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AWS Snow Family memberS

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in AWS, Cloud

The AWS Snow Family is a collection of physical devices that help to physically transport up to exabytes of data into and out of AWS. 

AWS Snow Family is composed of AWS Snowcone, AWS Snowball, and AWS Snowmobile.

These devices offer different capacity points, and most include built-in computing capabilities. AWS owns and manages the Snow Family devices and integrates with AWS security, monitoring, storage management, and computing capabilities.  

AWS Snowcone

AWS Snowcone is a small, rugged, and secure edge computing and data transfer device. 

It features 2 CPUs, 4 GB of memory, and 8 TB of usable storage.

AWS Snowball

AWS Snowball offers two types of devices:

  • Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices are well suited for large-scale data migrations and recurring transfer workflows, in addition to local computing with higher capacity needs.
    • Storage: 80 TB of hard disk drive (HDD) capacity for block volumes and Amazon S3 compatible object storage, and 1 TB of SATA solid state drive (SSD) for block volumes. 
    • Compute: 40 vCPUs, and 80 GiB of memory to support Amazon EC2 sbe1 instances (equivalent to C5).
  • Snowball Edge Compute Optimized provides powerful computing resources for use cases such as machine learning, full motion video analysis, analytics, and local computing stacks.
    • Storage: 42-TB usable HDD capacity for Amazon S3 compatible object storage or Amazon EBS compatible block volumes and 7.68 TB of usable NVMe SSD capacity for Amazon EBS compatible block volumes. 
    • Compute: 52 vCPUs, 208 GiB of memory, and an optional NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU. Devices run Amazon EC2 sbe-c and sbe-g instances, which are equivalent to C5, M5a, G3, and P3 instances.

AWS Snowmobile

AWS Snowmobile is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move large amounts of data to AWS. 

You can transfer up to 100 petabytes of data per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi trailer truck.

Cheers

Osama

Create IAM Users – OCI

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Cloud, OCI

You have the ability to establish users for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) for user situations that are not as common.

  • Open the navigation menu and click Identity & Security. Under Identity, click Users.
  • Click Create user and then select IAM User.
  • Fill the required fields, and click Create.
  • Add the user to an IAM group with specific access.
    • Under Identity, select Groups
    • From the groups list, click the group to which you want to add the user.
    • Click Add User to Group.
    • In the Add User to Group dialog, select the user you created from the drop-down list in the Users field, and click Add.
  • Create the user’s password.
    • From the Group Members table on the Group Details screen, select the user you added.
    • Click Create/Reset Password. The Create/Reset Password dialog is displayed with a one-time password listed.
    • Click Copy, then Close.
  • Welcome to OCI

Regards

Osama

Create a Bastion – OCI

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Cloud, OCI

What is a Bastion?

It’s essential to consider the security implications before allowing direct access to cloud services and resources, particularly as the latter expands. Some individuals get around this problem by setting up a virtual machine within the virtual cloud network and linking it to all the cloud services. This cuts down on publicly accessible services while facilitating connections for developers and system administrators. This virtual machine (VM) is like a manual bastion or leap box.

Create a Bastion

  • Connect to Oracle’s cloud service. To access the main menu, choose the hamburger icon in the upper left corner.
  • On the menu select “Identity & Security > Bastion”.
  • Select the compartment and click the “Create bastion” button.
  • Enter the bastion name and select the VCN and subnet for the bastion. We need to enter a CIDR block allowlist. In this case I’ve used the subnet for my IP address from my internet service provider. Click the “Create bastion” button.
  • Click on the “Create session” button.
  • Connect

Our previously copied connection information should look something like this at this point.

ssh -i  -N -L :ip-connection:22 -p 22 ocid1.bastionsession.oc1.uk-london-1.amaa...3acq@host.bastion.uk-london-1.oci.oraclecloud.com

Regards

Osama

AWS Support

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Uncategorized

AWS offers four different Support plans to help you troubleshoot issues, lower costs, and efficiently use AWS services. 

