System Operations on AWS - Tips and Tricks

This is my list of hints and tips for this course. It’s markdown so you can save it, access it or store it anywhere. I might also give you other links that are course specific. I’ll add specific answers to questions I get during the course. I’ll share it with everyone.

Pre Class Survey Results

  • Response 1)- AWS Infrastructure (ASG and LBs) TODO Labs 2)- AWS automation technologies. TODO Broad service review in the console 3)- AWS GuardRails and Cost Optimization. TODO EC2 Velocity Migration Deep Dive
  • How to effectively monitor and troubleshoot systems and EC2 instances. TODO AWS Systems Manager, Dome9 and Labs
  • creating and managing cloud formation templates TODO Cloudformation Build out from scratch
  • identifying strategies for applying autoscaling to messaging systems. TODO whiteboard architecture using messaging services
  • security and delegation TODO IAM review specifically roles
  • VPC and security groups and NACL to use them in combination to accomplish the design goals. TODO Review fully integrated NIST quickstart
  • To understand best practices for setting up and configuring AWS services. Mostly in architecting resilient services powered by AWS. TODO Labs and Arch and Adv Arch courses
  • It is important for me to understand how to create, test, deploy, and troubleshoot a CloudFormation template. To understand the whole pipeline. As much hands-on experience as possible. TODO Cloudformation Build out from scratch
  • I come from the Infrastructure team predominantly using Vmware ESXi for our on-premise virtualization. As such I am most interested in the fundamental compute/storage/networking aspects of AWS like EC2/EBS/S3/VPC…etc TODO Labs and VMWare Cloud on AWS
  • Use standard AWS infrastructure features such as VPC, EC2, Elastic Load Balancer, and auto scaling from the command line TODO Labs
  • Use CloudFormation and other automation technologies to produce stacks of AWS resources that can be deployed in an automated, repeatable fashion TODO Review SaaS Quickstart
  • Monitor the health of EC2 instances and other AWS services TODO Cloudwatch, Inspector, Labs
  • Using cloudformation templates for deployments, also the usage of AWS SAM for serverless. TODO Add SAM to Cloudformation Demo
  • General automation around deployments. TODO Codestar Intro
  • Monitoring and troubleshooting. TODO AWS Systems Manager, Dome9 and Labs
  • A very good understanding of creating VPC’s ground-up TODO Cloudformation Build out from scratch
  • and how to use Cloudformation
  • How to navigate the UI to piece all the pieces together.
  • Use cases of companies having services in both public and private cloud (ie. hybrid infrastructure). The use cases should provide examples on how challenges of migrating services to public cloud were overcome or are still being worked through. It would be also good to show examples of how proprietary standardization of cloudformation templates is enforced. TODO Service Catalog
  • Cloudformation.
  • Details on properly setting up ACLs / Security Groups. TODO Review fully integrated NIST quickstart
  • Good ways to manage large numbers of resources. TODO AWS Systems Manager
  • What is most important for my role is to understand the architecture of AWS and how each component works with the others and where they lie within the infrastructure TODO Review SaaS Quickstart

Lunch Time Entertainment

In an Emergency

  • Ian Falconer (415)-797-9307 ifal@amazon.com ** if you get locked out, lost or something else disastrous you can call my cell phone. I sometimes miss it buzzing or beeping so be persistent.

Administrivia

We need to jump through some hoops to get access to the labs, notes and my hints and tips. Be consistent with the email address you use for all sites. There are three seperate sites you need to access and one bitly link which is this page:

  • Join or login to https://www.aws.training/ to ensure your training and certifications are captured. No we don’t spam you or sell your details.
  • Access Qwiklab (yes it is spelt INCORRECTLY) ** aws.qwiklabs.com for the labs in this class ** run.qwiklabs.com for outside of the class or to do other labs at your own pace. NOTE: Some are free others require course credits.
  • Access the course notes and slides. You’ll receive two emails. One confirming your attendance at this course and with the following links. The download link seems broken. You can download apps for phones, tablets and laptops. Or use your browser.
  • www.vitalsource.com look for a signup link and download link. Or just go to https://evantage.gilmoreglobal.com/#/user/signin
  • Once you’ve logged into Vitalsource (aka Bookshelf, Gilmore, eVantage) you can redeem your unique course materials code (in a seperate email) and update your book list. You should see a lab guid and student guide for XXXXXXXXX, version 5. . The student guide is the powerpoint decks and notes and the lab guide is the step by step instructions for the labs. You can download the Vitalsource Bookshelf app for Windows, Mac, IoS and Android at https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/201344733-Bookshelf-Download-Page
  • If you have trouble printing the student and lab guides to pdf try using the 32 bit (not 64 bit) Bookshelf apps). https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/201344733-Bookshelf-Download-Page

ReInvent

There are some proven strategies to get the most out of ReInvent. The event is spread out over many casinos so you want to minimize commuting. I prefer to walk than shuttle to get some sun.

Cool links

Ian’s list of links for weekly review of all stuff AWS. (trying to keep up with the firehose)

https://aws.amazon.com/podcasts/aws-podcast/ and all the faq pages for each product (this is where I start reading)

AWS has released a number of webinars and now has a monthly cadence https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/events/monthlywebinarseries/

AWS Answers is now available to the public. It contains some interesting links. https://aws.amazon.com/answers/

Get to know your Technical Account Manager (TAM) The TAMs provide support for your applications running on AWS. They can help you prepare for major events like testing and scaling. They can also help troubleshoot and provide visibility into AWS infrastructure metrics for troubleshooting. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/faqs/

AWS Glossary contains service names and nomenclature https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/glos-chap.html

Management tools

Compute links

Serverless

Containers

Database and Storage links

Edge and IoT Computing links

Account and Network links

Security links

Visualize your AWS environment

IaaC

The Cloudformation resource type reference is a great single place to dive deep on which services are supported as IaaC https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-template-resource-type-ref.html

Run Cloudformation template from the command line

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name 'my-yaml-cloudformation-demo' --template-body file://cfn-manual-build.yaml

YAML Cloudformation Template

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"

Description: >
  # We are manually building a VPC, subnet, IGW, IGW Attachment, Security Group and EC2 Instance
  # ami-0b59bfac6be064b78 is hardcoded to us-central-1 ohio

Resources:
  MyVPC:
    Type: AWS::EC2::VPC
    Properties:
      CidrBlock: 10.23.0.0/16    # required
      Tags:                # optional, list of Tag
      - Key: Environment     # optional
        Value: Demo     # optional
      - Key: Customer
        Value: CVent

  MySubnet:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Subnet
    Properties:
      CidrBlock: 10.23.0.0/17     # required
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC     # required

  MyIGW:
    Type: AWS::EC2::InternetGateway

  MyIGWAttachment:
    Type: AWS::EC2::VPCGatewayAttachment
    Properties:
      InternetGatewayId: !Ref MyIGW     # optional
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC     # required

  MyWebServerSG:
    Type: AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup
    Properties:
      GroupDescription: Allow http to client host
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC
      SecurityGroupIngress:
        - CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0
          FromPort: 80
          ToPort: 80
          IpProtocol: tcp
      SecurityGroupEgress:
        - CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0
          FromPort: 0
          ToPort: 65535
          IpProtocol: tcp

  MyWebServer:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Instance
    Properties:
      ImageId: ami-0b59bfac6be064b78
      InstanceType: t3.small
      SecurityGroupIds:
        - Ref: MyWebServerSG
      SubnetId: !Ref MySubnet
      UserData:
        Fn::Base64: !Sub |
          "#!/bin/bash
          yum install -y httpd
          service httpd start"

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