Deploying Drupal at scale requires more than just launching an EC2 instance. In this session, we will bridge the gap between AWS Solutions Architect design principles and real-world Drupal architecture to build a highly available, self-healing, and performant web platform.
Key Takeaways & Architecture Concepts Covered:
- Decoupling File Systems & State: Managing Drupal’s
/sites/default/filesusing Amazon EFS with proper mount targets vs. offloading media directly to Amazon S3 via the Flysystem/S3FS module. - High Availability Database Tier: Configuring Amazon RDS / Aurora MySQL Multi-AZ clusters, read replicas, and connection pooling for heavy read/write Drupal workloads.
- Caching Layers for Maximum Throughput: Implementing Redis via Amazon ElastiCache for backend caching and entity storage alongside AWS CloudFront / Varnish edge caching.
- Auto-Scaling & Load Balancing: Setting up Application Load Balancers (ALB) with Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) using immutable Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) or containerized ECS/Fargate tasks.
- Security & Disaster Recovery: Securing your Drupal stack with AWS WAF, VPC private subnets, Secrets Manager for
settings.php, and automated backup strategies.
Attendees will leave with clear reference architecture diagrams, best practices for cost optimization, and practical deployment patterns they can immediately apply to their projects.