You can choose from the following Support plans to meet your company’s needs: 

  • Basic
  • Developer
  • Business
  • Enterprise

Basic Support

Basic Support is free for all AWS customers. It includes access to whitepapers, documentation, and support communities. With Basic Support, you can also contact AWS for billing questions and service limit increases.

With Basic Support, you have access to a limited selection of AWS Trusted Advisor checks. Additionally, you can use the AWS Personal Health Dashboard, a tool that provides alerts and remediation guidance when AWS is experiencing events that may affect you. 

If your company needs support beyond the Basic level, you could consider purchasing Developer, Business, or Enterprise Support.

Developer, Business, and Enterprise Support

The Developer, Business, and Enterprise Support plans include all the benefits of Basic Support, in addition to the ability to open an unrestricted number of technical support cases. These three Support plans have pay-by-the-month pricing and require no long-term contracts.

The information in this course highlights only a selection of details for each Support plan. A complete overview of what is included in each Support plan, including pricing for each plan, is available on the AWS Support site.

In general, for pricing, the Developer plan has the lowest cost, the Business plan is in the middle, and the Enterprise plan has the highest cost. 

Developer Support

Customers in the Developer Support plan have access to features such as:

  • Best practice guidance
  • Client-side diagnostic tools
  • Building-block architecture support, which consists of guidance for how to use AWS offerings, features, and services together

For example, suppose that your company is exploring AWS services. You’ve heard about a few different AWS services. However, you’re unsure of how to potentially use them together to build applications that can address your company’s needs. In this scenario, the building-block architecture support that is included with the Developer Support plan could help you to identify opportunities for combining specific services and features.

Business Support

Customers with a Business Support plan have access to additional features, including: 

  • Use-case guidance to identify AWS offerings, features, and services that can best support your specific needs
  • All AWS Trusted Advisor checks
  • Limited support for third-party software, such as common operating systems and application stack components

Suppose that your company has the Business Support plan and wants to install a common third-party operating system onto your Amazon EC2 instances. You could contact AWS Support for assistance with installing, configuring, and troubleshooting the operating system. For advanced topics such as optimizing performance, using custom scripts, or resolving security issues, you may need to contact the third-party software provider directly.

Enterprise Support

In addition to all the features included in the Basic, Developer, and Business Support plans, customers with an Enterprise Support plan have access to features such as:

  • Application architecture guidance, which is a consultative relationship to support your company’s specific use cases and applications
  • Infrastructure event management: A short-term engagement with AWS Support that helps your company gain a better understanding of your use cases. This also provides your company with architectural and scaling guidance.
  • A Technical Account Manager

AWS database services

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Uncategorized

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)

In a relational database, data is stored in a way that relates it to other pieces of data. 

An example of a relational database might be the coffee shop’s inventory management system. Each record in the database would include data for a single item, such as product name, size, price, and so on.

Relational databases use structured query language (SQL) to store and query data. This approach allows data to be stored in an easily understandable, consistent, and scalable way. For example, the coffee shop owners can write a SQL query to identify all the customers whose most frequently purchased drink is a medium latte.

Amazon DynamoDB

In a nonrelational database, you create tables. A table is a place where you can store and query data.

Nonrelational databases are sometimes referred to as “NoSQL databases” because they use structures other than rows and columns to organize data. One type of structural approach for nonrelational databases is key-value pairs. With key-value pairs, data is organized into items (keys), and items have attributes (values). You can think of attributes as being different features of your data.

In a key-value database, you can add or remove attributes from items in the table at any time. Additionally, not every item in the table has to have the same attributes. 

Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a data warehousing service that you can use for big data analytics. It offers the ability to collect data from many sources and helps you to understand relationships and trends across your data.

Amazon DocumentDB

Amazon DocumentDB is a document database service that supports MongoDB workloads. (MongoDB is a document database program.)

Amazon Neptune

Amazon Neptune is a graph database service. 

You can use Amazon Neptune to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets, such as recommendation engines, fraud detection, and knowledge graphs.

