Amazon Lightsail FAQs

Lightsail instances are specifically engineered by AWS for web servers, developer environments, and small database use cases. Such workloads don't use the full CPU often or consistently, but occasionally need a performance burst. Lightsail uses burstable performance instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the additional ability to burst above the baseline. This design enables you to get the performance you need, when you need it, while protecting you from the variable performance or other common side effects that you might typically experience from over-subscription in other environments. For more information on burstable performance, go here.

If you need highly configurable environments and instances with consistently high CPU performance for applications such as video encoding or HPC applications, we recommend you use Amazon EC2.

Lightsail offers a 1-click secure connection to your instance's terminal right from your browser, supporting SSH access for Linux/Unix-based instances and RDP access for Windows-based instances. To use 1-click connections, launch your instance management screens, click Connect using SSH or Connect using RDP, and a new browser window opens and automatically connects to your instance.

If you prefer to connect to your Linux/Unix-based instance using your own client, Lightsail will do the SSH key storing and management work for you, and provide you with a secure key to use in your SSH client.

Each Lightsail instance automatically gets a private IP address and a public IP address. You can use the private IP to transmit data between Lightsail instances and AWS resources privately, for free. You can use the public IP to connect to your instance from the Internet, such as through a registered domain name or through an SSH or RDP connection from your local computer. You can also attach a static IP to the instance, which substitutes the public IP with an IP address that doesn't change even if the instance is stopped and started.

A static IP is a fixed, public IP that is dedicated to your Lightsail account. You can assign a static IP to an instance, replacing its public IP. If you decide to replace your instance with another one, you can reassign the static IP to the new instance. In this way, you don't have to reconfigure any external systems (like DNS records) to point to a new IP every time you want to replace your instance.

DNS is a globally distributed service that translates human readable names like www.example.com into numeric IP addresses, like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. With Lightsail, you can easily map your registered domain names such as photos.example.com to the public IPs of your Lightsail instances. In this way, when users type human readable names like example.com into their browsers, Lightsail automatically translates the address into the IP of the instance you want to direct your users to. Each of these translations is referred to as a DNS query.

It's important to know that in order to use a domain in Lightsail, you must first register it. You can register new domains using domain support features on Lightsail, Amazon Route 53, or your preferred DNS registrar.

Yes. You can control the data traffic for your instances by using the Lightsail firewall. From the Lightsail console, you can set rules about which ports of your instance are publicly accessible for different types of traffic.

Snapshots are point-in-time backups of instances, databases, or block storage disks. You can create a snapshot of your resources at any time, or you can enable automatic snapshots on instances and disks to have Lightsail create snapshots for you. You can use snapshots as baselines to create new resources or to back up your data. A snapshot contains all of the data that is needed to restore your resource (from the moment when the snapshot was taken). When you restore a resource by creating it from a snapshot, the new resource begins as an exact replica of the original resource that was used to create the snapshot.

You can manually take snapshots of your Lightsail instances, disks, and databases, or you can use automatic snapshots to instruct Lightsail to take daily snapshots of your instances and disks automatically. For more information, see Snapshots in Amazon Lightsail.

Automatic snapshots are a way to schedule daily snapshots of your Linux/Unix instances in Amazon Lightsail. You can pick a time of the day, and Lightsail will automatically take a snapshot for you each day at the time you chose and always keep your seven most recent automatic snapshots. Enabling snapshots is free – you only pay for the actual storage used by your snapshots.

Automatic snapshots cannot be tagged or exported directly to Amazon EC2. However, automatic snapshots can be copied and converted into manual snapshots. To copy an automatic snapshot into a manual one, choose Keep from the automatic snapshot’s context menu to copy it as a manual snapshot.

If you want to back up your data, you can use the Lightsail console or API to take a snapshot of your instance. If there is a failure or bad code deployment, you can later use your instance snapshot to create a brand new instance. We recommend stopping your instance temporarily when taking a snapshot, to ensure your data is complete and not corrupted in any way.

When you stop your instance, it is powered down at its current state and is available for you to start again at any time. Stopping your instance will release its public IP, so it is recommended that you use static IPs for instances that must retain the same IP after they stop.

When you delete your instance, you are performing a destructive action. Unless you have taken an instance snapshot, all of your instance data will be lost and you cannot recover it again. The instance's public and private IPs will also be released. If you were using a static IP with that instance, the static IP is detached, but remains in your account.

Yes. You can take a snapshot of your instance, and use the API to launch a new, larger size instance. You can launch new instances from snapshot using the Lightsail console or the CLI. Find instructions on how to use the CLI here.

You can connect your Lightsail instances to VPC resources in your AWS account privately, by using VPC peering. Just choose Enable VPC peering on your Lightsail account page, and Lightsail does the work for you. Once VPC peering is enabled, you can address other AWS resources in your default AWS VPC by using their private IPs. Find instructions here.

Note that you need to have a default VPC set up in your AWS account in order for VPC peering with Lightsail to work. AWS accounts created before December 2013 do not have a default VPC, and you will need to set one up. Find out more about setting up your default VPC here.

Lightsail is currently available in all the Availability Zones in the following AWS Regions:

• US East (N. Virginia)
• US East (Ohio)
• US West (Oregon)
• Canada (Central)
• Europe (Frankfurt)
• Europe (Ireland)
• Europe (London)
• Europe (Paris)
• Europe (Stockholm)
• Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
• Asia Pacific (Singapore)
• Asia Pacific (Sydney)
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
• Asia Pacific (Seoul)

Availability Zones are collections of data centers that run on physically distinct, independent infrastructure and are engineered to be highly reliable. Common points of failure such as generators and cooling equipment are not shared between Availability Zones. Additionally, Availability Zones are physically separate, so that even extremely uncommon disasters such as fires, tornados, or flooding can affect only a single Availability Zone.

