Harken, good sir! Art thou aware of the arcane art of safeguarding thy AWS instances from malevolent threats whilst keeping them accessible for thy travels? There exists a mighty tool for such purpose, and it is hight the "bastion host." In this pamphlet, we shalt unravel the mysteries of the bastion host and showeth thee how to useth it to safeguard thy web space. We shall commence by presenting a shadowy example architecture and introducing thee to the definition of a bastion host. W...
Apr 27, 2023•27 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast Are you tired of waiting for your Lambda functions to finish before getting a response? Well, now you don't have to! In this episode of the AWS Bites podcast, we will talk about Lambda Response Streaming, a new feature recently added by AWS that lets you stream responses from your Lambda functions in real time. We'll start by explaining what Lambda Response Streaming is and how it differs from buffering. We'll also discuss HTTP Chunking and other benefits of streaming. If you're ...
Apr 20, 2023•27 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we're doing something different! Join us for a special screen-sharing edition of our podcast series, as we take a deep dive into AWS Copilot, a service designed to simplify container application deployment on AWS. During this video, we'll be sharing our screens as we walk through the AWS Copilot landing page and documentation, and demonstrate how to use the service to deploy a container application. We highly recommend watching the video version of this episode, as we...
Apr 13, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this special episode of AWS Bites, we drop all our opinions about the sudden growth of AI and how it is going to change the future as we know it! We begin by taking a trip down memory lane and discovering the types of AI tools that have been used in the past and how they have helped us. Then, we'll dive into ChatGPT, a language model that can assist us in writing and even creating code. We're especially excited to discuss how ChatGPT can be used to create slide decks or even write a b...
Apr 06, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast How can you use a Lambda to respond to an HTTP request? There are more ways than ever to do it. We have API Gateway REST APIs, Lambda support for Application Load Balancer, and now Function URLs. But which one should you use, and when? In this episode of AWS Bites podcast, we will give you a quick and simple guide to picking the best way to build APIs with Lambda. In this video, we're going to pitch Function URLs against API Gateway in a battle for the ages! Function URLs offer a simple and ...
Mar 30, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we're going to be talking about AWS Application Composer - a FREE service that promises to help you build serverless applications with ease. With its simple drag-and-drop interface, it's supposed to make Infrastructure as Code a breeze. But the real question is - does it live up to the hype? We know a lot of you are probably struggling with building applications using CloudFormation. It's a real pain, right? So, we decided to take Application Composer for a spin and ...
Mar 24, 2023•28 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast AWS ECS is a powerful service that allows you to run containerized applications at scale. It's suitable for a variety of use cases, including web applications, microservices, and background processing. In this episode, we'll provide an introduction to the main concepts of ECS and then dive into cost-optimization strategies. We'll explore the different options for running containers on ECS, including EC2, Fargate, and ECS Anywhere. We'll discuss various opportunities for saving money, such as usi...
Mar 17, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Join us as we explore the controversy surrounding serverless computing in this week's video! We'll be discussing David Heinemeier Hansson's recent blog post where he argues that serverless is a trap that only benefits cloud providers. While we respect DHH's opinion, we'll be providing an alternative perspective by analyzing his major points and discussing the benefits of using serverless computing, including Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increased agility. We'll also be highlighting how serv...
Mar 10, 2023•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Are you ready to level up your software architecture skills? In this episode, we deep-dive into the world of diagrams and show you why they are essential for creating robust and scalable cloud architectures! Starting with the basics, we explain why diagrams are so important and why you should be using them in your work. We'll discuss different approaches to creating diagrams mentioning the popular C4 method and some alternative approaches. In the context of AWS we will share some insider tips ab...
Mar 03, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you know what horrors lurk in your AWS account? Aren't you afraid of the murky waters of an old and cluttered AWS account, which might be rife with security risks and other unexpected dark forces? Fear no more! In this episode, we share our best tips to discover every resource in your neglected AWS account and, whether you decide to clean things up, delete what's needed, or just put some order into the mess, we give you some practical suggestions on what kind of tools or services you could yo...