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB)

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB) is a ledger database service. 

You can use Amazon QLDB to review a complete history of all the changes that have been made to your application data.

Amazon Managed Blockchain

Amazon Managed Blockchain is a service that you can use to create and manage blockchain networks with open-source frameworks. 

Blockchain is a distributed ledger system that lets multiple parties run transactions and share data without a central authority.

Amazon ElastiCache

Amazon ElastiCache is a service that adds caching layers on top of your databases to help improve the read times of common requests. 

It supports two types of data stores: Redis and Memcached.


Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator

Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache for DynamoDB. 

It helps improve response times from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds.

Cheers

Osama

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Cloud

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a service that provides object-level storage. Amazon S3 stores data as objects in buckets.

You can upload any type of file to Amazon S3, such as images, videos, text files, and so on. For example, you might use Amazon S3 to store backup files, media files for a website, or archived documents. Amazon S3 offers unlimited storage space. The maximum file size for an object in Amazon S3 is 5 TB.

Amazon S3 storage classes

With Amazon S3, you pay only for what you use. You can choose from a range of storage classes to select a fit for your business and cost needs. When selecting an Amazon S3 storage class, consider these two factors:

  • How often you plan to retrieve your data
  • How available you need your data to be

S3 Standard

  • Designed for frequently accessed data
  • Stores data in a minimum of three Availability Zones

S3 Standard provides high availability for objects. This makes it a good choice for a wide range of use cases, such as websites, content distribution, and data analytics. S3 Standard has a higher cost than other storage classes intended for infrequently accessed data and archival storage.

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)

  • Ideal for infrequently accessed data
  • Similar to S3 Standard but has a lower storage price and higher retrieval price

S3 Standard-IA is ideal for data infrequently accessed but requires high availability when needed. Both S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA store data in a minimum of three Availability Zones. S3 Standard-IA provides the same level of availability as S3 Standard but with a lower storage price and a higher retrieval price.

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

  • Stores data in a single Availability Zone
  • Has a lower storage price than S3 Standard-IA

Compared to S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA, which store data in a minimum of three Availability Zones, S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single Availability Zone. This makes it a good storage class to consider if the following conditions apply:

  • You want to save costs on storage.
  • You can easily reproduce your data in the event of an Availability Zone failure.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

  • Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns
  • Requires a small monthly monitoring and automation fee per object

In the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class, Amazon S3 monitors objects’ access patterns. If you haven’t accessed an object for 30 consecutive days, Amazon S3 automatically moves it to the infrequent access tier, S3 Standard-IA. If you access an object in the infrequent access tier, Amazon S3 automatically moves it to the frequent access tier, S3 Standard.

S3 Glacier

  • Low-cost storage designed for data archiving
  • Able to retrieve objects within a few minutes to hours

S3 Glacier is a low-cost storage class that is ideal for data archiving. For example, you might use this storage class to store archived customer records or older photos and video files.

S3 Glacier

  • Low-cost storage designed for data archiving
  • Able to retrieve objects within a few minutes to hours

S3 Glacier is a low-cost storage class that is ideal for data archiving. For example, you might use this storage class to store archived customer records or older photos and video files.

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

  • Lowest-cost object storage class ideal for archiving
  • Able to retrieve objects within 12 hours

When deciding between Amazon S3 Glacier and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, consider how quickly you need to retrieve archived objects. You can retrieve objects stored in the S3 Glacier storage class within a few minutes to a few hours. By comparison, you can retrieve objects stored in the S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage class within 12 hours.

Cheers

Osama

Connect to AWS Directory Services using Apache directory studio

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in AWS, Cloud

Apache Directory Studio is a complete directory tooling platform intended to be used with any LDAP server however it is particularly designed for use with the ApacheDS. It is an Eclipse RCP application, composed of several Eclipse (OSGi) plugins, that can be easily upgraded with additional ones.

