Building a Scalable Cloud-Native Drupal Website on AWS
Step-by-step guide to deploying and scaling Drupal applications on Amazon Web Services for optimal performance.
Building a Scalable, Cloud-Native Drupal Website on AWS
What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
A Content Management System (CMS) is software that allows users to create, manage, and publish digital content through an intuitive interface—often without needing to write code. CMS platforms separate content from design and logic, enabling content editors to manage websites independently from developers.
Popular CMS features include:
- WYSIWYG content editing
- Role-based access control
- Media management
- Workflow and version control
- SEO and metadata tools
Drupal is a powerful open-source CMS known for its flexibility, scalability, and security. It supports both traditional (monolithic) and headless (decoupled) architectures.
Headless vs Traditional CMS
Headless
- Frontend is decoupled and built separately (e.g., React, Vue)
- Highly flexible with API-driven delivery
- Frontend optimized independently for speed and UX
- Use cases: SPAs, mobile apps, multisite, IoT
- Complexity: Requires more coordination between teams
Traditional
- Backend handles rendering (e.g., Twig templates in Drupal)
- Tightly coupled frontend/backend
- May require more resources as site scales
- Use cases: Corporate websites, editorial platforms
- Complexity: Easier to manage as a single stack
Drupal supports both models. With JSON:API or GraphQL, it can serve as a headless CMS, providing structured content to any frontend framework.
Why Host Drupal in the Cloud?
As organizations increasingly seek scalable, secure, and cost-effective solutions, cloud infrastructure has become the go-to foundation for hosting modern web applications. For Drupal-based websites, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a robust ecosystem of tools that enable full control, performance tuning, horizontal scaling, and automation.
A Modern Drupal Cloud Architecture
Drupal serves as a powerful content management system (CMS) in this setup and can also be deployed as a headless backend. In a decoupled or headless architecture, Drupal manages structured content and exposes it via APIs (such as JSON:API), while the frontend is built with modern frameworks like React, Vue, or Next.js.
Key Components
- 1Amazon EC2 - Scalable compute capacity for Drupal application servers
- 2Amazon RDS - Managed MySQL/MariaDB database service
- 3Amazon S3 - Object storage for media files and static assets
- 4Amazon CloudFront - Global CDN for fast content delivery
- 5Elastic Load Balancing - Distributes traffic across multiple instances
- 6Amazon ElastiCache - In-memory caching with Redis or Memcached
- 7AWS WAF - Web application firewall for security
Benefits of Cloud-Native Drupal
- Scalability: Easily handle traffic spikes
- Reliability: High availability and fault tolerance
- Performance: Global content delivery and caching
- Security: Enterprise-grade security features
- Cost-Efficiency: Pay only for resources you use
Getting Started
At KodeNerds, we specialize in building and deploying scalable Drupal solutions on AWS. Our team can help you architect, implement, and optimize your cloud-native CMS.
Ready to build your scalable Drupal website? [Contact KodeNerds today](https://kodenerds.com/contact) to discuss your project.