Introduction

This project demonstrates the design and deployment of a scalable, secure, and highly available application architecture on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The solution leverages core AWS services such as Elastic Load Balancing, EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon S3, Route 53, and private DNS zones to build a production-ready environment. The architecture was designed to meet modern cloud-native best practices, ensuring performance, scalability, and reliability while maintaining secure access controls.

Architecture Overview

The architecture consists of three primary layers:

1. Frontend Layer (User Access & Load Balancing)

   • End users connect through HTTPS using a custom domain name managed via DNS zones.

   • An Application Load Balancer (ALB) distributes incoming traffic securely across multiple Tomcat application server instances.

   • Security Groups are applied to ensure only HTTPS and necessary application traffic (e.g., port 8080) are allowed.
     
     

2. Application Layer (Compute & Auto Scaling)

   • Tomcat Instances handle application logic and serve dynamic requests.

   • Instances are deployed within an Auto Scaling Group to ensure elasticity—automatically adding or removing instances based on traffic demand.

   • This ensures high availability and cost efficiency.
     
     

3. Backend Layer (Data & Messaging)

   • Includes MySQL Instances for relational database storage.

   • Memcache Instances improve performance by caching frequently accessed data.

   • RabbitMQ Instances enable message queuing for asynchronous communication.

   • Each backend service is deployed inside its own Security Group for controlled access.

Supporting Services

• Amazon S3: Used for storing static assets (such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files). This offloads workload from the compute layer and delivers faster content to users.

• Amazon Route 53: Provides domain registration, global DNS resolution, and health checks for routing traffic to healthy instances.

• DNS Private Zones: Private DNS entries (db01, mc01, rmq01) map to backend services, simplifying communication between components without exposing IP addresses publicly.

Security Implementation

• All traffic is encrypted using HTTPS at the load balancer level.

• Security Groups segment layers of the architecture:

  • ALB allows only HTTPS traffic from users.

  • Tomcat instances only accept traffic from the ALB.

  • Backend services (MySQL, Memcache, RabbitMQ) only accept traffic from the application layer.

• This layered approach aligns with the principle of least privilege.

Scalability and High Availability

• The Auto Scaling Group ensures the application can handle sudden increases or decreases in traffic by adjusting the number of EC2 instances.

• Using multiple instances across Availability Zones ensures high availability, minimizing downtime if a single instance or zone fails.

• Elastic Load Balancer works seamlessly with Auto Scaling to distribute requests evenly among healthy instances.

Benefits of This Architecture

1. Scalability – Auto Scaling adapts resources dynamically.

2. High Availability – Redundancy across multiple instances and zones ensures reliability.

3. Security – Security Groups and HTTPS protect against unauthorized access.

4. Performance – Memcache speeds up data retrieval, RabbitMQ optimizes communication, and S3 improves static content delivery.

5. Flexibility – Route 53 and DNS zones enable easy service discovery and domain management.

6. Cost Optimization – Pay-as-you-go model with Auto Scaling prevents overprovisioning.

Use Cases

This type of architecture is suitable for:

• E-commerce platforms requiring high uptime and quick response times.

• Enterprise web applications handling unpredictable workloads.

• SaaS products that need elasticity and reliability.

• Dynamic web applications that integrate messaging queues and caching layers.

Problem Statement

Traditional on-premises or datacenter workloads face multiple challenges:

• Complex management of servers and teams.

• Scaling limitations—manual provisioning when traffic increases.

• High upfront CapEx and recurring OpEx costs.

• Time-consuming manual operations with a high risk of human error.

• Limited flexibility compared to modern cloud environments.
  
  

Objective

Migrate and run an existing application workload from on-premises infrastructure to AWS Cloud using a Lift and Shift strategy. The goal is to:

• Reduce infrastructure complexity.

• Enable elastic scalability.

• Minimize cost through pay-as-you-go pricing.

• Improve availability, reliability, and security.

• Automate repetitive infrastructure tasks.
  
  

Solution Overview

Instead of maintaining workloads in a datacenter, the application is hosted on AWS using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Key benefits:

• Pay-as-you-go pricing model.

• Elastic scaling with Auto Scaling Groups.

• Managed security with IAM, Security Groups, ACM, and Route 53.

• Automation through user-data scripts, AMIs, and ASGs.
  
  

AWS Services Used

• Amazon EC2 – Compute instances for application & backend services (Tomcat, MySQL, Memcached, RabbitMQ).

• Elastic Load Balancer (ALB) – Distributes traffic securely across Tomcat instances.

• Auto Scaling Group (ASG) – Automatically scales Tomcat instances based on load.

• Amazon S3 – Stores application artifacts for deployment.

• Amazon Route 53 – Private DNS resolution for backend services.

• AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) – Manages SSL/TLS certificates for HTTPS traffic.

• IAM – Provides secure access control & instance roles.

• Amazon EBS – Persistent storage for EC2 instances.

Architecture Description

• Users access the application through a domain name (e.g., myapp.com).

• Route 53 resolves the domain to the Application Load Balancer (ALB).

• ACM provides SSL certificates so traffic flows via HTTPS.

• The ALB accepts requests (port 443) and forwards them to Tomcat instances (port 8080).

• Tomcat instances (in an Auto Scaling Group) run the application and connect to backend services.

• Backend services (MySQL, RabbitMQ, Memcached) run on dedicated EC2 instances in a separate Security Group.

• Application artifacts are built locally, uploaded to S3, and deployed to Tomcat servers.

Step 2: Create a Key Pair for Secure Access

Generated an EC2 Key Pair to enable SSH access to my instances securely. The private key was downloaded and stored locally.

Step 4: Launch EC2 Instances

Provisioned EC2 instances for:

Tomcat application server

MySQL database

RabbitMQ message broker

Memcache caching service

Each instance was placed in the correct Security Group and initialized with User Data scripts for automated setup.

Step 6: Build Application Artifact with Maven

On my local development machine, I built the Java web application artifact (.war) using Maven. This required JDK and AWS CLI installed.

Step 8: Download and Deploy Artifact to Tomcat Server

Connected to the Tomcat EC2 instance, installed Tomcat, and deployed the .war file by fetching it from S3 using the AWS CLI.

Step 10: Configure SSL with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

Generated an SSL/TLS certificate in ACM and attached it to the ALB, ensuring encrypted HTTPS traffic.

Step 12: Test HTTPS Access

Verified secure access by opening the domain in a browser. Confirmed the application loaded successfully over HTTPS.

Step 14: Configure Auto Scaling

Set up an Auto Scaling Group (ASG) with the following parameters:

• Launch Template using Tomcat AMI.

• Minimum: 1 instance, Maximum: 4 instances.

• Scaling policies based on CPU utilization.

Conclusion

This project successfully migrated a monolithic application from an on-premises data center to AWS, implementing:

• Load balancing with SSL

• Secure multi-tier architecture

• Automated deployments using S3 and User Data

• Auto Scaling for elasticity

• DNS-based service discovery

By completing this project, I demonstrated my ability to design, implement, and optimize AWS-based production workloads, following cloud best practices in scalability, availability, and security.