Step 1: Create a New Connection in Apache Directory Studio

  1. Start up Apache Directory Studio.
  2. Click the LDAP icon to create a new connection.

Step 2: Enter your Connection Information

  1. Enter a name for your connection.
  2. Enter the ‘Network Parameter‘ information as follows:
HostnameThe domain name for your LDAP server. If the LDAP server is not on the same network as Crowd, you may need to use the FQDN or IP address of the LDAP server.
PortFor normal LDAP connectivity, use 389. For SSL connectivity, use 636.
Parameters for connection
  1. Click the ‘Check Network Parameter‘ button to ensure your connection is successful.

Click ‘Next‘.

Step 3: Enter your Authentication Information

  1. Choose the ‘Authentication Method‘ from the dropdown list.
  2. Enter the ‘Authentication Parameter‘ information as follows:
Bind DN or userEnter the full DN of the account that will be used to connect to the LDAP directory. This account should have the ability to browse the entire LDAP directory tree.
Bind passwordEnter the password for the Bind DN account.
Paramter for Auhentication

3. Click the ‘Check Authentication‘ button to ensure this account can authenticate.

4. If this authentication is successful, click ‘Finish‘.

Once the authentication done successfully, you can connect to the Directory services and start browsing the Base DNs for the users.

Cheers
Osama

Amazon EC2 Options

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Cloud

With Amazon EC2, you pay only for the compute time that you use. Amazon EC2 offers a variety of pricing options for different use cases. For example, if your use case can withstand interruptions, you can save with Spot Instances. You can also save by committing early and locking in a minimum level of use with Reserved Instances.

On-Demand

are ideal for short-term, irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted. No upfront costs or minimum contracts apply. The instances run continuously until you stop them, and you pay for only the compute time you use.

Sample use cases for On-Demand Instances include developing and testing applications and running applications that have unpredictable usage patterns. On-Demand Instances are not recommended for workloads that last a year or longer because these workloads can experience greater cost savings using Reserved Instances.

Amazon EC2 Savings Plans

AWS offers Savings Plans for several compute services, including Amazon EC2. Amazon EC2 Savings Plans enable you to reduce your compute costs by committing to a consistent amount of compute usage for a 1-year or 3-year term. This term commitment results in savings of up to 66% over On-Demand costs.

Any usage up to the commitment is charged at the discounted plan rate (for example, $10 an hour). Any usage beyond the commitment is charged at regular On-Demand rates.

Later in this course, you will review AWS Cost Explorer, a tool that enables you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. If you are considering your options for Savings Plans, AWS Cost Explorer can analyze your Amazon EC2 usage over the past 7, 30, or 60 days. AWS Cost Explorer also provides customized recommendations for Savings Plans. These recommendations estimate how much you could save on your monthly Amazon EC2 costs, based on previous Amazon EC2 usage and the hourly commitment amount in a 1-year or 3-year plan.

Reserved Instances

are a billing discount applied to the use of On-Demand Instances in your account. You can purchase Standard Reserved and Convertible Reserved Instances for a 1-year or 3-year term, and Scheduled Reserved Instances for a 1-year term. You realize greater cost savings with the 3-year option.

At the end of a Reserved Instance term, you can continue using the Amazon EC2 instance without interruption. However, you are charged On-Demand rates until you do one of the following:

  • Terminate the instance.
  • Purchase a new Reserved Instance that matches the instance attributes (instance type, Region, tenancy, and platform).

Spot Instances

 are ideal for workloads with flexible start and end times, or that can withstand interruptions. Spot Instances use unused Amazon EC2 computing capacity and offer you cost savings at up to 90% off of On-Demand prices.

Suppose that you have a background processing job that can start and stop as needed (such as the data processing job for a customer survey). You want to start and stop the processing job without affecting the overall operations of your business. If you make a Spot request and Amazon EC2 capacity is available, your Spot Instance launches. However, if you make a Spot request and Amazon EC2 capacity is unavailable, the request is not successful until capacity becomes available. The unavailable capacity might delay the launch of your background processing job.

