10 Things I Learned Shipping an Ancient Data Center to AWS (Part 1)

By John Fahl, IOD Expert
When we got to the consulting gig, they told us they wanted to do DevOps. They said they wanted to be like <insert “awesome streaming video provider” here>. What they had was several data centers filled with several servers using OSs older than 10 years (some even 20+ years old).
They also relied on some real relics like NIS (yup…this is still a thing …), had deep vendor lock-in, massive old, stagnant clusters, manually built applications (most having been created a decade earlier), and armies of contractors overseeing it all.
(more…)

Continue Reading10 Things I Learned Shipping an Ancient Data Center to AWS (Part 1)

Just a Few AWS Tricks I Learned on the Way

By John Fahl, IOD Expert
Once you work with AWS long enough, you realize it changes all the time.
Some things that were difficult last year are now easy.
Who remembers ELB IPs moving on you? Normally, when you use a CNAME (like you’re supposed to) it doesn’t matter, but I’ve moved a few apps that used hardcoded IPs in old applications. Now, you can just abandon the legacy ELB and use their NLB for that issue. NLB and ALB were big improvements over traditional ELB.
(more…)

Continue ReadingJust a Few AWS Tricks I Learned on the Way