Welcome to my technical blog focused on AWS best practices, architecture patterns, and cloud solutions. Here you’ll find in-depth tutorials, case studies, and insights from real-world AWS implementations and my own shareable experiences.
TL;DR Remember that Lambda function I built to work around EC2 Image Builder’s Distribution Settings wiping your Launch Template config? You can bin it. AWS have updated the Distribution Settings behaviour and it now preserves your existing Launch Template settings when it creates a new version. The custom Lambda updater is no longer required. A quick recap In Half Baked Images I walked through the pain of integrating EC2 Image Builder with Terraform-managed Auto Scaling Groups. The core issue was that when EC2 Image Builder distributed a new AMI and updated your Launch Template, it created a new version containing only the AMI ID and account ID. Everything else, i.e. instance profile, security groups, key pair, block device mappings was gone. ...
Disclaimer AKA: Are you sure you want to read this? Okay - so this isn’t my typical technical approach to blogging. This topic is regulatory heavy - unavoidably so if you’re to understand and navigate it. You have been warned :). Intro You might have noticed the world feels slightly less keen on being stable and predictable. Geopolitics, trade, and national interest are clashing more openly. Cloud computing is an area where we see some of the downstream consequences as a result. The ‘Cloud’ has a truly global presence, and so perhaps it’s unsurprising that it isn’t immune from politics. Companies like AWS made it possible for organisations of any size to start small and grow rapidly to a huge global scale - “reach your clients wherever they are” - that wasn’t by magic. It was because the cloud went global. ...
Intro In my previous post, Half Baked Images I walked through building hardened AMIs using Amazon EC2 Image Builder, automating the pipeline, and wiring it into Launch Templates for Auto Scaling Groups. I touched on some aspects that felt almost, but not quite useful. In this post I’ll talk about my attempts to keep on top of the images produced and why (spoiler!) I ultimately chose Lambda over built-in Image Builder functionality. ...
TL;DR Using Terraform to deploy and manage an Auto Scaling Group that utilises custom AMIs built by EC2 Image Builder and dealing with the limitations of EC2 Image Builder’s native capabilities for managing Launch Templates. What were we asked? I’ve recently worked on a project that required an Auto Scaling Group of EC2 instances that utilised custom-built AMIs produced by EC2 Image Builder. The requirement was to have an EC2 Image Builder pipeline produce weekly images based on Amazon Linux 2023, with various custom components applied. It’s quite straightforward to do this in Terraform, so happy days! ...
From inspiration to action. With AI. Inspired by the talented Chris Bingham, an AWS Ambassador here at Fujitsu, I recently set myself a new target: to apply for the Ambassador program myself. Chris spoke positively about the program, and it struck me as the kind of nudge I needed to step outside my comfort zone. It also felt like an opportunity to help bring positive attention to the good AWS work being done at Fujitsu. ...