For the latest Lightsail service quotas, including which quotas can be increased, see the Lightsail service quotas in the AWS General Reference. If you need to increase a quota, please open a case with customer service.

We're here for you. Quick Assist in Lightsail offers immediate helpful tips about your actions in the console. From the Lightsail console, you can also access a library of getting started guides, overviews, and how-to topics. And if you want to use the API or CLI, Lightsail has a full API reference for all supported programming languages. You can also use Lightsail support resources:

• If you have an issue with your account or billing, contact customer service online. You get free 24x7 access with your Lightsail account.
• If you have a general question about how to use Lightsail, search the Lightsail documentation and support forums.

Additionally, AWS Support offers an array of paid plans to cover your individual needs.

Lightsail currently supports 6 Linux or Unix-like distributions – Amazon Linux, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu – and 3 Windows Server versions – 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019.

A tag is a label that you assign to a Lightsail resource. Each tag consists of a key and a value, both of which you define. A tag value is optional, so you can choose to create “key-only” tags for filtering resources in the Lightsail console.

Tags have multiple use cases - they enable you to group and filter your resources in the Lightsail console and API, track and organize your costs in your bill, and regulate who can see or modify your resources through access management rules. By tagging your resources you can:

• Organize - use the Lightsail console and API filters to view and manage resources based on their tags you have assigned them. This is useful when you have many resources of the same type—you can quickly identify a specific resource based on the tags you've assigned to it.
• Cost-allocate - track and allocate costs across different projects or users by tagging your resources and creating “cost allocation tags” in the billing console. For instance, you can split out your bill and understand your costs by project or by client.
• Manage access - control how users with access to your AWS account can edit, create, and delete Lightsail resources by using AWS Identity and Access Management policies. This allows you to more easily collaborate with others without needing to give them full access to your Lightsail resources.

Learn more about using tags in Lightsail >>

Lightsail current supports tagging for the following resources:

• Instances (Linux and Windows)
• Container services
• Block storage disks
• Load balancers
• Databases
• DNS zones
• Instance, disk, and database snapshots

Manual snapshots also support tags and are automatically given the same tags as the source resource. You can edit these tags when you use a snapshot to create a new instance, disk, or database.

The Lightsail console automatically tags manual snapshots with the same tags as its parent resource. However, tags are not automatically copied over from a resource to its automatic snapshots. If you use the Lightsail API to create a snapshot, you can choose the tags for the snapshot yourself.

Important: Database snapshots tags are not currently included in billing reports (cost allocation tags).

Lightsail tags are key-value pairs, allowing you to organize resources such as instances across different categories, e.g. project:Blog, project:Game, project:Test. This allows you full control across all use cases such as resource organization, bill reporting, and access management. The Lightsail console also allows you to tag your resources with key-only tags for quick filtering in the console.

Yes. With Amazon Lightsail you can collect metrics on various resources, including instances, load balancers and databases. For any individual resource you can setup to two alarms thresholds for each metric. If the alarm threshold is breached you will receive a notification in the Lightsail console, and, optionally, you can choose to receive an email message and/or SMS message. There is no additional charge for the alerting and monitoring feature in Lightsail, however, you may incur charges from your mobile carrier for SMS messaging.

For a limited time, Lightsail is extending its free tier to include three months free on select bundles. The offer applies to new or existing AWS accounts who started Lightsail usage on or after 7/8/2021. Offer only applies to one bundle per account. Standard charges apply after first 750 hours of usage of the selected bundle each month. Check out the pricing page to learn more. 

Lightsail plans are billed on an on-demand hourly rate, so you pay only for what you use. For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost. The least expensive Lightsail plan starts at $0.0047 USD/hour ($3.50 USD/month). Lightsail plans that include a Windows Server license start at $0.01075 USD/hour ($8 USD/month).

Your Lightsail instances are charged only when they're in the running or stopped state. If you delete your Lightsail instance before the end of the month, we only charge you a prorated cost, based on the total number of hours that you used your Lightsail instance. For example, if you use the least expensive Lightsail plan for 100 hours in a month, you will be charged 47 cents (100*0.0047).

Static IPs are not charged extra when attached to a Lightsail instance. Static IPs cannot be attached to IPv6-only instances. IPv4 addresses are a scarce resource and Lightsail is committed to helping to use them efficiently, so we charge a small $0.005 USD/hour fee for static IPs not attached to an instance for more than 1 hour.

Your plan includes a free data transfer allowance. Both data transfer in and data transfer out of your instance count toward your data transfer allowance. For Lightsail content delivery network (CDN) distributions, only data transfer out of your distribution counts toward your allowance.

If you exceed your data transfer allowance, you will only get charged for data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance to the Internet or to AWS resources using the public IP address of the instance. This additional charge for data transfer beyond allowance is also payable for resources that are within their free trial period. Both data transfer IN to Lightsail instances and data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance when using the instance’s private IP address are free beyond your data transfer allowance. For Lightsail CDN distributions, all data transfer out of your distribution will incur a charge once you exceed your distribution data transfer allowance.

Every single Lightsail plan also includes a healthy amount of free IN and OUT data transfer. For example, using the cheapest Lightsail instance bundle you can send and receive up to 1 TB of data to the Internet within the month, at no extra charge.

