🛠️ Lab 3 — VPC + RDS Two-Tier App

Type: Guided lab Time: ~90 minutes Difficulty: Intermediate Cost: Free (within free tier — delete RDS promptly after the lab)

🎯 What you’ll build

Build the most important pattern in cloud: a two-tier application. Custom VPC with public + private subnets, EC2 web server in the public subnet, RDS MySQL database in the private subnet. The exact same architecture every fintech and SaaS app uses.

📋 Prerequisites

  • Lab 1 + Lab 2 complete
  • Comfortable with SSH and the EC2 launch wizard
  • You’ve read the Week 2 slides on VPC + Security Groups

🛠️ AWS Services used

  • VPC — custom network with subnets, route tables, IGW
  • EC2 — web tier (public subnet)
  • RDS — MySQL database (private subnet, Multi-AZ)
  • Security Groups — SG-to-SG references for tight security

📖 The full walkthrough

Open Week2_Lab3_VPC_RDS.html in your browser. It’s a complete step-by-step guide with screenshots, code snippets, and inline hints.

💡 The HTML file is self-contained — no install, no internet needed once you’ve cloned the repo. Just double-click to open in your browser.

🆘 If you get stuck

  1. Re-read the relevant step in the HTML walkthrough
  2. Check the Common Mistakes callouts (red boxes in the walkthrough)
  3. Expand the 💡 Hint sections for guidance
  4. WhatsApp the group with a screenshot of the error
  5. Tag your post with #week2done

🎓 Submission

  1. Screenshot of your EC2 web server running
  2. Screenshot of mysql> prompt showing you successfully connected to RDS from EC2
  3. Result of a SELECT query you ran on a table you created

⬅️ Back to Week 2