EDF at an AWS Game Day
By Connor Stokes and Kit Connick
EDF recently had the privilege of attending an AWS Game Day, and what a fantastic experience it was! The event welcomed a diverse group of engineers, ranging from those with limited AWS knowledge to seasoned experts, ready to immerse themselves in this dynamic learning opportunity.
Two of our brilliant engineers have shared their experiences and top-notch tips for mastering a game day, enjoy!
Connor’s Experience:
This was my first time experiencing an AWS game day and it didn’t disappoint, it was enjoyable. Chaos engineering hasn’t really been an area of expertise of mine, nor is it something that I have had to think about too much, but it was good to step out of the comfort zone. I thought the game/task was really engaging throughout the day. It prompts me to really think about the way we can know the ins and outs of the services we build in AWS, whether that’s Serverless or the older approach of services hosted on servers.
For anyone wanting to attend these days I wouldn’t say you need to be an expert, a keen interest will go a long way. The solution architects throughout the day were super engaging and really got you thinking in the right direction. I would say taking the Solution Architect Associate certification will contribute towards the game days (and in general) as they cover quite a few AWS services.
Kit’s Experience:
The AWS GameDays serve as an opportunity to learn more about AWS services in a gamified, friendly, and accessible way, whilst having a bit of good-natured competition with colleagues. They follow the journey of a fictitious ride-hailing service ‘Unicorn Rentals’, and each GameDay represents a step forward in that company’s journey. This means that you work on real-world problems and scenarios that actually frequently occur, but in a completely risk-free environment, resulting in a really great space to learn. The days are also deliberately quite ambiguous, with just rough tasks outlined, and complete freedom on how to go about solving them. This encourages a lot of creativity and gives total freedom to investigate things yourself, rather than just following overly-specific instructions step-by-step, which makes you complete tasks on autopilot without actually absorbing that much by the end of the day. So-called ‘Chaos’ events also occur during the day, triggering something to go wrong that you have to try and fix on the fly as quickly as you can, before losing any more points…
The most recent GameDay focused on Microservices, and we were placed into an imaginary DevOps team as new hires at Unicorn Rentals. We were working with a handful of popular AWS services, such as S3, ECS, Cloudwatch, EC2, and more. Essentially how the day worked was that we had 3 main tools to get up and running as quickly as possible, and then offer up these tools on a marketplace for other teams to use, gaining points for every team that used them. So it was of utmost importance to maintain your services to the highest standard possible, ensuring latency was as low as possible and availability was as high as possible. The better your tools, the more likely it is that other teams use them, and hence the more points you receive. Prizes were given out to the top three teams at the end of the day, with everyone keen to get their hands on a Firestick or cool t shirt…
I’ve been to two GameDays now and massively enjoyed both of them, for a few reasons. It’s a really nice opportunity to network and socialise with other engineers at EDF, meeting new people and getting to see people in person that you’ve only ever met virtually. Also, as a newcomer to both AWS and cloud technologies in general, it’s really nice to see some progression in my learning, and to feel more confident and knowledgeable between the two days (a few months apart). It’s also a really enjoyable format in which to learn more about AWS and their services. The loosely structured nature of the day means that you do a lot of investigating and digging off of your own steam, which is a really effective way of learning. Also, the fact you have team members there to support you, (and in my case teach/guide you a lot of the time), is really lovely, especially if you’re more junior like myself. The day is also incredibly varied, so you end up learning about more general topics like security and networks, often from the really helpful AWS staff who are there to support you.
Tips/Advice
• Think of a good team name (good puns are often appreciated), it will win you something cool…
• If like me you’re still fairly new to AWS, do some reading before the day on the services you’ll be using. This means you won’t be going in quite as blind.
• Be prepared for things to break! The chaos events will make sure this happens, frequently… Try and stay calm/positive.
• Just because you’re winning in the morning, doesn’t mean you’ll be winning later, everything seems to go crazy after lunchtime…
• Accept that you won’t always know what’s going on! Luckily there is plenty of support from both your team and the AWS staff.
• Enjoy it! It’s just a bit of fun and something different from the normal day to day.
