Cloudwithdj

11/12/2025

Happy Veterans Day.

Salute to those who have served,
and gratitude to those who continue to support our veterans.

- Hard Charger P.O.
US Navy veteran.

11/11/2025

When I was in the Navy, we had a program that encouraged sailors and Marines to pitch innovation ideas directly to leadership.

It was like an internal hackathon. Anyone could propose a new gadget, tool, or process that could help the Navy or the Department of Defense.

And I’ve always thought: every business should do that.

10/02/2025

10 Concepts to Learn Before You Start With Terraform

You’ve probably seen “Learn Terraform” on every DevOps roadmap… but what exactly should you focus on?

Here are the core concepts that will give you a strong start:

09/29/2025

Who owns AWS Cost optimization at your company?

09/09/2025

Ever had this happen to you? You push your code, hit deploy, and instead of success, you get an error message that doesn’t explain much.

Here is my tips for troubleshooting a failed Lambda deployment:

Ever had this happen to you? You push your code, hit deploy, and instead of success, you get an error message that doesn’t explain much.

09/06/2025

How to avoid writing bad Terraform code?

Terraform is powerful, but if your code isn’t clean, your infrastructure won’t be either.

Here are 4 best practices I follow to keep my Terraform projects clean and scalable:

1. DRY principle
- Don’t repeat yourself.
- Use variables and modules instead of copy-pasting resources.

2. Consistent naming and tagging
- Clear naming and proper tags make management, reporting, and troubleshooting easier.

3. Organized file structure
- Separate files like main.tf, variables.tf, and outputs.tf to keep things clear and manageable.

4. Cost awareness
- Build with budget in mind.
- Use tagging, right-size resources and clean up anything you’re no longer using.

Clean Terraform code isn’t just about neat files, it’s about creating reliable, scalable infrastructure your team can trust.

What’s one Terraform practice you always follow?

09/04/2025

As a Cloud or DevOps engineer, you’ll often work on smaller but critical tasks like creating and connecting a database server, setting up a security group, or running a bootstrap script on a web server when using Terraform.

For beginners, these tasks are great practice because they reflect what you’ll do in enterprise environments.

I created a step-by-step tutorial to walk you through one of these tasks:

Terraform isn’t just for big, end-to-end projects. As a Cloud or DevOps engineer, you’ll often work on smaller but critical tasks like creating and connecting a database server, setting up a security group, or running a bootstrap script on a web server.

05/26/2025

AWS CodeBuild vs AWS CodePipeline, aren’t they both part of CI/CD?
Yes, they are. But they handle very different parts of the process.

Here’s how I explain it when someone asks, “Do I need both?”

✅ AWS CodeBuild
- Builds service: it compiles code, runs tests, creates artifacts
- Fully managed: you don't need to provision build servers
- Uses buildspec.yml to define build steps
- Supports Docker, Java, Python, Go, .NET, and more
- Scales automatically, pay-as-you-go
- Great for unit tests, packaging, static analysis

CodeBuild is the “do the work” part of CI.

✅ AWS CodePipeline
- Orchestration tool: it connects your stages (Source → Build → Deploy)
- Automates end-to-end delivery workflows
- Integrates with CodeCommit, S3, GitHub, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, etc.
- Uses JSON or YAML definitions (via AWS Console or CLI)
- Each stage can use a different service (or custom actions)
- Monitors each step and stops on failure.

CodePipeline is the “glue” that manages the whole pipeline.

My take
- Use CodeBuild when you need to build and test your code.
- Use CodePipeline to connect everything together (source, build, deploy).

Most teams use both CodeBuild as a stage inside CodePipeline.

Are you using CodePipeline end-to-end, or just triggering builds/deploys manually?

05/23/2025

11 websites You Should Know.

These are official links for some of the most used DevOps tools where you’ll find the most accurate, up-to-date documentation, downloads, and product updates.

If you are looking for tutorials, setup guides, best practices and integration roadmaps, these official resources are the best places to start.

- Git: Version control system for source code.
https://git-scm.com

- Jenkins: Automation server for CI/CD workflows.
https://www.jenkins.io

- Ansible: Automation tool for configuration management and deployment.
https://www.ansible.com

- Docker: Platform for building and running containers.
https://www.docker.com

- Kubernetes: Orchestrates and manages containerized applications.
https://kubernetes.io

- Chef: Infrastructure as code tool for configuration management.
https://www.chef.io

- Puppet: Another tool for managing infrastructure as code.
https://puppet.com

- Terraform: Tool for provisioning infrastructure using code.
https://www.terraform.io

- Nagios: Monitors systems, networks, and infrastructure.
https://www.nagios.org

- Grafana: Visualizes data from various monitoring tools.
https://grafana.com

- Prometheus: Monitoring and alerting toolkit.
https://prometheus.io

There is a lot of value in these official resources, more than most people realize. They're not just for downloads, they’re often the best place to learn how to use each tool properly.

What is your go-to website when you're troubleshooting or exploring a new DevOps tool?

05/22/2025

S3 Glacier vs S3 Standard, which one should you choose?

This is how I break it down when folks ask me “Where should we store this data?”

✅ S3 Standard:
- Instant access, low latency
- Great for frequently accessed data
- Designed for real-time apps, websites, big data
- Lifecycle transitions make it easy to move to cheaper tiers later
- Higher cost, but you pay for speed

S3 Standard is ideal when availability and performance are top priorities.

✅ S3 Glacier
- Cold storage, long-term, infrequent access
- Retrieval can take minutes to hours (Glacier) or up to 12h (Deep Archive)
- Great for backups, archives, compliance, audit trails
- Much cheaper than Standard (cents on the dollar)
- Data retrieval charges apply, so plan access carefully

S3 Glacier is ideal for “store and forget” scenarios.

My opinion:
- Use S3 Standard when your app or users need that data now.
- Use S3 Glacier (or Deep Archive) when you won’t touch it for months or years.

Both are powerful.

But the right choice depends on access patterns, retention policy, and budget.

What’s your go-to S3 tier? How do you manage storage costs?

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05/11/2025

Bookmark this link: https://workshops.aws/

This FREE website lists workshops created by the teams at Amazon Web Services (AWS). You'll find hands-on events designed to teach or introduce you to practical skills, techniques, or concepts which you can use to solve business problems.

I’ve personally enjoyed working on some of the workshops, and I hope they help others on their cloud journey too