Trevor Roberts Jr

re:Invent 2024 Highlight: EKS Auto Mode

Another great re:Invent is in the books! As a container aficionado, one announcement stood out more than most: EKS Auto Mode. I already planned to spend most of my re:Invent time refreshing on EKS best practices for work, but this announcement kicked my curiosity up to 11...

Posted December 6, 2024 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 9 min read

Simplifying Developer Access with Client VPN

"Hey! Can you add my IP address to the security group, real quick?" If you have ever had this question interrupt your day...several times a day, read on to see how you can solve it with Client VPN...

Posted August 10, 2024 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 5 min read

Creating an AWS Budget with Pulumi

It finally happened to me...I forgot to delete an AWS resource. I am usually pretty good about my dev environment clean-up, but this can still happen to the best of us 😅. I decided right then and there to deploy AWS budget alerts and to automate this task with Pulumi. Read on to see how quick and easy it can be...

Posted July 10, 2024 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 4 min read

Running Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for AWS Lambda Functions on Terraform Cloud

While reviewing my blog infrastructure, I realized I was still using the deprecated go Lambda runtime to invalidate my CloudFront cache. When I went to update my Lambda deployment automation, I realized I deployed it manually 😅. Read on to see how I went about automating the final manual component of my blog infrastructure...

Posted February 29, 2024 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 8 min read

Simplifying Access to EC2 Instances on Private Subnets with EC2 Instance Connect

Just a gentle reminder as we go into 2024: On February 1, 2024, AWS will begin charging customers for the public IPv4 addresses that we use. Now is a really good time to get familiar with IPv6 networking. For any workloads that still require IPv4 addresses for some reason, it is imperative to get familiar with the options to securely access EC2 instances running in private subnets. In this blog post, I demonstrate how to automate the configuration of one of these options: the EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint. Read on to learn more...

Posted December 29, 2023 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 6 min read

Allowing GCP Compute Resources to Assume AWS IAM Roles with Pulumi

Did you know that AWS IAM has built-in support for some well-known OIDC providers, including Google? Neither did I until I worked on a project that required GCP compute instances to securely access Amazon S3 buckets...

Posted October 27, 2023 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 6 min read

Modifying EKS Kubernetes Pod Application Behavior with AWS AppConfig Feature Flags

The AWS AppConfig team recently released a container image for an AppConfig Agent that can be used as a sidecar in your Kubernetes pod or your ECS task to simplify feature management for cloud native applications on AWS. I decided to take the agent for a spin to see if it was as simple to integrate with containers as it is to integrate AppConfig with Lambda functions...

Posted April 5, 2023 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 9 min read

Automating AWS Infrastructure Deployment with Pulumi

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables consistent and reliable infrastructure deployments while reducing human error due to handcrafting resources with Infrastructure as Point-and-Click (IaPaC). I've used CloudFormation, CDK, and Terraform in the past, and they work well. However, I recently heard about Pulumi, and I used it to deploy the AWS resources for my AppConfig automation. Check out my experiences in this blog...

Posted March 16, 2023 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 4 min read

Modifying Application Behavior with Go Lambda Functions and AWS AppConfig Feature Flags

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series' depiction of the conflict between light and dark reminded me of a similar struggle faced by my favorite video game character: Cecil (Final Fantasy IV). I used AWS AppConfig Feature Flags to dynamically generate an information page about Cecil based on his decision...

Posted July 5, 2022 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 7 min read

Preparing for a Career in Cloud Computing

Hello (Again) World! I took some time off from blogging, gaming, etc. to renew my existing AWS certifications, to earn a GCP certification, and...to speak at re:Invent 2021! 😮 However, I'm back, and I'd like to switch gears a little bit to share recommendations on how aspiring Cloud Engineers can learn the skills they need to land that first role in cloud...

Posted January 20, 2022 by Trevor Roberts Jr ‐ 5 min read