Author Archives

Lou Bichard

Software Developer

Hey I'm Lou! I'm a Cloud Software Engineer From London. I created Open Up The Cloud to help people get their start and grow their careers in cloud. I edit the monthly Open Up The Cloud Newsletter which I think you'd really like. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn , I'm always happy to chat. When I'm not writing you can usually find me picking up heavy things and putting them down, or riding two wheels (sometimes with an engine, sometimes not).

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What Are The Pre-Requisites To Learning AWS? 5 Topics You Probably Should Look Into First.

So, I’m guessing you’re new to AWS? If you are—you might be wondering what different things you should understand before deep diving into your learning. Well, you’re in the right place, since that’s exactly what we’ll discuss today.

What are the prerequisites to learning AWS? There are no mandatory pre-requisites to learning AWS. However knowledge of topics such as: the internet, command line interfaces, programming and “infrastructure as code” can be beneficial and might speed up the learning process. 

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But of course, it’s not very useful to just list these topics, let’s go through and discuss why and how these areas can help as pre-requisites to learning AWS.

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Does AWS Require Coding? Understanding When You Might Need To Code.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a cloud computing platform popular with tech companies and engineers. When it comes to working with AWS a question that comes immediately to most people is: “Will I need to code to use AWS?”

Does AWS require coding? No. Getting started with and learning AWS does not require any coding skills, many basic tasks can be performed without coding. However dependent on the job / skills you have (or need) you may still be required to learn some programming skills. 

As always, there’s some nuances to the question. Whilst I might not know your exact personal circumstance, we can still look at examples of tasks you can complete in AWS with and without coding skills, and we can also go through and understand the situations that require coding and why.

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Can AWS Lambda Access A Database? And The Considerations You Should Be Taking.

Architecting solutions using AWS Lambda means understanding many nuances in how AWS works, and a main consideration for our application architecture is the database. So we’ll need to need to know whether AWS Lambda can connect to a database at all, and what our options are.

Can AWS lambda access a database? Yes. AWS Lambda can connect to an AWS hosted databases such as RDS or DynamoDB. AWS Lambda can also connect to external databases which are public or grant network access. 

Dependent on the database you’re using (or intending to use) there are some considerations you should address. Let’s now go through the different options you have for integrating a database with AWS Lambda, and address some of those considerations so you can make an informed decision.

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How Long Does It Take To Learn Terraform? And How To Speed Up Your Learning.

For a long time Terraform seemed like a mystical technology, so I avoided learning it. When I finally got around to putting my mind to it, it turned out that learning Terraform was a simpler and quicker process than I imagined.

How long does it take to learn Terraform? Learning Terraform can be easy and could take as little as 1 week to master the basics, and as little as 3 months to really master if you are spending adequate time learning. 

But, of course—as always—there are some additional factors which affect how long it can take to learn Terraform. Let’s take a look at what those factors are…

Terraform

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Is AWS Easy To Learn? (And How You Can Make It Easier)

Are you just starting out learning AWS? AWS has lots of services and it can be daunting when you’re just starting out. Staring at all those online resources, articles and courses gets you wondering: How easy will it be to learn all AWS?

So is AWS easy to learn? Learning AWS can be quick an easy and can take as little as a few days up to a few months. But, the exact time it’ll take you to learn AWS depends on your past experience.

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Okay, so that gives you a rough idea of how long you can expect to learn AWS. But exactly how easy AWS is to learn depends on your past experience. So let’s dig a little deeper into factors which affect how easy learning AWS will be.

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Cloud Native Software Engineering Newsletter #16 (September 2020)

Hello friends, and we’re back!

It’s the end of September and it’s the next edition of the Cloud Native Software Engineering Newsletter, where I dig through the internet to bring back everything that’s new or noteworthy in the world of cloud software engineering for you.

In this months breakdown it seems that AWS have been releasing some nice little tweaks to the platform, especially around serverless and the supporting services.

Cloud Native Software Engineering Newsletter Banner

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The Secret Of Web Development BootCamps And How To Use Cloud To Your Advantage

Yesterday, as I read an article on DEV, titled: “forget web development, become a cloud developer instead!” I punched the air: yes! The author, Moneer, put into words something I’d been talking about for some time, but never wrote down.

Girl Learning Tech

Getting a job in web development isn’t getting easier. The bootcamp factories churn out graduates and the entry-level market is saturated. Add to this that the web development world hasn’t moved much recently, so there’s no hot tech to leverage. But that’s where cloud tech presents an amazing opportunity.

By the end of this article you’ll understand why learning cloud skills is the unique opportunity which will separate you from other graduates and ultimately land you a job.

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You’re Alerting Wrong: The Why & How Of Setting An AWS Lambda Alarm Using Error Rate Percentages.

When it comes to operating Lambda, we often want to configure alarms to alert us when things aren’t running smoothly. Naturally our first choice for Lambda alarms is CloudWatch, the default monitoring service that comes with AWS.

Alarm CloudWatch

CloudWatch gives us some custom metrics out-of-the-box, such as: errors and invocation rates. But there are some problems we run into when setting up alarms based directly on these metrics.

By the end of this article you’ll understand why alarms based on default AWS Lambda Metrics can cause difficulty, how AWS Metric Math helps us to apply “context” in our alarms and make them more effective, and how to setup an alarm using metric math to calculate an error rate percentage. 

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Should You Use Typescript To Write Terraform? (The Terraform CDK)

Recently, Terraform dropped an interesting new extension to their Terraform toolchain: the Terraform CDK. The new CDK allows you to write Terraform using TypeScript and Python — neat! But is the CDK as good as it seems?

Terraform Written In The CDK

I wanted to jump in to uncover the truth and understand whether writing Terraform in TypeScript really is the future, or whether it’s just another fad.

By the end of this article you’ll understand what the Terraform CDK is, how it works, and ultimately help answer the question: should you use it?