The problem I ran into was the version of Discourse that was available as an AWS image (aka AMI) did not seem compatible with the developer version we’ve been working on: Although I got it up and running, I was unable to do a restore…it kept throwing errors. Beyond that, it was shown as version 1.9.3-dirty and I couldn’t even do a backup/restore of the default install without errors being thrown.
So what are the options to use Discourse in an AWS context?
What are your recommendations?
What are the costs?
If we wanted to host ourselves (at AWS) and ensure it scales and is resilient by using such services as RDS and Elasticache (for Redis), with that work with these solutions?
My recommendations are to start with the simplest configuration possible, a single server using the standard Docker install. For a frame of reference here’s a list of how I charge for installations.
For most people, I recommend Digital Ocean because it’s reliable and simple to configure.
If you have hundreds of thousands of page views daily, or a community that’s geographically diverse, a more complicated setup may be warranted.
You can use RDS and Eleasticache, but you’re mostly on your own to figure that out. There is some discussion about scaling over here. Mostly, unless you have wildly varying needs (e.g., hundreds of thousands of people pounding your site for a couple of days and then little traffic the rest of the time), auto-scaling more trouble than it is worth.