Blog

AWS DynamoDB vs MongoDB: A NoSQL Comparison

  • 10 min read

In this post we explore 2 giants of the NoSQL Database world – DynamoDB from Amazon Web Services, and MongoDB.   We’ll take a look at what NoSQL actually means, then examine the  2 different offerings, looking at the pros & cons of each.  Each of course has their advantages and disadvantages – your choice is likely to be guided by your long term cloud strategy and the specific requirements of your application. First up, what exactly is NoSQL? What is… Read More »AWS DynamoDB vs MongoDB: A NoSQL Comparison

AWS Reliability Pillar

AWS Reliability – A Core Pillar of Your Architecture

  • 8 min read

In this post I’m going to give an overview of the AWS Well Architected Framework, then give a deep dive on the Reliability pillar, which is one of the 5 core pillars that should underpin your AWS architecture. AWS Well Architected Framework The AWS Well Architected Framework is a series of best practise principles, designed by AWS, to help customers compare their AWS environments against these best practises and identify areas for improvement.  The Framework is based on the extensive… Read More »AWS Reliability – A Core Pillar of Your Architecture

AWS Microservices: Architecture, Use Cases, Scaling & More

  • 8 min read

We’ve all heard the terms crop up in conversation, monoliths & microservices – but what exactly do they mean?  How exactly do we ‘break up the monolith’? In this post we’ll explore the differences between monolothic and microservices based applications, and highlight some of the benefits of microservices. We’ll also explore what services AWS have available to help you to build out a microservices architected application on the AWS cloud. Microservices Basics – What are Microservices? Microservices, or microservices architecture,… Read More »AWS Microservices: Architecture, Use Cases, Scaling & More

5 New Features in AWS Fargate Version 1.4

  • 3 min read

What is AWS Fargate? AWS Fargate is a serverless computing engine for containers that enables customers to deploy and manage applications, not infrastructure.  Fargate works with Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and enables customers to deploy container based applications without having to provision EC2 instances or Kubernetes pods. AWS Fargate launches and scales compute resources for containers, ensuring that they have the optimal amount of resource available to run customer’s applications.  This ensures that… Read More »5 New Features in AWS Fargate Version 1.4

Amazon Detective – Now Generally Available

  • 4 min read

This week, AWS announced general availability of Amazon Detective.  To save you doing the detective work to figure out what Amazon Detective can do for you, I’ve outlined everything you need to know. What is Amazon Detective? Amazon Detective is a new log analytics and visualization service that helps AWS customers identify and investigatesecurity issues across their AWS workloads and accounts.  Amazon Detective collects log data from various sources including: AWS CloudTrail (logs aws account activity) Amazon VPC Flow Logs… Read More »Amazon Detective – Now Generally Available

Combat Covid-19 With 3 Free AWS Homeworking Solutions

  • 5 min read

It’s fair to say that the world was unprepared for a global pandemic such as Covid-19.  We’ve seen outbreaks in the past – SARS, Ebola, but nothing that has spread so quickly and with such far reaching consequences.  Bill Gates told us in 2015 that we were not ready for such a global outbreak and he was right – all around the world healthcare systems are struggling to cope, and people are being told to work from home where possible.   If you… Read More »Combat Covid-19 With 3 Free AWS Homeworking Solutions

Don’t get Caught Out by AWS Data Egress Fees…

  • 3 min read

It’s no secret that AWS, like most cloud providers, charge nothing for data ingress.  It’s free to put your data in to the cloud, yet they do charge for data egress – getting your data back out again.  This fact is often overlooked when modelling the business case for cloud versus on premise. Recently NASA have committed to upload hundreds of petabytes of data in to AWS, and it seems they failed to factor egress costs into their business case.… Read More »Don’t get Caught Out by AWS Data Egress Fees…

aws database migration

What is AWS Database Migration Service?

  • 4 min read

AWS Database Migration Service is a simple and cost effective way to migrate live, petabyte scale databases both into and out of the AWS Cloud with virtually no downtime. Those databases could be hosted on premise, already in the AWS cloud, or in another cloud.

AWS Migration with AWS Server Migration Service

  • 3 min read

Server Migration Service (SMS) from AWS is an agentless service that enables customers to simplify the AWS Migration process by automatically replicating live server volumes from their on premises servers in to AWS.  AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) are automatically created from the replicated volumes, which can be used to launch the servers as AWS EC2 instances.  SMS can be used to migrate live running server instances from VMware, HyperV and Microsoft Azure environments. How does AWS Server Migration Service Work?… Read More »AWS Migration with AWS Server Migration Service

AWS Migration in 5 Simple Steps

  • 4 min read

Migrating your on premises workloads to AWS may seem like a daunting task to the uninitiated.  It is however a process that has been repeated by many AWS customers, and one which has evolved and been refined over the years.  Here I’m going to outline the 5 major steps to an AWS Migration to demystify the process. Step 1 – Evaluation – Understand the Why? Many cloud migration projects have been doomed to fail because businesses have simply jumped on… Read More »AWS Migration in 5 Simple Steps