RoadRunner PHP Application Server

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## RoadRunner - Production-Ready PHP Application Server AMI with 24/7 Expert Support

RoadRunner is a high-performance PHP application server and process manager written in Go. Instead of re-bootstrapping the PHP interpreter on every request, RoadRunner starts a pool of long-lived PHP worker processes once and keeps them warm, then dispatches incoming requests to them over an efficient pipes relay. The result is dramatically lower per-request overhead than a traditional PHP-FPM setup, with predictable memory use, graceful worker recycling and built-in supervision. RoadRunner speaks PSR-7 and PSR-15 to your PHP application, and its plugin architecture adds HTTP and HTTP/2 serving, gRPC, background jobs and queues, key-value caching and more from a single static binary.

## Why This AMI Over a Manual Install

• Instant time-to-value: RoadRunner is running as a systemd service the moment your instance boots, reverse proxied behind nginx - no package installation, no dependency troubleshooting and no proxy configuration required.
• Proven end to end: PHP 8.3 and Composer are already installed and a minimal demo PSR-7 worker application is vendored and running, rendering a status page that shows the PHP version, the RoadRunner version and the identity of the worker process serving each request. Replace the demo worker with your own PSR-7 application, or point RoadRunner at an existing framework project, and reload the server.
• Expert support included: 24/7 technical assistance from cloudimg engineers covering deployment, TLS termination, worker-pool tuning and troubleshooting.

## Application Stack

• RoadRunner installed as the official prebuilt single Go binary at /usr/local/bin/rr, SHA256-verified during install
• PHP 8.3 CLI plus the extensions the PSR-7 worker needs, and Composer, from the distribution archive
• A dedicated unprivileged service account owns the app directory; systemd starts RoadRunner on boot and restarts it automatically on failure
• nginx reverse proxy on port 80, ready for your TLS certificate

## Security Posture

• Loopback-only listeners: RoadRunner binds only to loopback for its HTTP, status and RPC listeners; the network reaches the application exclusively through the nginx reverse proxy
• No admin surface, no default password: RoadRunner has no web admin interface and the demo application is served content only, so no credential is baked into the image
• Unprivileged execution: RoadRunner and its PHP workers run under a dedicated service account with minimal OS permissions
• TLS readiness: the nginx virtual host is ready for your certificate; cloudimg support can assist with connector configuration and AWS Certificate Manager integration

## AWS Integration Points

• Application Load Balancer: place this AMI behind an ALB for traffic distribution, health checks and TLS termination at the load balancer tier
• Amazon CloudWatch: stream the nginx and RoadRunner logs to CloudWatch Logs for centralized monitoring and alerting
• AWS Systems Manager: use Session Manager for secure shell access without opening SSH ports, and Patch Manager for OS-level updates
• Amazon S3: store application artifacts in S3 and pull them during deployment pipelines
• AWS Certificate Manager: provision and manage TLS certificates for HTTPS at nginx or the ALB

## Features

A persistent, supervised PHP worker pool; PSR-7 and PSR-15 request handling; HTTP and HTTP/2 serving; gRPC; background jobs and queues; key-value plugins; graceful worker recycling and memory limits; and a health and metrics status endpoint on loopback for readiness checks.

## Use Cases

• High-throughput PHP APIs and web apps: serve REST APIs and web applications with far lower per-request overhead than PHP-FPM, behind an Application Load Balancer with auto-scaling for variable traffic
• Framework acceleration: run Symfony, Laravel or other PSR-7 framework projects on a warm worker pool for lower latency
• Lift and shift of PHP workloads: migrate existing PHP applications to EC2 on a modern, supervised application server without re-architecting

## Get Started Quickly

Launch the AMI, browse to your instance IP to see the demo PSR-7 application running immediately, then replace the demo worker with your own application. If you need a guided walkthrough or want to discuss whether RoadRunner fits your workload, contact cloudimg support for a free deployment consultation - our engineers will help you plan worker-pool sizing, TLS configuration and load balancer integration before you commit to production.

## About cloudimg

cloudimg publishes and maintains production-ready application server images across AWS Marketplace and Azure Marketplace, providing multi-cloud presence and consistent support for open-source infrastructure.