Creating subdomains in Amazon EC2

Question

How can I create subdomains on Amazon EC2?

Is adding virtual host in httpd.conf is enough.. or any other changes also needs to be done?

Thanks

Answer 1

Depends on your server software. But as you mention httpd.conf, chances are good that you run Apache on a Linux distribution. If that's the case then yes, adding a virtual host is enough. Here is one way of doing it:

1. Purchase a domain. If you have one, skip this, we'll take example.com for this example.
2. Find the external IP or DNS for your EC2 instance. You probably want to associate an Elastic IP to your instance, otherwise the IP of your instance will change on reboots.

3. Create a DNS record for your domain, for instance a CNAME record to point to your Elastic IP/DNS name:

   subdomain.example.com => ec2-xx-xxx-xxx-xxx.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

4. Make sure your httpd.conf contains a line to allow virtual hosts:

   NameVirtualHost *:80

5. Create a virtual host directive:

httpd.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName subdomain.example.com
  ServerAdmin webmaster@subdomain.example.com

  DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/subdomain

  <Directory /var/www/example.com/subdomain>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/subdomain.example.com.error.log
  LogLevel warn
  CustomLog /var/log/apache2/subdomain.example.com.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

6. Restart Apache

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart