WordPress High Availability

WordPress High Availability brings WordPress to a new level, making this flexible and expandable content management system highly available and specifically geared towards critical projects. This solution ensures maximum fault tolerance thanks to a distributed architecture with multiple instances and a common file system.

Benefits of the High Availability architecture

• Fault-tolerance. Multiple WordPress instances are deployed in one availability zone and restored automatically in case of failure.
• Common file system. Yandex Cloud file systems ensure high-performance synchronization of WordPress files across all instances.
• Managed database. The solution employs Yandex Managed Service for MySQL^® with automatic backup, replication, and monitoring.
• Automatic failover. If one of the instances fails, traffic is automatically redistributed to live servers.
• Load balancing. Yandex Network Load Balancer evenly distributes queries across available instances.

Main WordPress features

• Visual editor (Gutenberg). The block-based editor enables assembling pages from ready-made blocks (text, images, galleries, covers, columns, buttons, etc.) with no programming skills required.
• Thousands of themes and plugins. A vast variety of free and paid-for extensions for introducing such features as SEO, forms, caching, multi-language support, online store, and many more.
• Managing users and roles. An embedded role system (admin, editor, author, etc.) for teamwork around content.
• SEO and marketing. Basic out-of-the-box SEO features and advanced plugin-based settings (Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, etc.), integration with analytics and marketing tools.
• Flexible settings. Theme editor, widgets, menu, support for child themes, as well as full access to code for developers.
• Online store. Deploy your store using the WooCommerce plugin: sales catalog, shopping cart, order placement, integration with payment systems.

Beyond that, the following plugins are installed and set up automatically along with WordPress:

• S3 Uploads: Integrated with Yandex Object Storage to store media files.
• WP Mail SMTP: Integrated with Yandex Cloud Postbox to send email notifications from your website.

1. The application requires a domain delegated to Yandex Cloud DNS. Specify the ns1.yandexcloud.net. and ns2.yandexcloud.net. name servers. For more information, see How to delegate a domain to Cloud DNS servers.

2. Create a Yandex Virtual Private Cloud network as well as subnets in the ru-central1-a and ru-central1-d availability zones.

3. Create a Yandex Lockbox secret with a password:

   • For a Managed Service for MySQL^® database, enter db_password in the Key field.
   • Optionally, for a WordPress admin, enter wp_admin_password in the Key field. Creating a secret with a WordPress admin password is not mandatory: you can omit it in the application settings; in this case, it will be created automatically with a random password when installing the application.

4. In the management console, select the folder where you want to deploy the application.

5. Go to Cloud Apps.

6. In the left-hand panel, select Marketplace.

7. Select WordPress High Availability and click Use.

8. Specify the following:

   • Application name: Name of your WordPress High Availability instance.

   • Application description. This is an optional property.

   • Service account with the admin role for the folder, or select Auto to have the service account created when installing the application.

   • ID of the DNS zone to host the application’s domains.

   • Site subdomain for WordPress. This is an optional property. By default, the subdomain is empty. The website domain is formed by adding a subdomain to the DNS zone domain.

   • Mail sender. This is an optional property. The default is noreply@website_domain. It is used to set up the SMTP via Yandex Cloud Postbox.

   • WordPress administrator username: Username for the WordPress admin account. This is an optional property. The default value is admin.

     Warning

     Once created, the WordPress admin login cannot be edited.

   • The WordPress administrator email to use for creating the WordPress admin account, sending system notifications, and resetting the password.

   • ID of the secret with the WordPress administrator password you created earlier. This is an optional property. If you do not specify a secret, it will be created automatically with a random password when installing the application.

   • VPC subnets in the ru-central1-a and ru-central1-d availability zones for deploying a Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster and VMs with a file system.

   • Instance group size: The number of VMs in the group. This is an optional property. The default value is 2.

   • Number of vCPUs. This is an optional property. The default value is 2.

   • RAM in GB. This is an optional property. The default value is 2 GB.

   • vCPU guarantee. This is an optional property. The available values are 20%, 50%, or 100%. The default value is 100%.

   • Public SSH key. This is an optional property. It will be added to the WordPress user’s authorized_keys. To learn how to create an SHH key, see this guide.

   • File system size in GB. This is an optional property. The default value is 100 GB.

   • ID of the secret with the DB password for accessing the Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster you created earlier.

   • Size of the Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster’s disk. This is an optional property. The default value is 20 GB.

9. Click Install and wait for the installation to complete.

After installing WordPress, you will have access to:

• The main website: https://your-domain.
• The WordPress admin dashboard: https://your-domain/wp-admin.

Along with the website, a WordPress admin account will be created automatically with the login and email you specified. The admin password can be:

• Configured in the application settings, if you have previously created a Yandex Lockbox secret with a password.
• Be obtained after installing the application: the password will be generated automatically and saved into a Yandex Lockbox secret created when installing the application.

You can reset your password via a regular WordPress password reset form, as the account uses the admin email you specified.

Deleting an application

1. Delete the Yandex Cloud Postbox that was created automatically when installing the application. For technical reasons, it will not be deleted automatically when deleting the application.
2. Delete all objects from the Yandex Object Storage buckets created when installing the application: you can only delete empty buckets.
3. Delete the WordPress High Availability instance.

• Critical corporate websites requiring high availability.
• Large, high-traffic news and media outlets.
• WooCommerce-based online stores requiring continuous operation.
• Corporate websites and intranet systems for large organizations.
• SaaS platforms and web applications with critically important SLAs.

Yandex Cloud technical support is available 24/7. The types of requests you can submit and the relevant response times depend on your pricing plan. You can switch to the paid support plan in the management console. You can learn more about the technical support terms and conditions here.