After you have launched a Spot Instance, if capacity is no longer available or demand for Spot Instances increases, your instance may be interrupted. This might not pose any issues for your background processing job. However, in the earlier example of developing and testing applications, you would most likely want to avoid unexpected interruptions. Therefore, choose a different EC2 instance type that is ideal for those tasks.

Dedicated Hosts

are physical servers with Amazon EC2 instance capacity that is fully dedicated to your use. 

You can use your existing per-socket, per-core, or per-VM software licenses to help maintain license compliance. You can purchase On-Demand Dedicated Hosts and Dedicated Hosts Reservations. Of all the Amazon EC2 options that were covered, Dedicated Hosts are the most expensive.

Cheers

Osama

Amazon EC2 instance types

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Cloud

Amazon EC2 instance types are optimized for different tasks. When selecting an instance type, consider the specific needs of your workloads and applications. This might include requirements for compute, memory, or storage capabilities.

General purpose instances

provide a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources. You can use them for a variety of workloads, such as:

  • application servers
  • gaming servers
  • backend servers for enterprise applications
  • small and medium databases

Suppose that you have an application in which the resource needs for compute, memory, and networking are roughly equivalent. You might consider running it on a general purpose instance because the application does not require optimization in any single resource area.

Compute optimized instances

are ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit from high-performance processors. Like general purpose instances, you can use compute optimized instances for workloads such as web, application, and gaming servers.

However, the difference is compute optimized applications are ideal for high-performance web servers, compute-intensive applications servers, and dedicated gaming servers. You can also use compute optimized instances for batch processing workloads that require processing many transactions in a single group.

Memory optimized instances

are designed to deliver fast performance for workloads that process large datasets in memory. In computing, memory is a temporary storage area. It holds all the data and instructions that a central processing unit (CPU) needs to be able to complete actions. Before a computer program or application is able to run, it is loaded from storage into memory. This preloading process gives the CPU direct access to the computer program.

Suppose that you have a workload that requires large amounts of data to be preloaded before running an application. This scenario might be a high-performance database or a workload that involves performing real-time processing of a large amount of unstructured data. In these types of use cases, consider using a memory optimized instance. Memory optimized instances enable you to run workloads with high memory needs and receive great performance.

Accelerated computing instances

use hardware accelerators, or coprocessors, to perform some functions more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs. Examples of these functions include floating-point number calculations, graphics processing, and data pattern matching.

In computing, a hardware accelerator is a component that can expedite data processing. Accelerated computing instances are ideal for workloads such as graphics applications, game streaming, and application streaming.

Storage optimized instances

are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large datasets on local storage. Examples of workloads suitable for storage optimized instances include distributed file systems, data warehousing applications, and high-frequency online transaction processing (OLTP) systems.

In computing, the term input/output operations per second (IOPS) is a metric that measures the performance of a storage device. It indicates how many different input or output operations a device can perform in one second. Storage optimized instances are designed to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random IOPS to applications. 

You can think of input operations as data put into a system, such as records entered into a database. An output operation is data generated by a server. An example of output might be the analytics performed on the records in a database. If you have an application that has a high IOPS requirement, a storage optimized instance can provide better performance over other instance types not optimized for this kind of use case.

Cheers

Osama

Multi POd Example – k8s

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in DevOps Tools

Create a Multi-Container Pod

  1. Create a YAML file named multi.yml:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: multi
  namespace: baz
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
  - name: redis
    image: redis

Create a Complex Multi-Container Pod

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: logging-sidecar
  namespace: baz
spec:
  containers:
  - name: busybox1
    image: busybox
    command: ['sh', '-c', 'while true; do echo Logging data > /output/output.log; sleep 5; done']
    volumeMounts:
    - name: sharedvol
      mountPath: /output
  - name: sidecar
    image: busybox
    command: ['sh', '-c', 'tail -f /input/output.log']
    volumeMounts:
    - name: sharedvol
      mountPath: /input
  volumes:
  - name: sharedvol
    emptyDir: {}