Feb 24, 2023•22 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast If you've been using AWS for a while, you might have heard the term "well-architected". But what does it really mean? Don't worry if you're not quite sure, because we are here to help! In this episode of AWS Bites, we will be diving into the world of well-architected and explaining what it means, both in general and in the specific context of AWS. We will be covering the well-architected framework, the different tools, and facets that come with it, and answering some practical questions like "sh...
Feb 17, 2023•19 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed by the vast AWS landscape? Do you find yourself constantly struggling to keep up with all the tasks at hand? Look no further! In this episode of AWS Bites podcast, Eoin and Luciano share their top six time-saving tools to help you reclaim your productivity and make the most of your AWS experience. These tools are designed to make your life easier and allow you to achieve more in less time. But don't worry, this won't be a boring lecture. Get ready to have som...
Feb 10, 2023•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Discover the Ultimate Battle: Serverless Framework vs AWS SAM! Are you building and deploying serverless applications and don't know which tool to choose? Look no further, as we dive into a comparison of the two heavyweights in the serverless world - AWS SAM and Serverless Framework. Find out their unique features, ease of use, and what the future holds for these Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools. By the end of this episode, you will know which one is right for you and your projects! Join us as...
Feb 03, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the AWS Bites Podcast, we dive into the serverless pattern of using AWS Lambda together with SQS. We explain the basics of both Lambda and SQS for those who may not be familiar with them. We talk about how we use Lambda, a Function as a Service offering in AWS, to write our own functions and have AWS run them in response to certain events. And we also discuss SQS, a scalable and managed queuing system available on AWS, which we use to offload work to background workers. We del...
Jan 26, 2023•16 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast Are you curious about using Rust to write AWS Lambda functions? In this episode of AWS BItes, we will be discussing the pros and cons of using Rust for serverless applications. With Rust, you'll be able to take advantage of its fast performance and memory efficiency. Plus, its programming model makes it easy to write safe and correct code. However, Rust is not a native runtime for Lambda, but rather a library that implements a custom runtime built and maintained by AWS. This custom runtime is bu...
Jan 20, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast We built a Step Function that allows us to generate high-quality transcripts for AWS Bites podcast! After evaluating different approaches and technologies we ended up using Amazon transcribe and OpenAI whisper. They both have their pros and cons but combined together they gave us everything we were looking for with quite a good degree of accuracy! In this episode, we describe our use case, our research, and how eventually we did go about productionizing our final solution. If you run a podcast a...
Jan 13, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast re:Invent 2022, the biggest AWS conference of the year is just over and there were tons of interesting announcements: many new features and some interesting new AWS products! But we are not going to bother you with yet another walkthrough of all of them. In this episode of AWS Bites podcast we just discuss our top 3 announcements and explained what we liked and what could have made them even better! We will talk about EventBridge Pipes, Step Functions Distributed Map, and Application Compo...
Dec 09, 2022•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Let's face it: when it comes to AWS, cost is one of the scariest topics! Why? Mostly because the underlying model can get very complex. There are too many variables and ultimately it's just hard to predict how much is a given workload going to cost you on AWS. Are going to be bankrupted by this unpredictable cost? Probably not! In this episode, we share some suggestions and tools on how to approach cost when going to AWS. It's not a simple topic, but it's something you need to embrac...
Dec 02, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast AWS Lambda is one of the most famous AWS services these days. If you are just starting with your cloud journey you might be confused about what Lambda actually is, what are the limitations, and when you should be using it or not. In this episode, we provide a beginner-friendly introduction to Lambda and summarise everything there’s to know about it: when to use it and when not, differences with containers, the pricing model, limitations, and integrations. By the end of this episode, we will also...
Nov 25, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The definition of serverless has already changed in the few years since it first emerged. There have been many success stories using serverless - in startups and the enterprise. But what comes next? In this episode, we will clarify our definition of Serverless, what are the main challenges with it today, and speculate on what we believe will come next! By the end of this episode, you’ll have heard our thoughts and predictions on what Serverless 2.0 will look like. We will also reveal who we thin...
