AWS EventBridge Triggering SSM Automation IAM Role Error

I recently wanted to create an Amazon EventBridge rule that will schedule an SSM Automation document. A rule watches for certain events (cron in my case) and then routes them to AWS targets that you choose. You can create a rule that performs an AWS action automatically when another AWS action happens, or a rule […]

Migrate to AWS EC2 with SQL licensing included

While performing a lift and shift migration of Windows SQL Server using the AWS Application Migration Service I was challenged with wanting the newly migrated instance to have a Windows OS license ‘included’ but additionally the SQL Server Standard license billed to the account. The customer was moving away from their current hosting platform where […]

Fault Tolerant Multi AZ EC2, On a beer budget – live from AWS Meetup

Filmed on 18th of March 2021 at the Adelaide AWS User Group, where Arran Peterson presented on how to put together best practice (and cheap!) cloud architecture for business continuity. The title: “Enterprise grade fault tolerant multi-AZ server deployment on a beer budget” Recording RATED ‘PG’ – Mild course language. Presenter More Reading Amazon Elastic […]

Pimp my VS Code

Those who know me, know that I have a keen interest in software tools and exploring the various different ways that people use them. I take great joy in exploring custom or 3rd party plugins and add-ons to get the most out of the tools I use every day. From OS automation tools (like BetterTouchTool) […]

Cognito authentication integration with Django using authorization code grant.

Note: Assumed knowledge of AWS Cognito backend configuration and underlying concepts, mostly it’s just the setup from an application integration perspective that is talked about here. Recently we have been working on a Django project where a secure and flexible authentication system was required, as most of our existing structure is on AWS we chose […]

Tagging EC2 EBS Volumes in Auto Scaling Groups

Tagging becomes a huge part of your life when in the public cloud. Metadata is thrown around like hotcakes, and why not. At cloudstep.io we preach the ways of the DevOps gods and especially infrastructure as code for repeatable and standardised deployments. This way everything is uniform and everything gets a TAG! I ran into […]

AWS ECS CloudFormation Fails – Unable to assume the service linked role.

I ran into an interesting issue when building a new ECS Cluster using CloudFormation. The CloudFormation stack would fail on Type: AWS::ECS::Service with error: Unable to assume the service linked role. Please verify that the ECS service linked role exists. (Service: AmazonECS; Status Code: 400; Error Code: InvalidParameterException; Request ID: beadf3d5-3406-11e9-828d-b16cd52796ef) Okay google, what’s this […]

Planning a move to the cloud with the AWS Application Discovery Service

Here at cloudstep, we love to help our customers achieve their goals. We believe that the cloud is a tool in the toolbox and we can use that multi-facet tool to help our customers realise success. Planning for success starts with goals, and goals come in many different shapes and sizes. For any given solution, […]

YAML it Rhymes with Camel

I’ve blogged before about my passion for automation and the use of ARM templating in the Azure world to eradicate the burden of dull and mundane tasks from the daily routine of system administrators for whom I do consulting for. I loath repetitive tasks, its in this space where subtle differences and inconsistency love to […]