Networking is at the core of just about everything in the cloud. Some elements of your compute infrastructure need to be publicly accessible, while others like databases or transactional applications are better off remaining private.

Modern GitOps practices are based around the use of automations to deploy and manage cloud environments. One of the major players in this space is HashiCorp who's Terraform application is used by developers, DevOps and engineers around the world to deploy cloud infrastructure using code.

If you work with AWS at any scale, you will understand the benefits of accurate network documentation. Whether it's trying to get to grips with a network belonging to a new client, or getting a better understanding of exactly what you have running in your own cloud accounts, an accurate network topology diagram goes a long way to quickly understanding the state of play.

Following on from our post on the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials Compute topic, in this post we’ll look at module 3 which concerns itself with the global infrastructure AWS has in place to deliver cloud services and the reliability built in using the various regions and availability zones to provide both redundancy and lower latency.

Did you know your Hava account supports MFA. Are you using it?  MFA provides an optional layer of account log in security, but you probably already know that. In addition to your user name and password, you will be required to enter a one time code generated by a supported TOTP authentication application like Google Authenticator or Authy.

AWS cloud architecture can get complex fast. Once you rotate through a few engineers or external consultants how confident are you that someone within your organisation knows exactly what you have running in your cloud accounts and are those resources actually being used.

Having up to date diagrams can be invaluable when you want to know how your networks hang together or need to explain to stakeholders what you have running and why.

The problem with creating and maintaining network diagrams manually is finding the time to do it in the first place, which is never anyone's priority and then finding the time to update the diagrams when things change (which they invariably do) 

The AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials is a course and examination designed to help you understand the essentials of AWS.

As more companies turn to the cloud to host critical business applications, mass cloud adoption brings with it a new set of challenges.

If you have adopted a micro-services approach to application development, you'll understand the benefits of diagrams showing the status and connections of the configured services.