Nov 18, 2022•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Building actual projects is a great way to consolidate our understanding of AWS. In this episode, we present 4 different project ideas to explore services and concepts in the space of web application development, machine learning, and data science. Ok, you are probably wondering where kitties come into the equation here. Every one of these 4 project ideas involves kitties! 🐱 We can learn stuff and have some fun too! In this episode, we mentioned the following resources: - Our sponsor, fourTheor...
Nov 11, 2022•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you looked into Amazon Cognito, chances are that you have been confused by User Pools and Identity Pools (now renamed to Federated Identities). Well, Cognito is not one of the simplest AWS services to get started with but it is indeed very powerful and it can be very convenient to use when you are dealing with authentication and authorization. In this Episode of the AWS Bites Podcast, we try to clarify what is the difference between User Pools and Identity Pools. When to use one or the other ...
Nov 04, 2022•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Uploading and downloading files are some of the most common operations for web applications. But let’s face it, as common as they are, they are still challenging features to implement in a reliable and scalable way! This is especially true for serverless environments where you have strict limits in payload size and you cannot have long-running connections. So what’s the solution? If you are using S3, pre-signed URLs can help quite a bit! In this episode of AWS Bites podca...
Oct 27, 2022•18 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes people talk about an MVP and then say "yeah but we deploy manually" or "we don't have tests yet". Is that really an MVP or is it something else? And what it takes to build a successful MVP when using AWS? In this episode, we discuss the differences between a prototype, a proof of concept, and an MVP. Then we debate about what's the minimum amount of work you need to put in place to have an MVP on AWS. We debate on whether our weshare.click is an MVP or just a prototype and why. Finally...
Oct 20, 2022•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast AWS Step Functions are all the rage right now! The visual editor is getting better and better and there are always new capabilities like the recently introduced intrinsic functions. In this episode we will try to answer the question “are Step Functions a Low-Code tool”? In the process, we will give our own definition of what Low-Code means, and we will describe the main characteristics of Step Functions and try to assess whether they match our definition or not. We will also discuss several prac...
Oct 13, 2022•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a special episode recorded live during a live coding session on YouTube (2022-09-28). The audio-only experience might not be the best one, so if you are curious to see the video and enjoy our diagrams and screen sharing, please check this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/b-FoqIcOcPw . How can you build a WeTransfer or a Dropbox Transfer clone on AWS? This is our sixth (and last!) live coding stream. In this episode, we completed the authentication layer for our file transfer ap...
Sep 29, 2022•2 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a special episode recorded live during a live coding session on YouTube (2022-09-21). The audio-only experience might not be the best one, so if you are curious to see the video and enjoy our diagrams and screen sharing, please check this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TzfkbisMEA . How can you build a WeTransfer or a Dropbox Transfer clone on AWS? This is our fifth live coding stream. In this episode, we continued adding some security to our application. Speci...
Sep 23, 2022•2 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a special episode recorded live during a live coding session on YouTube (2022-09-16). The audio-only experience might not be the best one, so if you are curious to see the video and enjoy our diagrams and screen sharing, please check this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVic3oqqqfY . How can you build a WeTransfer or a Dropbox Transfer clone on AWS? This is our fourth live coding stream. In this episode, we started looking into adding some security to our applic...
Sep 17, 2022•2 hr 31 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast This is a special episode recorded live during a live coding session on YouTube (2022-08-31). The audio-only experience might not be the best one, so if you are curious to see the video and enjoy our diagrams and screen sharing, please check this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlW_RwRgskI How can you build a WeTransfer or a Dropbox Transfer clone on AWS? This is our third live coding stream. In this episode, we made our lambdas better by adding observability best pract...
Aug 31, 2022•2 hr 47 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a special episode recorded live during a live coding session on YouTube (2022-08-24). The audio-only experience might not be the best one, so if you are curious to see the video and enjoy our diagrams and screen sharing, please check this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4wCX32YUtMk How can you build a WeTransfer or a Dropbox Transfer clone on AWS? This is our second live coding stream. In this episode, we revisited our architecture and added a custom domain to our APIs, and cr...
Aug 24, 2022•2 hr 44 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
