The Basics on My AWS Rocks!

Wait! IP4 has a cost?

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Caveat: I started this post in April because lots of people were shocked at the cost appearing on their bill. I got half way and though it wasn’t worth publishing as the chatter would die down. However 4 months later I am still seeing people ask what can they do about IPv4 costs so thought I’d finish it off.

So you will know, or should know, that the 1st February 2024 saw AWS introduce charges for all public IPv4 addresses in use within an AWS account.

My bill is how much‽

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most common post by newcomers to AWS seems to be bill shock or unexpected charges.

Some of this is from using a service with out knowing the costs or forgetting to shut something down and incurring costs for longer than planned.

Some however is where accounts have been compromised and resources used by someone else.

So what can you do to prevent this?

This article will look at ways of securing your account and managing your costs. It is a high level article and doesn’t go into every service mentioned in detail, however it should give you enough to protect yourself and point you to further resources.

You put what in a public subnet‽

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Its great seeing peoples designs for modern solutions and especially serverless. What is more impressive is, where VPC services are in use, they are splitting them out into separate tiers and subnets.

😕 But why do so many people put things in public subnets that don’t need to be?

In this article I’ll look at what I think should be in public subnets and why you try not to put anything in a public subnet you don’t need to.

Creating a Well-Architected VPC

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

So this is the first in my posts walking through how to deploy a solution in AWS. Hopefully you find it useful as VPCs are the foundation for private and secure networking in AWS and an area many struggle. This guide is designed to ensure that your VPC deployments can be Well-Architected and provide a base level of network security but is only one option for VPC layout. While it will meet a vast majority of workloads you might want to review the structure and reduce, or increase, the number of subnets as well as other components.

Useful AWS Training Resources

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One thing I think is important in technology is to never stop learning. For me change in technology is like a river, it never stops flowing, and at times such as re:invent it can feel like a flood. Things are changing so rapidly if you don’t keep up to date you will drown in all the announcements and changes.

Hopefully you have all heard about the AWS SkillBuilder website that has over two and a half thousand digital courses in 16 languages. What you may not know is that there is a raft of other training material out there either direct from AWS or others that can help with your learning journey.

Setting up your AWS account

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

So you want to get your own AWS account and get started with hands on deployments. What should you do?

Getting Started

Firstly take a look at the AWS Getting Started Guide. In particular follow at least the first 3 steps of the setting up your environment. This will go through account creation, securing your root account and creating an admin account for you to use on a daily basis.

How to Setup Your Development Environment for AWS | Introduction
Learn how to setup your development environment for AWS. This tutorial includes setting up and securing your account, installing the AWS CLI, and getting started with Cloud9.

Security 101

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from the foundational architecture post I thought I’d give a dive into security of the AWS cloud. For me this is the most important element to understand before even creating an AWS account as if you get this wrong it can be costly in more ways than one. There are a few items that need to be looked at when considering security. These include, but are not limited to:

AWS Foundational Architecture

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When building a house, the most important thing to get right is the foundations. With out a good foundation everything that is built on top will have issues and, worse case, completely fail. Building IT solutions is no different. We have to ensure the basic foundations are in place in order to build good solutions for the business we are working for.

Often I see organizations trying to implement the foundations once they have built the first few systems or they realize that “this cloud craze is real”. Many times it is after a proof of concept has suddenly become a production system. What ever the reason for the delay it always causes rework, at a cost to the business, and can cause friction or resentment from engineers who implemented the first solutions.

AWS Basics

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lets discuss some of the basics you need to begin to rock your AWS solutions.

The Principles

Everything As Code

Firstly everything has to be via code! Doing things via the console is not the way to go long term. As soon as you can look at using the Command Line Interface (CLI). Even using the CLI will start to give you a better understanding of how AWS works under the hood and allow you to design and build better solutions. See the links at the bottom on how to install the CLI.