Every Lightsail instance plan includes a data transfer allowance. Both data transfer IN and data transfer OUT of your instance count toward your data transfer allowance. If you exceed your data transfer allowance, you will only be charged for the excess data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance to the Internet or to AWS resources using the public IP address of the instance. You will not be charged for the excess data transfer IN to your Lightsail instance (see Example 1). Your data transfer allowance resets every month, and your instance can consume it whenever it needs to within the month. Data transfer allowance is aggregated for instances of the same bundle (i.e. bundleId) in a region (see Examples 2 and 3). Data transfer allowance is also aggregated for IPv4 and IPv6 instances of the same size (see Example 4). Deleting an instance and creating a new instance does not reset the data transfer allowance (see Example 5).

Example 1:
Assume you have one $5/month instance bundle (or bundleId ‘nano_3_0’) with 1TB/month data transfer allowance. If you send 500GB of data to the Internet (data transfer OUT) and 400GB of data to the instance (data transfer IN), you will have consumed 900GB of your 1TB allowance. If you further send 200GB of data to the Internet, you will exceed your allowance by 100GB, and will be charged a data transfer OUT overage fee for 100GB. If you next send 200GB of data to the instance, you will not be charged for overage.

Example 2:
If you have two $5/month instance bundles (or bundleId ‘nano_3_0’) for a full month in a region, each with 1TB/month data transfer allowance, you get 2TB data transfer allowance in aggregate. If you send 1.5TB of data to the Internet with the first instance and 100 GB of data to the Internet with the second instance, you will still be 400GB under your total allowance of 2TB, and you will not be charged any data transfer OUT overage fees.

Example 3:
You create two sets of instance bundles: set A with two $5/month instance bundles (bundleId ‘nano_3_0’) and set B with three $7/month instance bundles (bundleId ‘micro_3_0’), both in US West (Oregon) Region. In aggregate, this gives you 2TB of data transfer allowance for set A, and 6TB of data transfer allowance for set B. If you transfer 3TB of data to the Internet through set A instances and 4TB of data to the Internet through Set B instances, you will exceed your data transfer allowance for Set A instances and will be charged a data transfer OUT overage fee for 1TB. You will still be within your allowance for Set B instances by 2TB.

Example 4:
Assume you have consumed 600GB of the total 1TB data transfer allowance for your $3.5/month IPv6 instance bundle (bundleId ‘nano_ipv6_3_0’) within the first 20 days of the billing month. You decide to switch the networking type of your instance to dual-stack (bundleId ‘nano_3_0’ charged at $5/month price) on the 21st day. Your data transfer utilization for the month will not reset, and will remain at 600GB, with 400GB allowance left. During the remainder of the billing month, if you send 500GB of data to the Internet, you will accrue data transfer OUT overage charges for 100GB.

Example 5:
You have three $5/month instance bundles (bundleId ‘nano_3_0’), each with 1TB/month data transfer allowance. Assume you have consumed 1TB of the total 3TB data transfer allowance within the billing month, which leaves you with 2TB of remaining data transfer allowance. If you delete all your instances, and create three new instances of the same bundle (bundleId ‘nano_3_0’) in the same region within the same billing month, your data transfer utilization will still be 1TB and remaining data transfer allowance will still be 2TB. You can transfer 2TB more data through your instances within the same month before you start accruing any data transfer OUT overage charges.

We have designed our data transfer plans so that the vast majority of our customers will be fully covered by their allowance and not incur any additional charges. Even if you exceed your data instance transfer allowance, some types of data transfer are free. Data transfer IN to Lightsail instances is always free. Data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance to another Lightsail instance or AWS resource in the same Region is also free if private IP addresses are used.

When you exceed the monthly free data transfer allowance of your instance plan, you will get charged for data transfer OUT from a Lightsail instance to the Internet or to another AWS Region or to AWS resources in the same Region when using public IP addresses. The charge for these types of data transfer above the free allowance is as follows:

• US East (N. Virginia): $0.09 USD/GB
• US East (Ohio): $0.09 USD/GB
• US West (Oregon): $0.09 USD/GB
• Canada (Central): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Frankfurt): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Ireland): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (London): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Paris): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Stockholm): $0.09 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Mumbai): $0.13 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Singapore): $0.12 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Sydney): $0.17 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo): $0.14 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Seoul): $0.13 USD/GB

Instances created in different Availability Zones can communicate between zones privately and for free, and are much less likely to be impaired concurrently. Availability Zones enable you to build highly available applications and websites without increasing the cost of data transfer or compromising your application's security.

When you exceed the data transfer allowance of your Lightsail CDN distribution plan, you are charged for all data transfer OUT. The charge for data transfer above your distribution’s allowance is different from Lightsail instances and is as follows:

• Asia Pacific: $0.13 USD/GB
• Australia: $0.17 USD/GB
• Canada: $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe: $0.09 USD/GB
• India: $0.13 USD/GB
• Japan: $0.14 USD/GB
• Middle East: $0.11 USD/GB
• South Africa: $0.11 USD/GB
• South America: $0.11 USD/GB
• United States: $0.09 USD/GB

All AWS Regions have the same data transfer plan allowance as listed on amazonlightsail.com and amazonlightsail.com/pricing, with the exception of the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) and the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions. In these two AWS Regions, the data transfer plan allowance is as follows:

• 512 MB plan: 500 GB
• 1 GB plan: 1 TB
• 2 GB plan: 1.5 TB
• 4 GB plan: 2 TB
• 8 GB plan: 2.5 TB
• 16 GB plan: 3 TB
• 32 GB plan: 3.5 TB

Your load balancer does not consume your data transfer allowance. Traffic between the load balancer and the target instances or distributions is metered and counts toward your data transfer allowance for your instances or distributions, in the same way that traffic in from and out to the internet is counted toward your data transfer allowance for Lightsail instances that are not behind a load balancer. Traffic into and out of your load balancer to the internet is not calculated toward the data transfer allowance for your instances.

