AWS offers a vast number of storage choices, but what if you just want to upload some documents to the cloud and share them to end users? A simple and inexpensive option is AWS WorkDocs. In the first installment of this series, Brien shows how to set up WorkDocs, including establishing the Active Directory environment.
The AWS cloud's flexibility is one of its biggest assets, but it also presents management challenges for companies with large deployments or multiple administrators. In such instances, AWS Config is an indispensable tool for getting a handle on cloud resources.
In general, public cloud vendors are well-suited to running large-scale workloads. But what about migrating them?
While Amazon SNS can be used as a text messaging engine, it also has less obvious uses that you can leverage in your own applications. Brien walks through a few of them.
You wouldn't let VMs running in your datacenter go unchecked. The same goes for VMs in the cloud. Brien shows how to use AWS' CloudWatch tool to ensure these instances perform as intended.
It's easy enough to create an auto-scaling group in AWS, but how exactly does AWS know when a workload needs to be scaled? As Brien demonstrates, the entire process is based on alarms.
One of the challenges of operating a workload at scale is ensuring that it uses the right number of instances. Fortunately, AWS has an auto scaler that can automatically run a workload on the optimal number of instances. Here's how to set it up.
In the world of physical servers, it's rare for a server to have only a single hard drive -- and yet, default AWS instances usually only contain a single virtual hard disk. Fortunately, there is a way to attach additional virtual hard disks to an AWS instance.
By default, AWS storage buckets are relatively permissive. While you can exert more control over them by implementing bucket policies, the catch is that AWS doesn't provide a point-and-click process for this.
AWS provides tools that let admins not only track down unexpected costs, but also prevent billing surprises -- like the unexpected charge that Brien found on his credit card recently -- from happening in the first place.
Channel firms are increasingly seeing the benefits of partnering with both Amazon and Microsoft on cloud services, but doing so requires a good deal of training, planning and trust.
One of the primary storage structures in Amazon S3 is the bucket. When it comes to creating one, there are two important things to know.
Making on-premises Active Directory available to resources in the AWS cloud involves using the AD Connector option and a gateway VPN connection.
Rather than manually provision an Active Directory environment, you can use AWS' automated setup process.
One of the most effective ways to prevent sprawl is to keep track of who created each VM, when and why. In AWS, you can apply this information to each VM instance using tags.
The method for installing and preparing AWS CLI varies from one operating system to another. Here's how to deploy it for Windows.
Don't be fooled. While it sounds rudimentary, the process of deploying an Amazon EC2 virtual machine can be disorienting if you're coming from a native Windows Server environment.
While automatic status checks are default in AWS, the actions to take in response to failed status checks are not. Fix this problem by creating a "status check alarm."
Workload scaling and load balancing are core functions of Amazon's flagship cloud service. Brien walks you through the process of creating and configuring a load balancer in AWS.
Nowadays, cloud computing is as mainstream as a technology can get, but Aaron wonders how much of that is due to marketers dumbing down the concept of "the cloud."