Amazon Web Services (AWS) Posts - Page 4

Live! AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced

AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced

Today, I am excited to announce my third course on Udemy, the long waited advanced-level AWS CloudFormation course, AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced!

This course continues from my first course, AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Beginner to Intermediate, and teaches you more advanced features of AWS CloudFormation. If you already finished my beginner-level AWS CloudFormation course, you know that I announced the advanced course there from day 1. Now, it is finally here!

In this post, let’s talk about what you will learn in the Intermediate to Advanced course section by section. Besides, as in my previous courses, I will also share a discount coupon special to launch in the end. Read more at Live! AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced post.

Coming in June! AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced

Coming in June! AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced

I almost finished my AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced course and expect it to launch by mid-June 2021. It will be a detailed course with lots of hands-on examples. So, let’s go over its upcoming content and let me share the topics included in it.

Read more at Coming in June! AWS CloudFormation Step by Step: Intermediate to Advanced post.

3 Ways for Environment Variables in AWS CodeBuild Buildspecs

Defining Environment Variables in CodeBuild Buildspec Files

AWS CodeBuild is the serverless build service of AWS, and until now, I covered various ways of using it in my previous posts. Today, I would like to talk about how to define and use environment variables in your build specification files or, in other words, buildspecs. In a build project, you can assign plain texts to your environment variables, read parameters from AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, or retrieve secrets from AWS Secrets Manager. I will give examples to each.

Besides, you can also use AWS CodeBuild with AWS CodePipeline as a part of a CI/CD pipeline. We discuss how to do this in my AWS CodePipeline Step by Step course. Therefore, I will also give an example of exporting an environment variable from a build to be able to use it in a later pipeline action. Read more at 3 Ways for Environment Variables in AWS CodeBuild Buildspecs post.

Deploying to Amazon EFS With AWS CodeBuild & AWS CodePipeline

Automated Deployments to Amazon EFS with AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild.

You can use Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) as a shared file system between your Amazon EC2 instances to benefit from its scalability and durability. You can simply deploy your files to an Amazon EFS file system and mount it on dozens of Amazon EC2 instances in the same VPC. Then, you only need to deploy to your EFS file system when you have an update.

Now, what about automating your deployments to Amazon EFS? AWS CodePipeline does not have a deploy action integrated with Amazon EFS file systems. However, your AWS CodeBuild containers can mount EFS file systems. So you can copy your files and folders directly to your EFS file system after building them. In this post, I will talk about creating CI/CD pipelines using AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild to build and automate your content to Amazon EFS file systems. Read more at Deploying to Amazon EFS With AWS CodeBuild & AWS CodePipeline post.

Setting Object Cache Durations for Your Amazon CloudFront Distributions

Cache expiry on Amazon CloudFront

Using Amazon CloudFront is crucial for the speed of your website. Because when you use CloudFront, it caches your content at AWS Edge locations to serve them to your users faster. For example, this blog’s original AWS region is Europe Frankfurt (eu-central-1) that is the closest region to my location. If I did not place Amazon CloudFront in front of my S3 bucket, all requests to this blog will be served from Frankfurt. As you would guess, this would cause slower pages for most of my readers all around the World.

Luckily, I have an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of my blog. So, only the first reader close to an AWS Edge location will be served from this region. All subsequent requests around that Edge location will be served directly from the Edge location’s cache.

However, you will also need to update your website content. So, from time to time, CloudFront needs to expire your content on the Edge location’s cache, and check whether it was updated from the original location. In this blog post, I will talk about how to set caching times for the objects you serve from your CloudFront distributions. Read more at Setting Object Cache Durations for Your Amazon CloudFront Distributions post.