DNS management is free within Lightsail. You can create up to 6 DNS zones and as many records as you want for each DNS zone. You also get a monthly allowance of 3 million DNS queries per month to your zones. Beyond your first 3 million queries in a month, you are charged $0.40 USD/million DNS queries.

Lightsail snapshots cost $0.05 USD/GB-month for both instance snapshots and for disk snapshots. This means if you take a snapshot of your 30 GB SSD instance and keep it for a month, you pay $1.50 USD at the end of the month.

When you take multiple successive snapshots of the same instance, Lightsail automatically cost-optimizes your snapshots. For each new snapshot you take, you're charged only for the part of the instance that changed. In the example above, if your instance only changes by 2 GB, your second instance snapshot costs only $0.10 USD per month.

Lightsail Block storage costs $0.10 USD per GB per month.

Lightsail load balancers cost $18 per month.

Lightsail certificates and certificate management are free with use of a Lightsail load balancer.

Yes! For a limited time new Amazon Lightsail customers get up to three months free on select bundles. This offer only applies to new accounts created after 7/8/21. See the pricing page for more information.

Lightsail is an AWS service and runs on the AWS trusted and proven cloud infrastructure. You use the same AWS account and credentials to log in to Lightsail and the AWS Management Console.

You can manage your AWS account, including changing your AWS account password, user name, contact information, or billing information from the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

Lightsail is an Amazon web service, so to use Lightsail, you first agree to the AWS Customer Agreement and Service Terms. When creating Lightsail instances, you also agree that your use of software is also subject to the end user license agreement of the seller, available for your review on the create instance page.

You can pay and manage your bill through the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. AWS accepts most major credit cards. Learn more about managing your payment methods.

Lightsail for Research makes it easy for you to create powerful virtual computers on the cloud with your preferred applications like Scilab, RStudio, and Jupyter pre-installed. You can access the applications running on these virtual computers and upload or download data directly through a web browser from anywhere via internet. You can create and terminate these virtual computers at any time, meaning you can access virtual computers on-demand while paying only for the duration you use the virtual computers.

Lightsail offers popular pre-installed applications such as Scilab, RStudio, and Jupyter. Learn about all pre-installed applications available in Lightsail for Research documentation. You can also install additional packages and extensions through the interface of these applications. Moreover, you have access to the underlying virtual computer and can configure the environment.

A Lightsail for Research bundle (virtual computer) includes a virtual private server with a fixed amount of memory (RAM) and compute (vCPUs), SSD-based storage (disks), and a data transfer allowance. Lightsail features such as block storage, instance and disk snapshots, SSH access, remote desktop access (using Amazon DCV), and APIs can be used with Lightsail for Research virtual computers. Lightsail features such as static IPs, DNS management, object storage, load balancers, containers, databases, and CDN distributions are not applicable and cannot be used with Lightsail for Research virtual computers.

Lightsail for Research offers two types of virtual computers: non-GPU and GPU. For researchers who are using applications or analyzing data that do not need a GPU, we recommend using the non-GPU virtual computer. For researchers who are using analytical techniques like neural networks or are running advanced simulations, we recommend the GPU virtual computer.

Lightsail block storage provides additional storage volumes (called “attached disks” in Lightsail) that you can attach to your Lightsail instance, similar to an individual hard drive. Attached disks are useful for applications or software that need to separate out specific data from their core service and to protect application data in case of a failure or other issue with your instance and system disk. Attached disks offer consistent performance and low latency needed for applications or software that frequently access their stored data.

Lightsail block storage uses solid-state drives (SSD). This type of block storage balances a low price and good performance and is intended to support the vast majority of workloads that run on Lightsail. For customers with applications that require sustained IOPS performance, high amounts of throughput per disk, or that are running large databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, etc., we recommend using EC2 with GP2 or Provisioned IOPS SSD storage instead of Lightsail.

Each attached disk can be up to 16 TB.

You can attach up to 15 disks per Lightsail instance.

No, disks can only be attached to one instance at a time.

No, you can choose not to attach a disk to an instance. The disk will remain in your account in an unattached state. There is no difference in price if your disk is not attached to an instance.

Yes, you can increase the size of a disk by taking a disk snapshot and then creating a new, larger disk from snapshot.

Yes, to help keep your data secure, all Lightsail attached disks and disk snapshots are encrypted at rest by default, using keys that Lightsail manages on your behalf. Lightsail also provides encryption of data as it moves between Lightsail instances and attached disks.

Lightsail block storage is designed to be highly available and reliable. Each attached disk is automatically replicated within its Availability Zone to protect you from component failure. Although Lightsail does not guarantee SLAs, Lightsail block storage disks are designed for 99.99% availability and for an annual failure rate of less than 0.2%. Lightsail also supports disk snapshots to allow regular backups of your data.

You can back up your disk by taking a disk snapshot. You can also backup your entire instance and any attached disks by taking an instance snapshot.

The system disk included with your Lightsail plan is your instance’s root device. If you terminate your instance, the system disk will be deleted as well. If you experience an instance failure, the system disk could be impacted. You also cannot detach your system disk or back it up separately from your instance. Data stored on an attached disk persists independently of the instance. Attached disks can be detached and moved between instances and can be backed up independently from an instance using disk snapshot. To protect your data, we recommend that you use your Lightsail instance’s system disk only for temporary data. For data requiring a higher level of durability, we recommend using attached disks and regularly backing up your disk using disk or instance snapshots.

Lightsail load balancers allow you to build highly available websites and applications. By distributing traffic across instances in different Availability Zones and pointing traffic to only healthy target instances, Lightsail load balancers reduce the risk of your application going down due to an issue with your instance or to a datacenter outage. With Lightsail load balancers and multiple target instances, your website or application can also accommodate increases in web traffic and maintain good performance for your visitors during peak load times.

