DevOps Grind

Documenting my progress as I acquire technical expertise '#AWS, '#Linux and '#DevOps

22nd January 2023 - AWS Workmail - 5.0.0 bounce messages

AWS

Thanks to a AWS re:Post, I was able to resolve an issue that was preventing me from sending email using the AWS SES (Simple Email Service).

Sending Email failed. Could not send email. Status: 5.0.0

A quick update to the SES Authorization policy to update the Principal to the Workmail service…

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "stmt1641172570046",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": "workmail.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "Action": [
                "ses:*",
                "ses:SendBounce",
                "ses:SendRawEmail"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:ses:eu-west-1:XXXXXXXXXXXX:identity/x--v--x.com",
            "Condition": {}
        }
    ]
}

…and Voila!

Working email outbound from SES!

Here’s the article

18th October 2022 - Passed my AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Exam

AWS

Passed my AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Exam !!!!

17th October 2022 - Took my AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Exam

AWS

Took my AWS Solutions Architect - Professional Exam

23rd November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

AWS

Completed my first course on AWS Skills Builder, which looks like a great platform for learning materials
Amazon Transcribe

12th November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

AWS

Watched the “Disaster Recovery of Workloads on AWS | AWS Events”
Mostly covers the information in the AWS Disaster Recovery whitepaper but with better visualisation

4th November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

HomeLab

Began setting up the TuringPi and installed Hypriot on all 7 modules.
Before installing ECS Anywhere and eventually EKS Anywhere (Once released for baremetal installations), I’ve decided to use the Jeff Geerling guide to install services using ansible playbooks.

3rd November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Work

Worked through some issues with a new CloudFront distribution:

In CloudFront, you need to create a new origin request policy, not a cache policy:

  • Open up CloudFront
  • Go to Policies (left nav)
  • Click the “Origin Request” tab
  • Click the “create origin request policy” button
  • Name the policy whatever you want, i.e., “my origin request policy”
  • Under “Origin request settings” > Headers: select “Include the following headers”
  • Under “Add header”: check the “Host” option
  • Click the “Create” button

The policy will look like this:

CFOriginRequestPolicy

Once the new origin request policy has been created:

  • Head back to the CloudFront distributions
  • Click your distribution’s Id so you can edit it
  • Click the “Behaviors” tab
  • Select your behavior and edit
  • Scroll down to “Cache key and origin requests”
  • Make sure the “Cache policy and origin request policy (recommended)” is selected
  • Under the “Origin request policy - optional”, select your new policy, i.e., “my origin request policy”
  • Save changes

The behavior will look like this (I’m using no caching for now to verify the ec2 instance is getting all the requests):

CFCacheKeyOriginRequests

That’s it.
The host header is now correctly passed through to the ELB and ec2 instance.
Nothing else needs to be done with the ELB.

2nd November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Udemy

Completed the remaining review of the SA Practice exam. Worked through my answers and paraphrased the correct reasoning for questions I’d answered incorrectly

1st November 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Reading

Read “AWS for Solutions Architects” - Chapter 4 covering IaaS, PaaS & SaaS and making informed decisions about which is best
The later part of the chapter covered EC2 and S3 features, all things I was already aware of so more of a refresher

31st October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Udemy

Completed first Jon Bonso “Solutions Architect Professional Practice Exam”:

27th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

AWS

Completed the fourth and final “Solution Architect Professional Journey” questions

20th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Reading

Read for “AWS for Solutions Architects” - Chapter 3 covering Storage in AWS

Udemy

Completed Section 6: Storage of the Stephane Maarek SA Pro Course

AWS

Completed the third “Solution Architect Professional Journey” questions

18th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Udemy

Went through the re-cap on ELBs from Section 5 of the Stephane Maarek SA Pro Udemy Course

Community

GitHub Blog Input:

16th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

HomeLab

15th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Work

Discussed a new feature of the AWS Network Load balancer released last month:

14th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Work

Discussed out best practices for VPC networking and IPv4 address allocation

Udemy

Completed 2 hours of the Stephane Maarek SA Pro course on Udemy covering ECS and Lambda

Reading

Read the second chapter of ‘AWS for Solutions Architects’ by Alberto Artosanchez

13th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

AWS

Attended the second session of 4 in the ‘AWS PartnerCast - AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification Journey’ series

12th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

AWS

AWS Power Hour on Architecting will run for 6 sessions starting Monday October 18th 2021

Work

Discussions around Infrastructure services AWS account

Udemy

Completed Section 4 of ‘Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional 2021’ by Stephane Maarek

Community

GitHub Blog Phase One-point-Two:

6th October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Switched focus after some downtime with a vacation, I’m gearing back up to continue my studies.

AWS

Attended the first session of 4 in the ‘AWS PartnerCast - AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification Journey’ series

1st October 2021 - Shorter road to SA - Pro

Switched focus after some downtime with a vacation, I’m gearing back up to continue my studies.
Given AWS are offering a four week “AWS Solution Architect Professional Certification Journey”,
I’ve decided to focus on the Solutions Architect Professional qualification and put the DevOps Pro study on hold for now.

