Tag: Osama blog

AWS Community Builder

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in News

I woke up today with fantastic news: AWS Community Builder has been renewed for the second time.

The AWS Community Builders program offers technical resources, education, and networking opportunities to AWS technical enthusiasts and emerging thought leaders passionate about sharing knowledge and connecting with the technical community.

Interested AWS builders should apply to the program to build relationships with AWS product teams, AWS Heroes, and the AWS community.

You can check the program here.

Regards

Osama

VPC endpoints

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in AWS, Cloud

A VPC endpoint enables private connections between your VPC and supported AWS services without requiring an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or Direct Connect connection. Instances in your VPC do not require public IP addresses to communicate with resources in the service. Traffic between your VPC and the other service does not leave the AWS network.

Endpoints are virtual devices. They are horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC components. They permit communication between instances in your VPC and services without imposing availability risks or bandwidth constraints on your network traffic.

Types of VPC endpoints

GATEWAY ENDPOINT

Specify a gateway endpoint as a route target in your route table. A gateway endpoint is meant for traffic destined to Amazon S3, or Amazon DynamoDB and remains inside the AWS network.

instance A in the public subnet communicates with Amazon S3 via an internet gateway. Instance A has a route to local destinations in the VPC. Instance B communicates with an Amazon S3 bucket and an Amazon DynamoDB table using unique gateway endpoints. The diagram shows an example of a private route table. The private route table directs your Amazon S3 and DynamoDB requests through each gateway endpoint using routes. The route table uses a prefix list to target the specific Region for each service.

INTERFACE ENDPOINT

With an interface VPC endpoint (interface endpoint), you can privately connect your VPC to services as if they were in your VPC. When the interface endpoint is created, traffic is directed to the new endpoint without changes to any route tables in your VPC.

For example, a Region is shown with Systems Manager outside of the example VPC. The example VPC has a public and private subnet with an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance in each. Systems Manager traffic sent to ssm.region.amazonaws.com is sent to an elastic network interface in the private subnet.

Gateway VPC endpoints and interface VPC endpoints help you access services over the AWS backbone.

A gateway VPC endpoint (gateway endpoint) is a gateway that you specify as a target for a route in your route table for traffic destined for a supported AWS service. The following AWS services are supported: Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB.

An interface VPC endpoint (interface endpoint) is an elastic network interface with a private IP address from the IP address range of your subnet. The network interface serves as an entry point for traffic destined to a supported service. AWS PrivateLink powers interface endpoints and it avoids exposing traffic to the public internet.

Regards

Osama

DubOPS Event

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Uncategorized

DubOps is a unique event that brings together DevOps, IT operations, and software development experts to share their knowledge and insights with the community. This event provides a platform for attendees to learn about the latest trends and best practices in the industry, as well as network with peers and thought leaders.

Registration for the Dubops event is now open, and we encourage anyone interested in attending to sign up early, as space is limited. Don’t miss this chance to expand your knowledge, connect with peers, and stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of DevOps and IT operations.

Date: May 11th, 2023
Time: 18:00 – 21:00
Location: Zabeel House, Dubai, UAE
Registration link: https://lnkd.in/dCd7V-vv
We look forward to seeing you there!

Regards

Osama

Oracle 23c Is out

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in Database

Oracle Database 23c Free Version Now Available to Developers.

The new Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release is a free version of the trusted Oracle Database used by businesses of all sizes around the globe. Obtaining the only converged database that works with any data model and any task type is as easy as downloading it from the internet with no oracle.com user account or license click-through requirements.

If you’re looking for a free database to use for developing data-driven applications, look no further than Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release. Users can upgrade to other Oracle Database products at any moment because of its backwards compatibility with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Oracle Database cloud services.

Documentation here

Download:

Regards

Osama

AWS Infrastructure

Posted on by Osama Mustafa in AWS, Cloud

The AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure is the most secure, extensive, and reliable cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally.

AWS Data Center

AWS pioneered cloud computing in 2006 to provide rapid and secure infrastructure. AWS continuously innovates on the design and systems of data centers to protect them from man-made and natural risks. Today, AWS provides data centers at a large, global scale. AWS implements controls, builds automated systems, and conducts third-party audits to confirm security and compliance. As a result, the most highly-regulated organizations in the world trust AWS every day.

Availability Zone – AZ

An Availability Zone (AZ) is one or more discrete data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity in an AWS Region. Availability Zones are multiple, isolated areas within a particular geographic location. When you launch an instance, you can select an Availability Zone or let AWS choose one for you. If you distribute your instances across multiple Availability Zones and one instance fails, you can design your application so that an instance in another Availability Zone can handle requests.

Region

Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate Availability Zones within a geographic area. This achieves the greatest possible fault tolerance and stability. In your account, you determine which Regions you need. You can run applications and workloads from a Region to reduce latency to end users. You can do this while avoiding the upfront expenses, long-term commitments, and scaling challenges associated with maintaining and operating a global infrastructure.

AWS Local Zone

AWS Local Zones can be used for highly demanding applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users. Media and entertainment content creation, real-time multiplayer gaming, and Machine learning hosting and training are some use cases for AWS Local Zones.

CloudFront – Edge Location

An edge location is the nearest point to a requester of an AWS service. Edge locations are located in major cities around the world. They receive requests and cache copies of your content for faster delivery.

Regards

Osama

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

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