Beyond the Default: Building a Cost-Optimized Hybrid AWS Architecture

The article demonstrates a cost-optimized hybrid AWS architecture that uses a $5/month Lightsail instance as an Nginx reverse proxy to avoid EC2's $0.09/GB outbound data transfer charges, leveraging Lightsail's included 1TB bandwidth. The setup connects Lightsail to EC2 via VPC peering for private network communication, with practical troubleshooting tips like using traceroute to diagnose routing issues. Production optimizations include CloudFront for static assets, Cloudflare for security, and OpenLiteSpeed for PHP workloads.