AWS Cloud Resume Challenge
My name is Michael Connaker, and I am an experienced Site Reliability Engineer and Cloud Engineer.
With over a decade of experience in Information Technology, I have worked across a broad spectrum of disciplines, including networking, systems administration, desktop support, and cloud management. Currently I specialize as a Site Reliability Engineer and Cloud Engineer, where my expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitOps, Configuration Managment and CI/CD tools is used to automate deployments for improved efficiency, scalability, and cost optimization. I have a strong ability to drive collaboration with clients and teams, ensuring seamless execution and delivery of results.
I have extensive leadership experience, serving as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to clients and colleagues, as well as a Team Lead managing a team of 8 to 12 members. In this role, I provided guidance and direction, collaborated with management to develop and enhance onboarding procedures, SLAs, SLOs, technical documentation, and shaped the team’s vision and strategy. Additionally, as an Agile leader, I facilitated sprints, reported progress to senior leadership, and led Scrum of Scrums and retrospectives to drive continuous improvement.
I am educated with a Bachelors of Arts in General Studies and Associates of Applied Science in Computer Networking & Systems Administration. I have also achieved several industry certifications.
Outside the technical realm, I’m an avid reader with a passion for Sci-Fi and Supernatural genres, and a dedicated gamer, having explored countless virtual worlds across multiple platforms. Yet, my most fulfilling adventure is fatherhood to my two teenage daughters and a newborn son — a role that brings immense joy and fresh challenges every day.
AWS Cloud Resume Challenge
website: https://cloudresumechallenge.dev/instructions/
So, I am a little late to the party on the Cloud Resume Challenge. The Cloud Resume Challenge started on April 23, 2020 and had certain requirements and conditions that had to be met.
Those conditions were:
- HTML/CSS based website
- Hosted in S3 (Static Website)
- HTTPS
- DNS
- JavaScript
- Database
- API
- Python
- Infrastructure as Code
- Source Control
- CI/CD (Frontend / backend)
Why take the challenge
For me, the challenge meant learning more about the components of AWS. While I have worked in AWS fluidly, My core work is in ec2, RDS, iaaC, VPCs, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Security Groups, and IAM. This meant there were still services that either I do not know or have a bit of working knowledge in, but never done fron scratch - coding in JavaScript and Python, configuring API Gateways, configuring CloudFront, Amazon Certificate Manager, and Lambda Functions.
Completing the Challenge
I completed the challenge by breaking down what was needed. I also skipped over using IaaC in this challenge only because I wanted to learn and understand the services I would be using in the Management Console. I will most likely go back over this and build a proper IaaC and redeploy the API in the static website to point to it later on.
Breaking this down, I needed:
PageCount Counter:
- DynamoDB
- Lambda Function
- API Gateway
- Scripts
Website:
- HTML/CSS
- s3
- CloudFront
- Amazon Certificate Manager
- Domain
- DNS
PageCount Counter
DynamoDB
The DynamoDB was a excellent choice for this challenge. It is a key-value and document database, severless and does not require a lot of deep knowledge of querying and database. it is simple in design and easy to create. With DynamoDB, I added two items; the Primary Key with a string value that is looked for in the python script and a second one that is used to update the count.
Scripts
I am not a coder by any stretch of the word, so I'd like to thank Don Cameron who also did this challenge and added his script in his documentation. This helped me tremendously.
Lambda Function
For the Lambda Function, I created one from scratch using Python 3.7. I then applied Don's code to the Lambda Function.
API Gateway
I created a API REST Gateway that was connected to the Lambda Function. The API Gateway was configured with a GET Method and configured with CORS.
Website
HTML / CSS
For this challenge, I used a template CSS with slight modifications to the css code. I additionally, with A slight modification to Don's code, I was able to add the API gateway URL to the script code he had.
s3
I created two s3 buckets - connaker.org and www.connaker.org. I configured the s3 bucket for connaker.org as a static website. www.connaker.org was then configured as a redirect to connaker.org under the static website. connaker.org was updated to be public with a s3 policy to allow public access. Using GitHub Actions, I deployed the website through Github to connaker.org
Domain, Certificate Manager and CloudFront
I own the domain connaker.org. I created a Certificate in Amazon Certificate Manager and added this as a CNAME to the Google Domain's DNS records. After validation, I configured Cloudfront with alternate domain names (CNAMES) *.connaker.org and used the custom SSL Certificate I created in ACM. I added the Origin as the S3 buck's website path (NOT the s3 bucket name) and configured the Behaviors for HTTP and HTTPS. I will update the Behaviors for Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS.
Finally, I added the CNAME record for awsrc.connaker.org to point to the CloudFront Domain Name.
GitHub and GitHub Actions
I deployed a public repo (https://github.com/mconnaker/awsrc) where I configured GitHubActions with a Access Keys and Secret Access Keys of IAM user profile. Any changes made for the frontend (website) on my local machines that are pushed to GitHub are automatically pushed to the s3 bucket.
What was the Hardest Part
The hardest part for me was setting up CloudFront, ACM to work with Google Domains. Turns out, I had most of CloudFront and ACM right, just understanding how to add the CNAME correctly into Google Domains DNS records was confusing.
Which Part did I enjoy?
I enjoyed everything about this. It was fun diving and working on these particular services from scratch.
My Submission
website: https://awsrc.connaker.org
github: https://github.com/mconnaker/awsrc
diagram:
