Deploying and managing a Static Website using Gatsby, S3 and GitLab: Part 1

Running a website has always been a pain for organisations. From renting servers, installing and managing software, security patches and version upgrades… not to mention the 24×7 support team needed to monitor it and fix it when it breaks. All this required effort sets the bar quite high for launching a new website, even when all you want to do is run a simple landing site or launch your own blog. Well, through the wonders of the AWS cloud and a few simple services… it doesn’t need to be that hard.… [Keep reading] “Deploying and managing a Static Website using Gatsby, S3 and GitLab: Part 1”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 11th January 2019

Well, for a lot of people (myself included) we have now finished our first week back at work for 2019 and the teams over at Amazon Web Services are already hard at work releasing new products, services and even a couple of price reductions to help start off the 2019 year. This article forms the first of a weekly series we will be doing this year to help customers with a brief overview of the happenings within the AWS world over the last week to try and help surface some of the more important announcements.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 11th January 2019”

AWS DeepRacer – Tips and Tricks – Battery and SSH

If you would like to know more about what the AWS DeepRacer is, please refer to my previous post:  AWS DeepRacer – Overview

I was going to do an unboxing video, but Andrew Knaebel has done a well enough job of that and posted it on YouTube, so I’ll skip that part and move onto more detail on getting up and running with the AWS DeepRacer. 

A lot of this is covered in the AWS DeepRacer Getting Started Guide so I’ll try and focus on the places where it was not so clear.… [Keep reading] “AWS DeepRacer – Tips and Tricks – Battery and SSH”

AWS DeepRacer – Training your reinforcement learning model in AWS Robomaker

If you would like to know more about what the AWS DeepRacer is, please refer to my previous post:  AWS DeepRacer – Overview

There seems to be many ways to get your AWS DeepRacer model trained. These are a few I have discovered:

  • The AWS DeepRacer Console (Live Preview yet to commence, GA early 2019)
  • SageMaker RL notebook
  • Locally from the DeepRacer GitHub repository
  • AWS RoboMaker sample simulation
  • AWS RoboMaker Cloud9 IDE with sample application downloaded

In this post, we will be exploring how to train a reinforcement learning model using AWS Robomaker, both with the sample application downloaded and in the Cloud9 development environment.… [Keep reading] “AWS DeepRacer – Training your reinforcement learning model in AWS Robomaker”

Backups? Doesn’t Amazon handle that?

For many, the cloud is a magical place where servers just appear and your cloud provider looks after everything, or, if they at least have a concept of the servers, they just assume that the provider will also back them up. Lots of people never bothered to think about protection in a VMware environment, so why start now?

Unfortunately, while your cloud provider probably supplies the tools, you still need to do the configuration and management.… [Keep reading] “Backups? Doesn’t Amazon handle that?”

AWS DeepRacer – How to load a model

If you would like to know more about what the AWS DeepRacer is, please refer to my previous post:  AWS DeepRacer – Overview

This post assumes you have followed the AWS DeepRacer Getting Started Guide which gets you to the point of being able to manually drive the car.

So now you have the AWS DeepRacer charged up and ready to go. You have a trained model you got from Re:Invent or you followed my other post here and trained your model with RoboMaker/SageMaker.… [Keep reading] “AWS DeepRacer – How to load a model”

AWS DeepRacer – How to login to the Ubuntu Computer Onboard

If you would like to know more about what the AWS DeepRacer is, please refer to my previous post:  AWS DeepRacer – Overview

This post assumes you have followed the AWS DeepRacer Getting Started Guide which gets you to the point of being able to manually drive the car.

So to go deep into your understanding of the AWS DeepRacer and to troubleshoot deep technical issues, it may become necessary to log into the Ubuntu Server on-board the AWS DeepRacer.… [Keep reading] “AWS DeepRacer – How to login to the Ubuntu Computer Onboard”

AWS DeepRacer – Overview

Recently I had the privilege of attending the AWS Re:Invent 2018 conference in Las Vegas. Among the hundreds of announcements, there was one that particularly spoke to my passions of reinforcement learning and robotics.

The AWS DeepRacer!

I was one of the lucky few that got into the AWS DeepRacer workshops where we were introduced to the technology in the service as well as interacting with the yet to be released DeepRacer console.… [Keep reading] “AWS DeepRacer – Overview”

Re:Invent 2018 – Day 3: Keynote Time

Andy Jassy has finished presenting  the 7th Annual AWS Re:Invent keynote and he didn’t disappoint. Like in years past, their are a bunch of new product announcements such as:

  • Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
  • Amazon FSx for Lustre
  • Amazon DynamoDB On-Demand
  • Amazon Elastic Inference
  • SageMaker Ground Truth
  • SageMaker RL
  • AWS DeepRace
  • Amazon Personalize
  • Amazon Forecast

 

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server fits all of these needs, and more.… [Keep reading] “Re:Invent 2018 – Day 3: Keynote Time”

Re:Invent 2018 – Day 2 Part 1: Monday Night Live brings us More

So, last night PST brought us “Monday Night Live” hosted by “Peter DeSantis – Vice President AWS Global Infrastructure and Customer Support” and the session didn’t disappoint. In addition to the presentation, we we’re again bombarded with new Product announcements we can add to out list including:

  • Firecracker – Lightweight Virtualization for Serverless Computing
  • C5n Instances with 100 Gbps Networking
  • EC2 Instances (A1) Powered by Arm-Based AWS Graviton Processors
  • AWS Transit Gateway
  • AWS Global Accelerator

 

Firecracker – Lightweight Virtualization for Serverless Computing

Firecracker implements a virtual machine monitor (VMM) that uses the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to create and manage microVMs.… [Keep reading] “Re:Invent 2018 – Day 2 Part 1: Monday Night Live brings us More”