12th July 2021 - Adv. Architecting On AWS

AWS

Day 3 - Place holder for Notes / Observations

9th July 2021 - Adv. Architecting On AWS

AWS

Day 2 - Place holder for Notes / Observations

8th Oct 2021 - Adv. Architecting On AWS

AWS

Day 1 - Place holder for Notes / Observations

6th May 2021

RedHat

Completed the “RH024 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux Technical Overview” and would like to practice by using vimtutor in future.

AWS

Watched the “Amazon Linux 2 Deep Dive” on Youtube to better understand the OS AWS recommend for Linux on AWS Cloud.

5th May 2021 - Long road to DevOps

Udemy

Read a blog post on “Implementing GitFlow using AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeCommit, AWS Code Build and AWS CodeDeploy” by Ashish Gore.
I followed in up with some videos on best practices for using GitFlow.

Work

Worked through some Systems manager configuration and proposed using session manager to relieve SSH management burden and provide
a managed authentication platform using an existing identity provider. Removed a CloudFormation template and updated an Iam role.

4th May 2021 - Long road to DevOps

Udemy

I completed more of the DevOps course covering the CodePipeline in detail.

Work

Began work on a CloudFormation template to deploy a Tableau Server.

RedHat

Watched a video on Jenkins pipelines. Related to Kubernetes cluster deployments.

Community

GitHub Blog Phase One-point-One:

29th April 2021 - Long road to DevOps

Udemy

I completed more or of the DevOps course covering the CodeDeploy material.

Work

Managed to get an early start on the day by working on Codebuild. A few more steps configured including a webhook to launch the
build when code is pushed to the repo.
Followed the SoftwareDev demo of Terraform / Codebuild pipeline and hoping to get a chance to discuss it in more detail

AWS

1pm course on managing Microsoft platforms on AWS - AWS Migration Hub and Server Migration Service Community Need to start pushing blog to GitHub Page

28th April 2021 - Next challenge

DevOps Pro or SA Pro Began the process of figuring out which cert to try for next

Udemy

Watched the first part of the DevOps Pro course by Stephane Maarek. Covered CodeCommit and CodeBuild.

AWS

Started doing the sample questions for SA Pro and in some ways it wasn’t as tricky as I was expecting.

Work

Started building a ci pipeline with codebuild using github as a source.

27th April 2021 - Decompress

LinkedIn Learning

Completed the AWS SA course by Tom Carpenter

Work

Looked into blue/green deployment on elastic beanstalk. Started the trusted advisor audit across the accounts.
Reviewed current AWS config settings in the corp account.

AWS

Got my score! That means for all three associate certs I’ve scored over 900.
I’ve requested be put forward for the ‘Advanced Architecting On AWS’ QA course for training.

26th April 2021 - SysOps Certified

Youtube

Completed the last to CQ episodes

Brainscape

On the way to the exam went through the flashcards

AWS

The exam went okay, it was nice to have a scratch sheet to write things and the climate controlled office was preferable to my previous online experience. Thankfully, I had plenty of time and was able to finish early.
Although I’d flagged or made notes on a few questions, I had ample time to revisit and submit revised answers.

LinkedIn Learning

Completed the Shyam Raj Course on ‘AWS: Monitoring and Reporting’

25th April 2021 - Road to SysOps

Study Materials:

24th April 2021 - Road to SysOps

Udemy

Completed ‘AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate Practice Exam 4’ by Jon Bonso.
I passed but felt I fell foul to some wording that seemed ambiguous.
Followed it up by typing up my incorrect answers into a Google Doc to supplement my learning material.

LinkedIn Learning

Completed the ‘Exam Tips: AWS Certified SysOps Administrator’ lecture by Sharif Nijim.

23rd April 2021 - Road to SysOps

LinkedIn Learning

Watched the start of Tom Carpenter’s Solutions Architect 7 application deployment course.
It’s an enjoyable format watching Tom clearly explain the content.
Much more engaging than some of the PowerPoint online content

Completed “AWS Administration: Tips and Tricks” it was basic content but practical in it’s broad real life use cases.

Finished the ‘AWS: Deploying and Provisioning’ by Brandon Rich
It’s well explained with some great examples that are less common than some other lectures
Leans more heavily on Ruby but very good to see more detailed examples
Using lambda for custom resources in Cloudformation
Ruby application deployed with Elastic Beanstalk
Some more focus on using the AWS cli for Elastic Beanstalk
The opsworks demo provided good insights into the platforms strengths
Code deploy is another lesser demoed technology
Cloud9 looks like a easy way to standardise the ide platform to provide a unified experience to developers
Codestar is a great tool but in some ways it seems too easy to deploy a ci/cd pipeline

QwikLabs

Introduction to Amazon CloudFront

22nd April 2021 - Road to SysOps

LinkedIn Learning

Completed the 4 hr ‘High Availability’ lecture by Sharif Nijim - Very good overall
Versioning is required on both buckets for Cross region replication
EBS volumes can now be attached to multiple instances
Elasticache versions are slightly behind on AWS
Amazon Keyspaces is the AWS implementation of Apache Cassandra

AdamP's GitHub stats