API Mocking for Developers

18th of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

API is the most common practice to exchange messages in a microservices architecture world. There are actually two different approaches for API development. One is called Model First and the other is called Design First. Usually the latter, AKA Spec-Driven Development (SDD), is preferred over the former.
When is the Model First approach useful? If you are running legacy API applications, this would be a good example of using this approach. If those systems are well documented, API documents can be easily extracted by tools like Swagger which is now renamed to Open API.… [Keep reading] “API Mocking for Developers”

Watching the watcher – Monitoring the EC2Config Service

17th of May, 2017 / / No Comments

EC2Config service is a nifty Windows service provided by Amazon that performs many important chores on instances based on AWS Windows Server 2003-2012 R2 AMIs. These tasks include (but are not limited to):

  • Initial start-up tasks when the instance is first started (e.g. executing the user data, setting random Administrator account password etc)
  • Display wallpaper information to the desktop background.
  • Run Sysprep and shut down the instance

More details about this service can be found at Amazon’s webpage
Another important aspect of EC2Config service is that it can be configured to send performance metrics to CloudWatch.… [Keep reading] “Watching the watcher – Monitoring the EC2Config Service”

VPC ( Virtual Private Cloud) Configuration

15th of May, 2017 / / No Comments

Introduction

This blog is Part 01 of a 02 part series related to custom VPC configurations
Part 01 discusses the following scenario

  • Creating a VPC with 02 subnets ( Public and Private )
  • Creating a bastion host server in the public subnet
  • Allowing the Bastion host to connect to the servers in the Private Subnet using RDP.

Part 02 will discuss the following

  • Configuring NAT Instances
  • Configuring VPC Peering
  • Configuring VPC flow Logs.

What is a VPC

VPC can be described as a logical Datacenter where AWS resources can be deployed.… [Keep reading] “VPC ( Virtual Private Cloud) Configuration”

Patching EC2 through SSM

8th of May, 2017 / / 48 Comments

 

Why Patch Manager?

AWS SSM Patch Manager is an automated tool that helps you simplify your operating system patching process, including selecting the patches you want to deploy, the timing for patch roll-outs, controlling instance reboots, and many other tasks. You can define auto-approval rules for patches with an added ability to black-list or white-list specific patches, control how the patches are deployed on the target instances (e.g. stop services before applying the patch), and schedule the automatic roll out through maintenance windows.… [Keep reading] “Patching EC2 through SSM”

Re-execute the UserData script in an AWS Windows Instance

23rd of April, 2017 / / 11 Comments

First published at https://nivleshc.wordpress.com
Bootstrapping is an awesome way of customising your instances in AWS (similar capability exists in Azure).
To enable bootstrapping, while configuring the launch instance, in Step 3: Configure Instance Details scroll down to the bottom and then expand Advanced Details.
You will notice a User data text box. This is where you can provide your bootstrap script. The script will be run when your instance is first launched.
AWS_BootstrapScript
I went ahead and entered my script in the text box and proceeded to complete my instance configuration.… [Keep reading] “Re-execute the UserData script in an AWS Windows Instance”

A Closer Look at Amazon Chime

28th of March, 2017 / / No Comments

In news this quarter AWS have released a web conferencing cloud service to their existing ‘Business Productivity‘ services which already includes Amazon WorkDocs and Amazon WorkMail. So my thought was to help you gauge where this sits in relation to Skype for Business. I don’t want to put this into a Microsoft versus Amazon review but I do want you to understand the product names that ‘somewhat’ align with each other.

Exchange = WorkMail

SharePoint/OneDrive for Business  =  WorkDocs

Skype for Business  = Chime

The Microsoft products are reasonably well known in the world so I’ll give you a quick one liner about the Amazons products:

WorkMail “Hosted Email”

WorkDocs “Hosted files accessible via web, PC, mobile devices with editing and sharing capability”

So what is Chime?

… [Keep reading] “A Closer Look at Amazon Chime”

Dynamically rename an AWS Windows host deployed via a syspreped AMI

20th of March, 2017 / / 2 Comments

One of my customers presented me with a unique problem last week. They needed to rename a Windows Server 2016 host deployed using a custom AMI without rebooting during the bootstrap process. This lack of a reboot rules out the simple option of using the PowerShell Rename-Computer Cmdlet. While there are a number of methods to do this, one option we came up with is dynamically updating the sysprep unattended answer file using a PowerShell script prior to the unattended install running during first boot of a sysprepped instance.… [Keep reading] “Dynamically rename an AWS Windows host deployed via a syspreped AMI”

Configuring AWS Web Application Firewall

30th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

In a previous blog, we discussed Site Delivery with AWS CloudFront CDN, one aspect in that blog was not covered and that was WAF (Web Application Firewall).
What is Web Application Firewall?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over which traffic to allow or block to your web applications by defining customizable web security rules.

… [Keep reading] “Configuring AWS Web Application Firewall”

Experiences with the new AWS Application Load Balancer

29th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

Originally posted on Andrew’s blog @ cloudconsultancy.info

Summary

Recently I had an opportunity to test drive AWS Application load balancer as my client had a requirement for making their websocket application fault tolerant. The implementation was complete windows stack and utilised ADFS 2.0 for SAML authentication however this should not affect other people’s implementation.
The AWS Application load balancer is a fairly new feature which provides layer 7 load balancing and support for HTTP/2 as well as websockets.… [Keep reading] “Experiences with the new AWS Application Load Balancer”

Site Delivery with AWS CloudFront CDN

29th of November, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Nowadays, most companies are using some sort of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve the performance and high availability of their sites, those include Azure CDN, CloudFlare, CloudFront, Varnish, and so on.
In this blog however, I will demonstrate how you can deliver your entire website through AWS’s CloudFront. This blog will not go through other CDN services. This blog also assumes you have knowledge of AWS services, DNS, and CDN.
What is CloudFront?

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video content or other web assets.

… [Keep reading] “Site Delivery with AWS CloudFront CDN”