AWS Bites

In this episode of the AWS Bites podcast, we discuss the challenges of hosting private static websites on AWS. We explore why it's important to host internal corporate applications and line of business applications only for internal consumption, and the requirements for doing so. We also evaluate different options for hosting private static websites, including S3 with CloudFront, containers on...

In this exciting episode of the AWS Bites podcast, we're diving into the fascinating world of functionless applications. Yes, you heard it right! We'll be exploring how reducing the number of lambda functions can simplify your applications, resulting in lower latency, no cold starts, and cheaper costs. But don't worry, we still love lambda! We'll be explaining the pros and cons of...

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 p...

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...

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 depl...

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&...

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...

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 Clou...

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, includi...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 rath...

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 res...

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 bette...

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 ho...

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 co...

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...

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 an...

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...

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 yo...