In addition, you can use Lightsail load balancers to build secure applications and accept HTTPS traffic. Lightsail takes the complexity out of requesting, provisioning, and maintaining SSL/TLS certificates. The built-in certificate management requests and renews certificates on your behalf and adds the certificate to your load balancer automatically.

You cannot use load balancers with instances running in different AWS Regions. You can, however, use target instances across different Availability Zones with your load balancer. In fact, we recommend that you distribute your target instances across Availability Zones to maximize the availability of your application.

Lightsail load balancers scale automatically to handle traffic spikes to your application without you having to manually adjust them. If your application experiences a transient spike in traffic, your Lightsail load balancer will automatically scale and continue to efficiently direct traffic to your Lightsail instances. While your Lightsail load balancer is designed to easily manage traffic spikes, applications that consistently experience very high volume levels of traffic may experience performance degradation or throttling. If you expect your application consistently to manage more than 5 GB/hour of data or consistently to have a large number of connections (>400k new connections/hour, >15k active, concurrent connections), we recommend using Amazon EC2 with Application Load Balancing instead.

Lightsail load balancers direct traffic to your healthy target instances based on a round robin algorithm.

During load balancer creation, you will be asked to specify a path (a common file or webpage URL) for Lightsail to ping. If the target instance can be reached using this path, then Lightsail will route traffic there. If one of your target instances is unresponsive, Lightsail will not route traffic to that instance. You can update the Health check path if needed in the load balancer management screens.

Lightsail tags are key-value pairs, allowing you to organize resources such as instances across different categories, e.g. project:Blog, project:Game, project:Test. This allows you full control across all use cases such as resource organization, bill reporting, and access management. The Lightsail console also allows you to tag your resources with key-only tags for quick filtering in the console.

Yes, Lightsail supports adding instances as target instances for more than one load balancer, if desired.

If you delete your load balancer, the attached target instances will continue to run normally and will appear in the Lightsail console as regular Lightsail instances. Please note that you will likely need to update your DNS records to direct traffic to one of your former target instances after you delete the load balancer.

Session persistence enables the load balancer to bind a visitor's session to a specific target instance. This ensures that all requests from the user during the session are sent to the same target instance. Lightsail supports session persistence for applications that require visitors to hit the same target instances for data consistency. For example, many applications that require user authentication can benefit from using session persistence. You can turn on session persistence for specific load balancer from the load balancer management screens after creation.

Lightsail load balancers support HTTP and HTTPS connections.

SSL/TLS certificates are used to establish the identity of your website or application and secure connections between browsers and your website. Lightsail provides a signed certificate to use with your load balancer, and the load balancer provides SSL/TLS termination before routing verified traffic to your target instances over the secure AWS network. Lightsail certificates can only be used with Lightsail load balancers, not with individual Lightsail instances.

Lightsail certificates are domain validated, meaning that you need to provide proof of identity by validating that you own or have access to your website’s domain before the certificate can be provisioned by the certificate authority. When you request a new certificate, Lightsail will prompt you to add a CNAME to the DNS zone(s) of the domain or domains you are validating. You will add this CNAME wherever you currently manage your DNS zones – either Lightsail DNS management or an external DNS hosting provider (e.g., Route 53, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.). Once your certificate is validated, you can remove the CNAME record from your DNS zone, if desired.

You must be able to validate that you own a domain for security purposes. This means if you or someone in your organization cannot add a DNS record to validate your certificate for any reason, you will not be able to use an HTTPS-enabled load balancer with Lightsail.

You can add up to 10 domains or subdomains per certificate. Lightsail does not currently support wild card domains.

To change the domains (add/delete) associated with your certificate, you will need to resubmit the certificate and revalidate your ownership of the domain(s). Follow the steps in the certificate management screens to regenerate your certificate and add or remove domains when prompted.

Lightsail provides managed renewal for your SSL/TLS certificates. This means that Lightsail tries to renew the certificates automatically before they expire with no action required from you. Your Lightsail certificate must be actively associated load balancer before it can be automatically renewed.

If your load balancer is deleted, your certificate is deleted as well. If you need to use a certificate for the same domain(s) in the future, you will need to request and validate a new certificate.

No, Lightsail certificates are bound to your Lightsail account and cannot be removed and used outside of Lightsail.

Upgrade to EC2 is a feature that allows you to create a copy of your Lightsail instance in Amazon EC2. When you upgrade to EC2, you can pick among the wide set of instance types, configurations, and pricing models that EC2 offers, and have even more fine-tuned control over your networking, storage, and compute environment.

Lightsail offers you an easy way to run and scale a wide set of cloud-based applications, at a bundled, predictable, and low price. Lightsail also automatically sets up your cloud environment configurations such as networking and access management.

Upgrading to EC2 allows you to run your application on a wider set of instance types, ranging from virtual machines with more CPU power, memory, and networking capabilities, to specialized or accelerated instances with FPGAs and GPUs. In addition, EC2 performs less automatic management and set-up, allowing you more control over how you configure your cloud environment, such as your VPC.

To get started, you need to export your Lightsail instance manual snapshot. You'll then use the Upgrade to EC2 wizard to create an instance in EC2.

Customers who are comfortable with EC2 can then use the EC2 creation wizard or API to create a new EC2 instance as they would from an existing EC2 AMI. Alternatively, Lightsail also provides a guided Lightsail console experience to help you easily create a new EC2 instance.

Note: Exporting Ghost and Django instance manual snapshots to Amazon EC2 is not supported at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Using the Upgrade to EC2 feature is free. Once you have exported your snapshots to EC2, you will be charged for the EC2 image separately and in addition to your Lightsail snapshot. Any new EC2 instances you launch will also be billed by EC2, including their EBS storage volume(s) and data transfer. Refer to the EC2 pricing page for details on the pricing for your new instance and resources. Lightsail resources that continue to run in your Lightsail account will continue to be billed at their regular rates until they are deleted.

