We teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Directory-as-a-Service (DAAS) provider Jumpcloud to host an interactive AWS Meetup in Boulder, Colorado. Our theme was “Discussion with an AWS Solutions Architect,” and included a visual presentation followed by a informative Q&A session.
Representing AWS, Slavik Dimitrovich, a Solutions Architect, kicked off the evening by providing the audience with a deep dive on DevOps with AWS. DevOps helps IT organizations become more agile and efficient by creating a culture of collaboration between IT operations and software teams to speed up the building, testing, and releasing of new software. To describe how AWS began with DevOps, Slavik referenced the “two-pizza team,” an analogy coined by none other than Amazon’s very own CEO, Jeff Bezos. The two-pizza team analogy states that as teams grow larger communication begins to suffer, therefore you should keep your team no larger than two pizzas can feed. It goes on to say that communication problems are not always solved by more communication and smaller teams tend to engage in more meaningful and effective dialogue. Therefore, these smaller teams can create a culture of innovation because they are decentralized and more autonomous to build and release software quickly.
From there, Slavik discussed AWS tools available for consumers to use to replicate Amazon’s ability to maintain a consistently high pace of innovation. Some of these tools include:
- CloudFormation – Provides developers and system administrations with the tools needed to create, manage, and update AWS resources
- CodeDeploy – Automates code deployment to instances so that you can quickly release new features
- CodeCommit – A fully-managed service for hosting and scaling private Git repositories
- Elastic Beanstalk – A Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for creating and pushing applications to AWS services
- CodePipeline – A continuous delivery and release service that helps automate the software release process
- CloudTrail – A web service for recording API calls and delivering log files
Following the DevOps segment, Kevin Epstein, CTO, demonstrated some of the exciting and powerful features of AWS Lambda, a compute service for running code that automatically manages resources in response to events. Kevin completed a live demonstration using an Amazon Echo to show attendees how to create and run code in a serverless environment. Leveraging Alexa Skills boilerplate code from GitHub, Kevin programmed Alexa to randomly select an audience member to win the Amazon Echo as a prize for attending the AWS Meetup. If you’re interested in leveraging this boilerplate code, please click here.
Join us at our next AWS Meetup in Los Angeles by registering here. For those of you who can’t make it, please stay tuned for our event takeaways blog post.
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Are you interested in learning more about DevOps with AWS? Contact us to speak with one of our AWS Certified Professionals today!
