Automate your Cloud Operations Part 1: AWS CloudFormation

29th of April, 2015 / / 3 Comments

Operations

What is Operations?

In the IT world, Operations refers to a team or department within IT which is responsible for the running of a business’ IT systems and infrastructure.

So what kind of activities this team perform on day to day basis?

Building, modifying, provisioning, updating systems, software and infrastructure to keep them available, performing and secure which ensures that users can be as productive as possible.

When moving to public cloud platforms the areas of focus for Operations are:

  • Cost reduction: if we design it properly and apply good practices when managing it (scale down / switch off)
  • Smarter operation: Use of Automation and APIs
  • Agility: faster in provisioning infrastructure or environments by Automating the everything
  • Better Uptime: Plan for failover, and design effective DR solutions more cost effectively.
… [Keep reading] “Automate your Cloud Operations Part 1: AWS CloudFormation”

Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure service comparison cheat sheet

27th of April, 2015 / / 6 Comments

Originally posted on Lucian’s blog at lucian.blog.

I’m a big fan of both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The two clouds are redefining the way web, apps and everything on the internet is made accessible from enterprise to the average user. Both for my own benefit and for yours, here’s a detailed side by side comparison of services as well as features available in each cloud:

Cloud Service Microsoft Azure Amazon Web Services
Locations Azure Regions Global Infrastructure
  NA Availability Zones
Management Azure Portal Management Console
Azure Preview Portal NA
Powershell+Desired State Configuration Command Line Interface
Compute Services
 Cloud Services Elastic Beanstalk
Virtual Machines Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
  Batch Auto Scaling
RemoteApp Work Spaces
Web and Mobile Web Apps NA

Mobile Services Mobile SDK
API Management CloudTrail
NA Cognito
NA Mobile Analytics
Storage
 SQL Databases Relational Database Service (RDS)
DocumentDB Dynamo DB
  Redis Cache Redshift
Blob Storage Simple Storage Service (S3)
Table Storage Elastic Block Store (EBS)
Queues Simple Queue Service (SQS)
File Storage Elastic File System (EFS)
Storsimple Storage Gateway
Analytics + Big Data
 HDInsight (Hadoop) Elastic MapReduce (EMR)
Stream Analytics Kinesis
Machine Learning Machine Learning
Data Orchestration Data Factory Data Pipeline
Media Services
 Media Services Elastic Transcoder
  Visual Studio Online NA
  BizTalk Services Simple Email Service (SES)
  Backup (Recovery Services) Glacier
  CDN CloudFront
Automation Automation OpsWorks
  Scheduler CodeDeploy + CodePipeline
Service Bus Simple Workflow (SWF)
Search CloudSearch
Networking Virtual Network Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  ExpressRoute DirectConnect
  Traffic Manager Elastic Load Balancing
  NA Route 53 (DNS)
 Management Services Resource Manager Cloud Formation
NA Trusted Adviser
Identity and Access Management
 Active Directory Directory Service
NA Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Marketplace Marketplace Marketplace
Container Support Docker VM Extensions EC2 Container Service
Compliance Trust Centre CloudHSM
Multi-factor Authentication Multi-Factor Authentication Multi-Factor Authentication
Monitoring Services Operational Insights Config
Application Insights CloudWatch
Event Hubs NA
Notification Hubs Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Key Vault Key Management Store
Government Government GovCloud
Other services Web Jobs Lambda
NA Service Catalog
Office 365 Exchange Online WorkMail
Office 365 Sharepoint Online WorkDocs

For me this comparison is an exercise to allow me to reference quickly what the major services and features are on each cloud platform.… [Keep reading] “Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure service comparison cheat sheet”

Updating your AWS bootstrap

19th of August, 2013 / / 6 Comments

In Bootstrapping AWS we looked at what’s required to kick off a brand new installation with your latest build.  But it’s two weeks later now – and you’re about to release version 2 of the application.  Using the Cloud Formation script we created first, it’s actually quite easy.

In the first build script, there was a reference in the CloudFormation Metadata to the website source – being {“Ref” : “BuildNumber”}.

"Parameters" : {
  "BuildNumber" : {
  "Type" : "Number"
  }
}

So the process is as follows.… [Keep reading] “Updating your AWS bootstrap”

Bootstrapping on AWS

5th of August, 2013 / / 11 Comments

The Task

This post is going to look at the process of hosting a highly available corporate website using Windows Server 2012 Amazon Machine Image (AMI), and bootstrapping the installation of Internet Information Services (IIS), urlrewrite, and our website. We don’t need a golden image as we release software every week. We also want to make sure that it is a high availability solution, so we need to look at scaling groups and repeatability.

Our high availability solution will contain one load balancer, and a minimum of two Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances across multiple availability zones (AZ’s).  … [Keep reading] “Bootstrapping on AWS”

ELBs do not cater for your environment? Set up HAProxy for your IIS servers

4th of July, 2013 / / 9 Comments

Recently we encountered a scenario where we needed to look for an alternative for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) due to an existing IIS configuration used in an organisation.  We found that HAProxy was the best candidate in terms of simplicity & the suitability for scenario we were addressing.

This post will show you how you can leverage HAProxy to load balance IIS web servers hosted in AWS EC2 and explain briefly why HAProxy is best suited to address our scenario.… [Keep reading] “ELBs do not cater for your environment? Set up HAProxy for your IIS servers”

Cloud Storage AWS and Azure

22nd of February, 2013 / / 3 Comments

Kloud Cloud

Working with new technologies, rapid rates of change, the excitement of the unknown are good reasons to work in IT. The constant change keeps things fresh and interesting.

The thing that gets me excited though, is the business innovation that occurs with the application of the right mix of technology to otherwise everyday business problems. At Kloud we get to do this all the time!!

I’d like to share with you some simple use cases for cloud services that we have recently been a part of that makes IT Managers and Systems Administrators look like stars.… [Keep reading] “Cloud Storage AWS and Azure”