AWS architecture template
AWS 3-tier web app
CloudFront and WAF in front of an Application Load Balancer, EC2 Auto Scaling app servers, Aurora and ElastiCache in a VPC.
Free to start. Updated .
When to use it
This is the classic AWS layout for a stateful web application: Route 53 for DNS, CloudFront at the edge with AWS WAF attached, an Application Load Balancer as the web tier, EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group as the application tier, and Aurora plus ElastiCache as the data tier. Static assets come straight from S3 through CloudFront, so the servers only handle dynamic requests.
Choose it when your application already runs on virtual machines, needs local disk or long-running processes, or has to be lifted from a data centre without a rewrite. The cost is operational: you patch the instances, tune scaling policies and plan Aurora failover yourself. Keep the app servers stateless by putting sessions in ElastiCache, and spread every tier across at least two Availability Zones. If the code can move to containers, the EKS template removes much of the instance management.
What's in this template
User / ActorBrowsers and mobile clients
Route 53Public hosted zone
CloudFrontEdge cache and TLS termination
WAFManaged rules on the distribution
S3Static assets origin
ELBApplication Load Balancer (web tier)
EC2 Auto ScalingEC2 app servers across AZs (app tier)
AuroraAurora MySQL, writer + reader (data tier)
ElastiCacheRedis for sessions and hot reads
How it connects
- User / Actor → Route 53 (network): DNS
- User / Actor → CloudFront (network): HTTPS
- WAF → CloudFront (dependency): Web ACL
- CloudFront → S3 (data): Static assets
- CloudFront → ELB (network): Dynamic requests
- ELB → EC2 Auto Scaling (network): HTTP
- EC2 Auto Scaling → Aurora (data): SQL
- EC2 Auto Scaling → ElastiCache (data): Sessions
More AWS templates
AWS serverless API
API Gateway with a Cognito JWT authorizer, Lambda handlers, DynamoDB storage and an SQS queue for background jobs.
AWS static website with CloudFront
Private S3 bucket behind CloudFront with origin access control, ACM, WAF and a CodePipeline build that deploys on push.
AWS EKS microservices
Amazon EKS behind an Application Load Balancer, with ECR images built by CodeBuild, Aurora, ElastiCache and IAM pod roles.
Make it your own
Open a copy in the editor, then rename, rearrange and extend it.