Day 1 of the #30-Day Cloud Computing Challenge (Intermediate level)
Soo, hi everyone, I’m back! I took some time off to dive into becoming a full-stack Software Engineer. Guess what? I even made a Twitter account (FMOT: @BRITTANYWA30570)! But, I don’t want to leave my Cloud knowledge behind, so let’s dive back into the world of cloud computing.
Okay, let’s kick off my birthday month strong! The first challenge is to “Dive into a specific cloud service you’re less familiar with and explore its advanced features.”
The service I want to discuss is AWS CloudFormation. Before we explore the uncharted territory, let’s first discuss what I already know. CloudFormation is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that automates creating, updating, and deleting cloud infrastructure with specified configurations. This enables organizations to replicate their entire infrastructure across different environments, regions, and accounts. This approach reduces errors, increases system reliability, speeds up environment creation (thanks to templates!), and facilitates automation.
Now, let’s navigate the uncharted territory, filled with potential pitfalls and maybe even a hefty AWS bill (just kidding!). CloudFormation is cost-effective, and any unexpected bills can easily be disputed with the bank (again, just kidding!).
Here are some advanced features:
Robust Security Models: These protect data in transit between different services within the application’s architecture. It’s one of the pillars of AWS’s well-architected framework — security. Ensuring data security is crucial for companies, and these security models enforce a layer of separation and implement the principle of least privilege via version-controlled templates. Usually, you will protect data in transit by encryptions, tokenization and access control.
Disaster Recovery Scenarios: Users can create backups of their system’s infrastructure to quickly recover after outages or attacks. Think of it like backup and restore(one of the 4 disaster recovery strategies), with high Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Like CloudFormation, the backup and Restore method doesn’t manage the Infrastructure in the middle, we just recreate it. This is also a pillar of the AWS’s well-architected framework — reliability.
Rollback Features: Users can quickly undo undesired changes without deleting entire stacks of resources. This restores the software to its previous state and is useful for fixing bugs or restoring database integrity after erroneous operations. This is also a pillar of the AWS’s well-architected framework — performance efficiency.
Understanding these features is essential as I continue my cloud journey. The so-called uncharted territory isn’t so uncharted anymore. I hope it’s clearer for you too! To recap, CloudFormation is an IaC tool that automates cloud infrastructure management. Advanced features include robust security models, disaster recovery scenarios, and rollback capabilities.
This research journey has been rewarding, and I can’t wait to see what else the challenge has in store. As always, let’s end the blog with a prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and purpose. I pray that this challenge strengthens my skills in cloud and anyone reading this. I hope that I am using every breathe that you’ve allowed me to take, to walk in your purpose with dignity and grace. With gratitude and grace, Amen.