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Website on a LAMP or LEMP stack using the management console

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Updated at June 20, 2024

To create an infrastructure for a website on a LAMP or LEMP stack using the Yandex Cloud management console:

  1. Prepare your cloud.
  2. Create a cloud network and subnets.
  3. Create a security group.
  4. Create a VM with a pre-installed web server.
  5. Upload the website files.
  6. Configure the DNS.
  7. Check that the website is running.

We will use the example.com domain name as an example.

If you no longer need the resources you created, delete them.

Prepare your cloud

Sign up for Yandex Cloud and create a billing account:

  1. Go to the management console and log in to Yandex Cloud or create an account if you do not have one yet.
  2. On the Yandex Cloud Billing page, make sure you have a billing account linked and it has the ACTIVE or TRIAL_ACTIVE status. If you do not have a billing account, create one.

If you have an active billing account, you can go to the cloud page to create or select a folder for your infrastructure to operate in.

Learn more about clouds and folders.

The cost of supporting the website infrastructure includes:

Create a cloud network and subnets

All the resources created in the use case will belong to the same cloud network.

To create a network and subnets:

  1. In the management console, select Virtual Private Cloud.
  2. Click Create network.
  3. Specify the Name of the network: web-network.
  4. In the Advanced field, select Create subnets.
  5. Click Create network.

Create a security group

Security groups contain rules that allow accessing your VMs from the internet. You need to create a security group named sg-web.

To create a security group:

  1. In the management console, select Virtual Private Cloud.
  2. Open the Security groups tab.
  3. Create a security group for your VM:

    1. Click Create group.

    2. Enter the Name of the group: sg-web.

    3. Select the Network: web-network.

    4. Under Rules, create the following rules using the instructions below the table:

      Traffic
      direction      		 Description Port range Protocol Source /
      destination      		 CIDR blocks
      Outgoing any All Any CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
      Incoming ext-http 80 TCP CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
      Incoming ext-https 443 TCP CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
      1. Select the Outgoing traffic or Incoming traffic tab.
      2. Click Add rule.
      3. In the Port range field of the window that opens, specify a single port or a range of ports that traffic will come to or from.
      4. In the Protocol field, specify the appropriate protocol or leave Any to allow traffic transmission over any protocol.
      5. In the Purpose or Source field, select the purpose of the rule:
        • CIDR: Rule will apply to the range of IP addresses. In the CIDR blocks field, specify the CIDR and masks of subnets that traffic will come to or from. To add multiple CIDRs, click Add CIDR.
        • Security group: Rule will apply to the VMs from the current group or the selected security group.
      6. Click Save. Repeat the steps to create all the rules from the table.

    5. Click Save.

Create a VM with a pre-installed web server

  1. On the management console folder page, click Create resource and select Virtual machine.

  2. In the Name field, enter lamp-vm or lemp-vm as the VM name. The naming requirements are as follows:

    • The name must be from 3 to 63 characters long.
    • It may contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
    • The first character must be a letter and the last character cannot be a hyphen.

  3. Select an availability zone to place the VM in. If you do not know which availability zone you need, leave the default one.

  4. Under Image/boot disk selection, go to the Cloud Marketplace tab and select the VM image with the components you need:

    • LAMP for Linux, Apache, MySQL®, and PHP.

    • LEMP for Linux, Nginx, MySQL®, and PHP.

      For static websites, we recommend using LEMP.

  5. Under Computing resources:

    • Choose a VM platform.
    • Specify the required number of vCPUs and the amount of RAM.

    This minimum configuration is enough for functional website testing:

    • Platform: Intel Ice Lake
    • Guaranteed vCPU share: 20%
    • vCPU: 2
    • RAM: 1 GB

  6. In the Network settings section, select the web-network network and the subnet to connect the VM to.

  7. Under Public address, keep Auto to assign your VM a random external IP address from the Yandex Cloud pool, or select a static address from the list if you reserved one in advance.

  8. Specify the VM access data:

    • Enter the username in the Login field.

    • In the SSH key field, paste the contents of the public key file.

      You will need to create a key pair for the SSH connection yourself; see Connecting to a Linux VM via SSH for details.

    Alert

    Once created, the VM gets an IP address and a host name (FQDN) for connections. If you selected No address in the Public address field, you will not be able to access the VM from the internet.

  9. Click Create VM.

    It may take a few minutes to create the VM. When the VM status changes to RUNNING, you can upload the website files.

Upload the website files

To test the web server, upload the index.html file to the VM. You can use a test file. Download and unzip the archive.

  1. Under Network on the VM page in the management console, find the VM's public IP address.

  2. Connect to the VM via SSH.

  3. Grant your user write access to the /var/www/html directory:

    sudo chown -R "$USER":www-data /var/www/html

  4. Upload the website files to the VM via SCP.

    Use the scp command-line utility:

    scp -r <path_to_file_directory> <VM_username>@<VM_IP_address>:/var/www/html

    Use WinSCP to copy the local file directory to /var/www/html on the VM.

Configure the DNS

If you have a registered domain name, use the Cloud DNS service to manage the domain.

Read below to learn how to configure the DNS for the example.com domain name. The example.com domain name must be mapped to the VM IP address using DNS records. To do this:

  1. In the management console, select Compute Cloud.

  2. Copy the IP address of the VM you created.

  3. On the site of your DNS hosting provider, go to the DNS settings.

  4. Create or edit the A record for example.com so that it points to the copied IP address:

    example.com. A <VM_IP_address>

  5. Create a CNAME record named www with example.com for value.

    If you use Yandex Cloud DNS, follow this guide to configure the record:

    Configuring DNS records for Cloud DNS
    1. In the management console, select Cloud DNS.
    2. If you do not have a public DNS zone, create one:
      1. Click Create zone.
      2. Specify example-zone-1 for zone Name.
      3. In the Zone field, enter the website's domain name with a trailing dot: example.com.
      4. Select a Type of the zone: Public.
      5. Click Create.
    3. Create an A record:
      1. In the list of zones, click example-zone-1.
      2. Click Create record.
      3. Leave the Name field empty for the record to match the example.com domain name (rather than a name with a subdomain, e.g., www.example.com).
      4. Select the record Type: A.
      5. In the Data field, paste the copied IP address of the VM.
      6. Click Create.
    4. Create a CNAME record:
      • Select the example.com DNS zone from the list.
      • Click Create record.
      • Set the record parameters:
        • Name: www.
        • Record type: Select CNAME as the value.
        • TTL (record time to live): Keep the default value.
        • Value: Enter example.com.
      • Click Create.

Delegate the domain name

Delegation is the transfer of authority from the registrar's servers to yours. For a domain, NS resource records are created (ns1.yandexcloud.net and ns2.yandexcloud.net).

To delegate a domain, specify its DNS servers in the registrar's account.

Delegation does not take effect immediately. It usually takes up to 24 hours (86,400 seconds) for internet service providers to update records. This depends on the TTL value which specifies how long domain records are cached.

You can check domain delegation using Whois or the dig utility:

dig +short NS example.com

Result:

ns2.yandexcloud.net.
ns1.yandexcloud.net.

Check that the website is running

To test the site, enter its IP or domain name in your browser:

  • http://<public_IP_of_VM>
  • http://www.example.com

How to delete the resources you created

To stop paying for the resources you created:

  1. Delete the lamp-vm (lemp-vm) virtual machine.
  2. Delete the static public IP address if you reserved one specifically for this VM.
  3. Delete the DNS records and delete the DNS zone if you used Cloud DNS.

See also

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