Amazon's new S3 Files capability blurs the traditional boundaries between object, file, and block storage by allowing S3 buckets to be accessed through a high-performance file system that can be mounted by services such as EC2, Lambda, and ECS.
Brien Posey picks up where Part 1 left off -- showing how to customize an enterprise chatbot's persona and prompts, attach reference documents, and connect the chatbot to enterprise data through external SaaS integrations or custom knowledge sources built from uploaded files, dashboards, and topics.
Brien Posey shows how Amazon Quick makes it surprisingly easy to build a custom enterprise chatbot -- walking through the agent creation prompt, the fine-tuning interface, and the data source and reasoning options available before connecting the chatbot to organizational data in Part 2.
Brien Posey walks first-time users through Amazon Quick -- Amazon's agentic AI platform -- covering its two pricing tiers, a mandatory $250/month infrastructure fee, a 30-day free trial option, and the step-by-step account setup process required before accessing the main interface.
Brien Posey explains how he used the AWS CLI -- including concurrent request configuration, credential backup, and the S3 sync command -- to successfully upload hundreds of gigabytes of video files to a publisher's S3 bucket after GUI-based tools proved unreliable.
In Part 2, Brien Posey walks through creating Route 53 Resolver forwarding rules so the right domains are sent to the right private-network DNS targets.
Configuring a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint lets DNS queries for private-network domains resolve correctly from resources running inside your AWS VPC.
When an AWS EC2 instance returns a generic "connection closed" error, the cause is rarely obvious -- Brien Posey walks through a systematic approach to diagnosing the problem, from checking status checks and EBS volume health to monitoring resource usage and reviewing the system log
When an IAM policy summary is missing in the AWS console, Brien Posey explains the most likely culprits -- from unsupported JSON elements like Principal and NotResource, to contradictory permissions, unrecognized services, and spelling errors in the JSON document.
Amazon's new Deletion Protection Policies let you safeguard EC2 Auto Scaling Groups against accidental deletion at three levels -- from no protection to full prevention -- and can be layered with IAM roles for added security.
After completing an agentless VMware migration to AWS, Brien Posey explains how to clear the persistent vCenter Client error from the Application Migration Service dashboard by archiving source servers and then deleting the vCenter client record via the AWS CLI.
Amazon now publishes AWS Network Firewall state changes to EventBridge, enabling real-time security automation that can immediately respond to firewall configuration changes, attachment modifications, and endpoint health issues.
AWS EC2 placement groups simplify the deployment of distributed workloads by automatically positioning instances according to performance, redundancy, and isolation requirements using three strategic approaches -- cluster, partition, and spread.
Brien Posey advises AWS admins to adopt infrastructure as code and an automation-first mindset, design subnets as trust boundaries, and treat cost management as an ongoing process with regular reviews of resources, budgets, and scaling rules.
Brien Posey outlines AWS admin best practices -- keep accounts and access clean, reserve the root account for emergencies with least privilege and MFA, and tag resources for clear ownership and governance.
Brien Posey outlines essential best practices for AWS EC2 security groups, including role-based group creation, defense-in-depth strategies, selective port management, and the importance of thorough documentation to maintain a secure and manageable cloud infrastructure.
AWS EC2 best practices include training administrators on core AWS services, starting with modest instance sizes, and using CloudWatch metrics and auto scaling groups to balance performance, availability, and cost, explains columnist Brien Posey.
Brien Posey explains how Amazon S3 Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) lets organizations manage bucket access using tags, offering a flexible alternative to traditional IAM-only permissions.
Brien Posey walks through how to create and configure AWS VPC encryption controls, review exclusions and unencrypted resources, and safely transition from Monitor Mode to Enforcement Mode.
Brien Posey explains how AWS VPC encryption controls help identify and enforce encrypted network traffic settings (without encrypting traffic themselves), using Monitor and Enforce modes, plus exceptions, pricing, and a free intro period through Feb. 28, 2026