The upgrade feature allows you to export Lightsail disk manual snapshots but doesn't currently support managed database snapshots. Disk snapshots can be rehydrated as EBS volumes from the EC2 console or API.

Lightsail's upgrade to EC2 feature is designed to support the export of Linux and Windows instances and their attached block storage (if applicable) to EC2. It also supports the export of unattached block storage disks to EBS. It does not currently support the export of load balancers, databases, static IPs or DNS records.

Lightsail's managed databases are instances that are dedicated to running databases, instead of other workloads like webserver, mail server, etc. A Lightsail database can contain multiple user-created databases, and you can access it by using the same tools and applications that you use with a stand-alone database. Lightsail maintains the security and health of your database’s underlying infrastructure and operating system, so that you can run a database without deep expertise in infrastructure management.

Like regular Lightsail instances, Lightsail databases come with a fixed amount of memory, computing power, and SSD based storage in their plans that you can scale up over time. Lightsail will automatically install and configure your chosen database for you upon creation.

Lightsail managed databases provide an easy, low maintenance way to store your data in the cloud. You can run Lightsail databases either as a new databases or by migrating from an existing on-premises or hosted database to Lightsail.

They can also allow you to scale your application to accept larger amounts of traffic and more intensive loads, by separating out your database into a dedicated instance. Lightsail databases are especially useful for stateful applications – like WordPress and most common CMSs – that need data to be kept in sync when you scale beyond a single instance. Lightsail databases can be paired with a Lightsail load balancer and two or more Lightsail instances to create a powerful, scaled application. By using Lightsail High Availability plans, you can also create add redundancy to your database, helping to ensure high uptime for your application.

Lightsail manages a range of maintenance activities and security for your database and its underlying infrastructure. Lightsail automatically backs up your database and allows point in time restore from the past 7 days using the database restore tool, to help protect against data loss or component failure. Lightsail also automatically encrypts your data at rest and in motion for increased security and stores your database password for easy and secure connections to your database. On the maintenance side, Lightsail runs maintenance on your database during your set maintenance window. This maintenance include automatic upgrades to the latest minor database version and all management of the underlying infrastructure and operating system.

Lightsail offers 4 sizes of databases in Standard and High Availability plans. Each plan comes with a fixed amount of storage and a monthly allowance of data transfer. You can also scale up to larger plans over time, as needed, and switch between Standard and High Availability plans. High Availability plans mirror the same resources as Standard plans and additionally include a standby database running in a separate Availability Zones from your primary database for redundancy.

Managed databases are available in Standard and High Availability plans. Standard and High availability plans have identical plan resources, including memory, storage, and data transfer allowance. High Availability plans add redundancy and durability to your database, by automatically creating standby database in a separate Availability Zone from your primary database, synchronously replicating data to the standby database, and providing failover to the standby database in case of infrastructure failure and during maintenance so that you ensure uptime even when databases is being automatically upgraded/maintained by Lightsail. Use High Availability plans for running production applications or software where high uptime is required.

You can scale up your database by taking a snapshot of your database and creating a new, larger database plan from snapshot or by creating a new, larger database using the emergency restore feature. You can also switch from Standard to High Availability plans and vice versa using either method. You cannot scale down your database. To learn more, see Creating a database from a snapshot in Amazon Lightsail.

Lightsail backs up your data automatically and allows restore of this data from a specific point in time to a new database. Automatic backup is a free service for your database but only saves the last 7 days of data. If you delete your database, all automatic backup records are deleted and point in time restore is no longer possible. To retain backups of data after deleting your database or to retain a backup for more than 7 days in the past, use manual snapshots.

You can take manual snapshots of your Lightsail managed databases from the database management pages. Manual snapshots contain all the data from your database and can be used as backups for data that you want to store permanently. You can also use manual snapshots to create a new, larger database or to switch between Standard and High Availability plans. Manual snapshots are stored until you delete them and are billed at $0.05 USD/GB-month.

If you delete your managed database, both your database itself and all automatic backups will be deleted. There is no way to recover this data unless you take a manual snapshot before deleting your database. During deletion of your database, Lightsail provides a one-click option to take a manual snapshot, if desired, to help protect against accidental loss of data. Taking a manual snapshot before deletion is optional but highly recommended. You can delete your manual snapshot in the future when you no longer need the stored data.

After you create your managed database, you can start using your database with your application immediately, using your Lightsail instances as web servers or other dedicated workloads for your app. To connect your Lightsail instance to a database, use your database endpoint and reference your securely stored password to configure the database as your data store in the code of your application. You can find connection data in the database management screens. The file name and location for your database configuration file will vary by application. Note that you can connect many instances to one database, either using the same tables or using different ones.

Lightsail content delivery network (CDN) distributions make it easy for you to accelerate the delivery of content hosted on your Lightsail resources by storing and serving it on Amazon’s global delivery network, powered by Amazon CloudFront. Distributions also help you enable your website to support HTTPS traffic by providing simple SSL certificate creation and hosting. Finally, distributions can help reduce the load on your Lightsail resources and help your website handle large traffic spikes. Like all of Lightsail’s features, setup can be completed with just a few clicks, and you pay a simple monthly price.

Lightsail distributions allow you to use your Lightsail instances, containers, load balancers, or Lightsail buckets as origins.

Yes, static IPs are required to be attached to instances that are specified as origins.

Simply create your distribution, select your WordPress instance as the origin, choose your plan, and you’re all set. Lightsail distributions automatically configure your distribution settings to optimize performance for most WordPress configurations.

Although you cannot attach multiple origins to your Lightsail distribution, you can attach multiple instances to a Lightsail load balancer and specify it as the origin of your distribution.

Yes. Lightsail distributions makes it easy to create, verify, and attach certificates directly from your distribution’s management page.

A certificate is only required if you wish to use your custom domain name with your distribution. All Lightsail distributions are created with a unique Amazon CloudFront domain name that is HTTPS-enabled. However, if you wish to use your custom domain with your distribution, then you need to attach a certificate for your custom domain to your distribution.

Yes, refer to Lightsail’s service quotas for more information.

Lightsail distributions automatically redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS to ensure that your content is served securely.

In order to point your apex domain to your CDN distribution, you must create an ALIAS record in the domain name system (DNS) of your domain that maps your apex domain to your distribution’s default domain. If your DNS hosting provider does not support ALIAS records, you can use Lightsail DNS zones to easily configure your apex domain to point to your distribution’s domain.

While data transfer IN and OUT count toward your instance’s data transfer quota, only data transfer OUT counts toward you distribution’s quota. In addition, all data transfer OUT in excess of your distribution’s quota is charged an overage fee, whereas some types of data transfer OUT are free for instances. Finally, Lightsail distributions use a different regional overage model, though the majority of the rates are the same as those charged for instance data transfer overage.

Yes, you can change your distribution's plan once per month. If you wish to change your plan a second time, you must wait until the beginning of the following month to do so.

Lightsail distributions provide you with a variety of metrics that track the performance of your distribution, including the total number of requests your distribution has received, the amount of data your distribution has sent to clients and to your origin, and the percentage of requests that have resulted in errors. Additionally, you can create alerts that are linked to distribution metrics.

Lightsail distributions are designed specifically for users who are hosting websites or web applications on Lightsail resources, such as instances and load balancers. If you’re using another service in AWS to host your website or app, have complex configuration needs, or have a workload that involves a high number of requests per second or large amount of video streaming, we recommend that you use Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon Lightsail CDN distributions are created using fixed-priced bundles of data transfer to make the cost of using the service simple and predictable. Distribution bundles are designed to cover a month’s worth of usage. Using distribution bundles in a way to avoid incurring overage fees (including, but not limited to, frequently upgrading or downgrading bundles, or using an excessively large number of distributions with a single origin) is beyond the intended scope of use and is not permitted. In addition, workloads that involve a high number of requests per second or large amount of video streaming are not permitted. Engaging in these behaviors may result in throttling or suspension of your data services or account.

Yes, you can move your Lightsail distribution by creating a similarly configured distribution in CloudFront. All of the settings that can be configured in a Lightsail distribution can also be configured in a CloudFront distribution. Complete the following steps to move your distribution to CloudFront:

1. Take a snapshot of your Lightsail instance that is configured as your distribution's origin. Export the snapshot to Amazon EC2, and then create a new instance from the snapshot in EC2. For more information, see Exporting Amazon Lightsail snapshots.

Note: Create an application load balancer in Elastic Load Balancing if you need to load balance your website or web application. For more information, see the Elastic Load Balancing User Guide.

2. Disable custom domains for your Amazon Lightsail distribution to detach certificates that you might have attached to it. For more information, see Disabling custom domains for your Amazon Lightsail distributions.

3. Using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), run the get-distributions command to get a list of your Lightsail distribution’s settings. For more information, see get-distributions in the AWS CLI Reference.

4. Sign in to the Amazon CloudFront console and create a distribution with the same configuration settings as your Lightsail distribution. For more information, see Creating a Distribution in the Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide.

5. Create a certificate in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) that you will attach to your CloudFront distribution. For more information, see Request a Public Certificate in the ACM User Guide.

Update your CloudFront distribution to use the ACM certificate you created. For more information, see Updating your CloudFront distribution in the CloudFront User Guide.

Lightsail container services provide an easy way to run containerized applications in the cloud. You can run a variety of applications on a container service, ranging from simple web apps to multi-tiered micro services. You just specify the container image, power (CPU, RAM) and scale (number of nodes) required for your container service. Lightsail takes care of running the container service without you having to manage any underlying infrastructure. Lightsail will provide you with a load balanced TLS endpoint to access the application running on the container service.

Yes. Lightsail supports Linux-based Docker containers. Windows containers are currently not supported.

You can use either container images on registries like Docker Hub or build your own custom image and push it to Lightsail in a few easy steps using the AWS CLI. For more information, see Pushing and managing container images on your Amazon Lightsail container services.

Currently, only public container registries are supported by Lightsail container services. Alternately, you can push your custom container images from your local machine to Lightsail to keep them private.

Yes, container service power and scale can be changed at any time even after the service is created.

Lightsail provides a HTTPS endpoint for every container service in the format “<service-name>.<random-guid>.<aws-region-name>.cs.amazonlightsail.com. Only the service name can be customized. Alternately, you can use a custom domain name. For more information, see Enabling and managing custom domains for your Amazon Lightsail container services.

Yes. You can create and attach SSL/TLS certificates with custom domain names to your container service in Lightsail. The certificates need to be domain validated. After the certificate is attached, if you manage your domain via Lightsail DNS, you can easily add A/AAAA/CNAME records to route traffic for your domain to your container services. Alternately, you can use a DNS hosting provider who supports adding ALIAS records, to map the apex of your domain to the public domain (public DNS) of your Lightsail container service. For more information, see Enabling and managing custom domains for your Amazon Lightsail container service.

Lightsail container services are billed on an on-demand hourly rate, so you pay only for what you use. For every Lightsail container service you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly service price. Maximum monthly service price can be calculated by multiplying the base price of the power of your service with the scale of your service. For example, a service of Micro power and scale of 2 will cost a maximum of $10*2=$20/month. The least expensive Lightsail container service starts at $0.0094 USD/hour ($7 USD/month). Additional data transfer charges may apply for usage above the free-quota of 500 GB per month for each service.

