A Comprehensive Guide to Scaling Web & Mobile Apps on AWS – Part 1

I published a 12,000+ word guide in January on AirPair.com on building scalable apps on Amazon Web Services. I’ve been a longtime Hacker News reader so it was gratifying to see the article get 500+ upvotes and 120+ comments on Hacker News! It also attracted about 30,000 readers in the first 24 hours of publication and well over 1,000,000 readers over the following year.

Part 2 of the article is brewing right now, mostly in the form of gaining the real-world experience necessary to write a thorough and helpful guide.

Read the Article on AirPair.com

Download the PDF

Update/June 9, 2025: Eight years and two kids later, I’m back on this blog! But alas, AirPair is no longer in business. Amazingly, people still occasionally ask me for a PDF of the article, so you can now download it above. As for part 2, I got so busy with consulting and family at the time (and later Gruntwork) that I never did have time to write it. At this point, it’s no longer clear there’s value to add by authoring a part 2, so I’m afraid this will remain a “part 1” series only!

Update/January 6, 2017: Looks like AirPair is back online, so you can view the article there now!

Update/December 25, 2016 : AirPair.com has been down for a few days now, so if you’d like a copy of the article just email me and I’ll send you a PDF.

Regarding Part 2, I have all the knowledge and experience to write it, but I’ve been busy getting our new “DevOps as a Service” company Gruntwork up and running. I’d like to make it a Q1-2017 goal to publish Part 2, and will report back here once I’ve formally committed to that. Thank you for all your interest!