AWS Bootcamps and the power of 'Infrastructure as Code'

I mentioned in an early post that I’ve been traveling quite a bit this summer leading AWS boot camps. Even though I’m not really into flying, It’s been a ton of fun, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some fantastic people along the way.

For the majority of the day, students are using the AWS Management Console to build a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), deploy security groups and configure auto-scaling groups – just to mention a few things. It equates to quite a bit of clicking and troubleshooting along the way. Throughout the day I talk about “Infrastructure as Code” and how we can automate all the deployment we do throughout the boot camp via an AWS service called Cloud Formation. The last thing we build is a MySQL instance using the Relational Database Service (RDS), and I purposefully use Cloud Formation to deploy the Multi-AZ infrastructure.

I love watching the “light bulbs” going off over everyone’s heads when they realize the power of “Infrastructure as Code.” That last part of the day generates the most questions and “what if” type scenarios.

Based on the response I’ve got to Cloud Formation I’ve decided to build a public GitHub repo where I will publish various templates over time. It’s pretty small right now, but I plan on growing it over time. Feel free to fork it, or ask me to create something for you.