Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 4)

23rd of January, 2018 / / No Comments

Welcome back to the final blog post in this series! In parts 1, 2 and 3, we set up an Amazon Lex bot to converse with users, receive and validate verification input, and perform a password reset. While we’ve successfully tested this functionality in the AWS console, we want to provide our users with the ability to call and talk with the bot over the phone. In this blog post, we’ll wire up Amazon Connect with our bot to provide this capability.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 4)”

Patching LINUX EC2 through SSM

23rd of January, 2018 / / 5 Comments

This blog deals with configuring patches for Linux EC2 instances through AWS Systems Manager (SSM).
Mentioned below is the link for patching Windows-based EC2 instances using SSM
https://blog.kloud.com.au/2017/05/08/patching-ec2-through-ssm/
The configuration has three major sections

  • EC2 instance configuration for patching
  • Default Patching Baseline Configuration
  • Maintenance Window configuration.

1 Instance Configuration

We will start with the First section which is configuring the Instances to be patched. This requires the following tasks.

  1. Create Amazon EC2 Role for patching with two policies attached
    • AmazonEC2RoleForSSM
    • AmazonSSMFullAccess
  2. Assign Roles to the EC2 Instances
  3. Configure Tags to ensure patching in groups.
… [Keep reading] “Patching LINUX EC2 through SSM”

Update FSTAB on multiple EC2 instances using Run Commands

15th of January, 2018 / / No Comments

Scenario:

  • Customer Running multiple Linux Ec2 instance in AWS.
  • Customer reports that Instances are loosing mount points after a reboot.

Solution :

The resolution requires to update the fstab file on all the instances.
fstab is a system configuration file on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems that contains information about major filesystems on the system. It takes its name from file systems table, and it is located in the /etc directory ( ref : http://www.linfo.org/etc_fstab.html)… [Keep reading] “Update FSTAB on multiple EC2 instances using Run Commands”

Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 3)

9th of January, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Hopefully you’ve had the chance to follow along in parts 1 and 2 where we set up our Lex chatbot to take and validate input. In this blog, we’ll interface with our Active Directory environment to perform the password reset function. To do this, we need to create a Lambda function that will be used as the logic to fulfil the user’s intent. The Lambda function will be packaged with the python LDAP library to modify the AD password attribute for the user.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 3)”

Enable Cost Allocation Tags to differentiate project based billing

8th of January, 2018 / / No Comments

When running in an AWS public cloud environment, many times there is a need to dissect the billing across different projects for accounting and accrual purposes. AWS provides a mechanism to aggregate related platform costs using a feature known as Cost Allocation Tags. With this feature you can designate Tags on your AWS resources to track costs on a detailed level.
From the AWS Documentation:

Activating tags for cost allocation tells AWS that the associated cost data for these tags should be made available throughout the billing pipeline.

… [Keep reading] “Enable Cost Allocation Tags to differentiate project based billing”

Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 2)

20th of December, 2017 / / No Comments

Welcome back! Hopefully you had the chance to follow along in part 1 where we started creating our Lex chatbot. In part 2, we attempt to make the conversation more human-like and begin integrating data validation on our slots to ensure we’re getting the correct input.

Creating the Lambda initialisation and validation function

As data validation requires compute, we’ll need to start by creating an AWS Lambda function. Head over to the AWS console, then navigate to the AWS Lambda page.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 2)”

Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 1)

18th of December, 2017 / / No Comments

“What! Is this guy for real? Does he really think he can replace the front line of IT with pre-canned conversations?” I must admit, it’s a bold statement. The IT Service Desk has been around for years and has been the foot in the door for most of us in the IT industry. It’s the face of IT operations and plays an important role in ensuring an organisation’s staff can perform to the best of their abilities.… [Keep reading] “Replacing the service desk with bots using Amazon Lex and Amazon Connect (Part 1)”

Disk Space Reporting through Lamba Functions- Linux servers

4th of December, 2017 / / No Comments

Solution Objective:

The solution provides detailed report related to hard disk space for all the Linux Ec2 instances in the AWS environment.

Requirements:

 
Mentioned below are the requirements the solution should be able to fulfil.

  • Gather information related to all mount points in all the Linux EC2 instances in the environment.
  • Able to generate cumulative report based on all instances in the environment.

3. Assumptions:

The following assumptions are considered

  • All the EC2 instances have SSM agent installed.
… [Keep reading] “Disk Space Reporting through Lamba Functions- Linux servers”

Azure AD Domain Services

4th of December, 2017 / / No Comments

I recently had what I thought was a rather unique requirement from a customer.
The requirement was to build Azure IaaS virtual machines and have them joined to a managed domain, while also being able to authenticate to the virtual machines using Azure AD credentials.
The answer is Azure AD Domain Services!
Azure AD Domain Services provides managed domain services such as domain join, group policy and Kerberos/NTLM authentication without the need for you to deploy and  manage domain controllers in the cloud.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Domain Services”