Progress on Amazon EC2 and Docker

After two frustrating days I finally got a Docker repository running on an Amazon Lightsail virtual machine, pushed a WordPress image from my Mac to my Docker repository, then pulled that image to my Lightsail virtual machine and got it running, thank to some help from my son Adam Pratt.

The Amazon part was fairly straightforward. Kudo’s to Amazon for making the process somewhat understandable. The big problem I had was with Docker. It took me about 15 hours of work to figure out how to push a Docker image from my Mac desktop to my repositor on Docker Hub. They don’t make it easy. Once Adam helped me get it to Docker Hub, we were easily able to pull it down and run it on my Amazon Lightsail virtual machine. I haven’t yet been able to log into my WordPress site running on Amazon, but hopefully I can get that done soon.

Using the knowledge I gained today, I decided to build a VPN from my computer to my Amazon cloud. This will make it easier to manage all my resources on Amazon. To do that I set up a free Amazon EC2 Instance with an Amazon Linux image and installed OpenVPN on it. That went much faster than all the Docker stuff. I still don’t have the VPN connected – it is getting late – but I feel pretty confident about that part since I have set up hundreds of VPN’s in my life. I just have to figure out the commands to get it done with OpenVPN and my Mac. Concepts are the same as I am familiar with, but the commands are different.

I am really excited about the possibilities of Amazon Web Services. Man that stuff is way, way cool. It takes some serious technical skills to get everything working but it is really powerful once I can get it done.