Blog
Thoughts on engineering, design, and building great products.
Stand Up Six EC2 Machines and Prepare the OS
The first hands-on article: stand up a dedicated VPC on AWS with six EC2 machines (1 load balancer, 3 controllers, 2 workers), assign fixed private IPs, then prepare the OS — hostname, /etc/hosts, kernel modules, sysctl, disable swap — and install the kubectl and cfssl tooling. All done step by step, run for real.
What DevOps Is and Why You Should Learn It Alongside AWS
Series opener: what problem DevOps solves, what work it covers, why we learn it together with AWS, and the hands-on roadmap ahead.
Open an AWS Account Safely and Set Up a Billing Alert
Create an AWS account the right way: enable MFA on the root account, create an IAM user for daily use, install the AWS CLI, and set a Budget so no bill catches you off guard.
EC2: Create Your First Virtual Server and Run a Web Server
Create an EC2 instance, SSH into it, install nginx, and open the web page in a browser. The first article with a billable resource, so also the first with a cleanup section.
VPC and Security Group: Networking and Basic Firewalling on AWS
Understand VPC, public/private subnets, route tables, and Security Groups. Know why your server lets some in and not others, and how to tighten access correctly.
S3: Store Files and Host a Static Website
Create an S3 bucket, upload files, and host a static website on the Internet without any server running continuously. Understand buckets, objects, and managing access.
RDS: Running an AWS-Managed PostgreSQL Database
Create a PostgreSQL database on RDS, put it in a private subnet, connect from EC2, and understand why RDS beats running your own database on EC2. RDS is the easiest service to rack up a bill, so cleanup matters most here.