Business Insider’s AWS Training Workshop

At the end of 2023, about 20 members from Business Insider’s Product and Tech team attended three full-day professional development sessions led by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The BI team could participate in the following trainings:

• DevOps Engineering on AWS
• Running Containers on Amazon EKS
• Security Engineering on AWS
• Planning and Designing Databases on AWS

After the training session, we asked BI participants to share their feedback about each course:

• Overall, how was it?
• What was the most impactful thing you learned?
• How will you plan to put your learnings to use?

Here’s what our participants had to say!

DevOps Engineering on AWS

Adam Kierstein, Site Reliability Engineer V (Cloud Engineering)

Overall: I enjoyed learning new AWS tools that I wasn’t as familiar with. The class instructor initially opened the training session with a focus on DevOps being a practice that we all participate in (and not just the tooling we use). The instructor unpacked how to utilize specific tooling related to DevOps. I feel like I could walk away with helpful, applicable learnings around DevOps toolings. Next time, I hope to join a class focused on DevOps enablement and culture.

Most impactful thing I learned: My biggest takeaway was remembering the importance of continued professional development and training. I missed being in “training mode” and getting new exposure to tooling and techniques. The training was helpful in honing my skills and advancing my professional growth. I learned more about AWS’ code stack and use cases that can improve our Infrastructure. Code pipeline, for example, makes it super easy to implement releases with change approval. That use case is clunkier to implement in GitHub Actions.

As a result of the class, I would like to:

• I would love to learn more! It would be worth having another training session with the AWS’ app mesh and other service meshes before implementing them at BI. I’d also like to get more formal training on statistics and observability, as the majority of my experience with it has been on the fly.
• I would also like to further experiment with more AWS Tooling:
  –AWS’ service catalog might be a great option for a self-service portal as we evolve this platform team.
  –Mix automation processes with AWS step functions (the EKS upgrade prep process comes to mind).
  –Systems manager and AWS configuration to manage, report on and support our legacy EC2 systems.

Running Containers on EKS

Trevor Rambert, Software Engineer III (Subscriptions Group)

Overall: The content was great for those that have some exposure to AWS, though, for those who do not have as much exposure to AWS, it might be overwhelming at first. The instructor was knowledgeable and had a calm demeanor that helped us digest complex content. It was great to see how the Amazon EKS system is set up and how it interacts with other parts of our code.

Most impactful thing I learned: The most impactful aspect I learned about was the setup of the EKS tool and its purpose in the CI/CD process. It provided a base for better understanding of our own internal system, and it made me realize that the point of using EKS is to let Amazon do the heavy lifting. I walked away from the session wondering how we could improve our implementation.

As a result of the class, I would like to:

• Participate in projects that can optimize our EKS configuration at BI, potentially with less controls to simplify our architecture.
• Learn more about EKS! I realized that I didn’t quite understand the foundational basics of EKS and how it relates to Kubernetes, EKS, Containerization and beyond. I would love to learn more about this on a deeper level — whether from our own Cloud Engineering team, more AWS training or resources like LinkedIn Learning. It would be valuable to build a training program with these resources for all Engineers at BI.

Bryan Fellerath, Software Engineer III

Overall: As a beginner in AWS, this class was perfect for my level, and I am glad I took the recommended courses leading up to this. I also took an Udemy course that is an introduction to Kubernetes. I was somewhat familiar with some of the terminology and concepts of AWS and Kubernetes, which helped me get more out of the class. The labs were great for hands-on learning. Overall, it was a good foundation for continued learning. Going forward, I’m confident that I can continue developing skills for a Cloud Engineer.

Most Impactful thing I learned: I think the most impactful thing I learned was from the diagrams and slides depicting Control Plane nodes vs Worker nodes. Additionally, there were helpful multiple choice and matching questions that helped me solidify high level concepts. Learning about Control Plane Nodes and Work Nodes helped me determine if a certain service would be managed by AWS or Kubernetes CLI commands. The class helped me build my confidence in understanding how AWS EKS is structured at a high level

As a result of the class, I would like to:

• Work with the BI Cloud Engineering team more closely so that I can apply what I learned from the class to a real-world project. For example, deploying an Amazon EKS cluster, scaling containers in and out, and getting logging data.
• I really liked the labs and would like to take more of them in order to possibly build a PoC for App Mesh.

Security Engineering on AWS

Omari Rose, Systems Administrator (IT Group)

Michael Ramirez, IT Support (IT Group)

Overall: This was a good crash course of the security offerings that AWS provides. It helped frame the way I think about the Security domain.