Your Lightsail container services are charged only when they're in the running or disabled state. If you delete your Lightsail container service before the end of the month, we charge you a prorated cost based on the total number of hours that you used your Lightsail container service. For example, if you use your Lightsail container service with a power of Micro and scale of 1 for 100 hours in a month, you will be charged $1.34 ($0.0134*100).

Every container service comes with a data transfer quota (500 GB per month). This counts towards both the data transfer IN and OUT of your service. When you exceed the quota, you will get charged for data transfer OUT from a Lightsail container service to the Internet or to another AWS Region or to AWS resources in the same Region when using public IP addresses. The charge for these types of data transfer above the free allowance is as follows:

• US East (N. Virginia): $0.09 USD/GB
• US East (Ohio): $0.09 USD/GB
• US West (Oregon): $0.09 USD/GB
• Canada (Central): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Frankfurt): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Ireland): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (London): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Paris): $0.09 USD/GB
• Europe (Stockholm): $0.09 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Mumbai): $0.13 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Singapore): $0.12 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Sydney): $0.17 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo): $0.14 USD/GB
• Asia Pacific (Seoul): $0.13 USD/GB

When you disable your container service, your container nodes are in a disabled state and the public endpoint of the service returns a HTTP status code ‘503’. Enabling the service restores it to the last active deployment. Power and scale configurations are also retained. Public endpoint name does not change after re-enabling. Deployment history and container images are preserved.

When you delete your container service, you are performing a destructive action. All the container nodes of the service will be permanently deleted. The HTTPS public endpoint address, container images, deployment history, and logs associated with your service will also be permanently deleted. You will not be able to recover the endpoint address.

Yes, you are charged according to the power and scale configuration of your container service, even when it is in a disabled state.

Container services are currently not supported as origins for Lightsail CDN distributions.

No. Container services are currently not available as targets for Lightsail load balancers. However, the public endpoints of container services come with built-in load balancing.

Lightsail container service public endpoints automatically redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS to ensure that your content is served securely.

Container services provide metrics for CPU utilization and memory utilization across the nodes of your service. Alerting based on these metrics is currently not supported.

Lightsail now provides you with the ability to store your static content such as images, videos or HTML files in an object storage that can be used for your websites and applications. Lightsail object storage can be associated to your Lightsail CDN distribution with a few simple clicks, making it quick and easy to accelerate the delivery of your content to a global audience. It can also be used as a low cost, secure backup solution.

Lightsail object storage has three different fixed-priced bundles in all AWS Regions where Lightsail is available. The first bundle is $1 per month and is free for the first 12 months. This bundle includes 5 GB storage capacity and 25 GB data transfer. The second bundle is $3 per month and includes 100 GB storage capacity and 250 GB data transfer. Lastly, the third bundle is $5 per month and includes 250 GB of storage capacity and 500 GB of data transfer. Lightsail object storage includes unlimited data transfer into your bucket, as the bundled data transfer allowance is used only for data transfer out from your bucket.

When you exceed the monthly storage capacity or data transfer allowance of your object storage plan, you will get charged for the additional amount. For more information, see the Lightsail pricing page.

You can consume your data transfer allowance by transfering data into and out of Lightsail object storage, except for the following:

• Data transferred into Lightsail object storage from the internet
• Data transfer between Lightsail object storage resources
• Data transferred out from Lightsail object storage to another Lightsail resource in the same region (including to a different account in the same AWS Region)
• Data transferred out from Lightsail object storage to a Lightsail CDN distribution

Yes, you can change your Lightsail object storage plan one time within your monthly AWS billing cycle.

Yes, copying from Lightsail object storage to Amazon S3 is supported. Documentation on the proper AWS CLI command can be found here.

To use Lightsail object storage, you must first create a bucket that is used to store your data. For more information, see Creating buckets in Amazon Lightsail. After your bucket is up and running, you can start adding objects to your bucket by uploading files using the Lightsail console or by configuring your application to put content like logs or other application data in the bucket. Alternatively, you can also get started with Lightsail object storage through the use of AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Lightsail buckets and objects are set to private by default, meaning that only users with appropriate permissions have access to the bucket and objects. A user can change this default setting and either make individual objects public and read only in a private bucket or opt to make the entire bucket public and read only. When a user makes a bucket or object public, anyone in the world can read its content.

You can use either access keys or roles for programmatic access to your bucket. First, select the bucket you want to programmatically connect to in the Lightsail console. Second, under the “Permissions” tab, create an access key or assign a role to your Lightsail instance and then configure your website or application code to use your bucket. This behavior may vary depending on how you plan to use object storage with your website or application. See more documentation here.

Lightsail makes cross-account sharing easy by allowing you to share access to your bucket with the AWS account ID you specify in the “Cross-account access” in the Lightsail console. After you specify an AWS account ID, that account will have read-only access to the bucket.

Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object storage in your bucket, providing an additional level of protection from accidental overwrites and deletes. See more documentation on enabling versioning here.

Lightsail object storage can be associated to Lightsail CDN distributions with a few simple clicks, making it quick and easy to accelerate the delivery of your content to a global audience. To do so, create a Lightsail CDN distribution and simply select the Lightsail bucket as the origin of your Lightsail CDN distribution. See more documentation here.

You can create up to 20 Lightsail object storage bundles per account. There is no limit to the number of objects that you can store in a bucket.

With Lightsail object storage, customers can easily view metrics on the total used space within a bucket and number of objects within the bucket. Alerting based on these metrics is also supported.