The most impactful things learned:

• Learning IAM and how to make and apply Identity and Resource-Based Policies.
• Key encryption in AWS KMS to allow encryption on resources such as RDS via different kinds/sets of policies.

As a result of the class, would you like to:

• Learn more about:
  –CloudWatch and how it can integrate with other monitoring and alerting systems we use.
  –How to properly apply SCPs within AWS Organizations service and follow best practices recommended by AWS for enhancing security for account entities.
• Experiment with:
  –AWS System Manager in order to administer some of our EC2 environments and to automate updates and upgrades.
  –Setting up Secret Manager to rotate EC2 credentials and encrypting the secrets, leveraging KMS (Key Management Service) to encrypt the stored secrets.
  –Using Amazon Macie to be authorized to scan bucket data to search and redact PII.
  –IR and the methods AWS taught how to isolate and quarantine compromised instances.

Planning and Designing Databases on AWS

Michael Lauri, Software Engineer III (Subscriptions Group)

Overall: I found this class to advance my understanding of the AWS core database offerings. The class also helped cement some of my foundational database knowledge. The class structure felt carefully curated in terms of time spent on each type of purpose-built database. The majority of the first day focused on RDS/Aurora and then shifted gears on day two to cover NoSQL staples like DynamoDB and DocumentDB. Finally, the class capped things off on day three with Redshift. Sprinkled into the mix were less commonly encountered solutions such as Neptune, Quantum Ledger (QLDB) and Timestream. The course provided practical opportunities to apply the acquired knowledge through hands-on labs, demos, and quizzes. Participants had the chance to exercise their problem-solving skills with real-world business-use cases. The learning experience was facilitated by a knowledgeable AWS instructor who fostered a conversational atmosphere, encouraging questions and discussion throughout the course. In terms of pre-requisites, I think this class is best suited for engineers that have at least some hands-on experience working with established database solutions and a baseline understanding of the AWS cloud.

Most impactful thing I learned:

The class continually reinforced how to design a solution from scratch by considering the basics like workload requirements, the type of database, and an understanding of access patterns. These factors layered with trade-offs between consistency, performance, capacity, scaling, availability, and durability; the class gave me the fundamentals to designing Databases on AWS.

As a result of the class, I would like to:

Each database type/offering could encompass its own full class, and I feel more empowered now to dive deeper into each over time through more focused learning and creating proof of concepts. Although implementing a database solution from scratch may not be a common job task for me specifically, having a better way to diagnose not only how, but why, our existing systems are configured the way that they are is a great short-term payoff, and I now feel more prepared tackling this down the road.

Charlotte Wilson, Data Engineer II (Data Group)

Overall: The Planning and Designing Databases on the AWS course covered how to identify and design the most suitable AWS database solutions. Our expert AWS instructor led the class through the features and characteristics of 11 databases including SQL services like Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora, and NoSQL services such as Amazon Neptune, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon DocumentDB, and more. The course provided a comprehensive overview of various AWS databases, covering a wide range of information, while also emphasizing the reinforcement of foundational knowledge, contributing to a better understanding of general principles in database management strategy.

Throughout the course, we participated in practical opportunities to apply the acquired knowledge through hands-on labs, demos, and quizzes. We had the chance to exercise their problem-solving skills with real-world examples. The learning experience was facilitated by a knowledgeable AWS instructor who fostered a conversational atmosphere, encouraging questions and discussions. This interactive approach enhanced the learning process and ensured a thorough understanding of the material.

Overall, the course helped solidify my understanding of designing databases and rekindled my interest in learning more to become an even better data engineer. While I do not use AWS in my day-to-day work, expanding my knowledge and exposure into how other databases work is a wonderful growth opportunity.

Most impactful thing learned:

One key takeaway was the importance of considering workload requirements when selecting a database, such as access patterns, consistency, performance, capacity, scaling, availability and durability. This foundational knowledge is applicable to any database management strategy, regardless of the use of AWS tools.

As a result of the class, I would you like to:

As a result of the class, I am interested in further learning and training. This course reignited my desire to dive deeper into databases and I recently signed up for a Database and Applications course at my local community college. Continuing my education and gaining more skills around databases is important to me as a data engineer.

In Summary

For all of our participants, the training provided a foundation for learning AWS tooling. Our favorite class structure used labs and quizzes as practical use cases to apply what we learned in the course. We were impressed with the quality of the class instructors. While our learnings varied depending on which class we attended, the team gained valuable knowledge in our respective fields.

The training piqued our curiosity to experiment with tooling and improve our current systems. Overall, we valued the opportunity for professional development, so, here is your call to action: allocate time in the next month to build your skills and learn something new!