Category

AWS Cloud

Disaster Recovery in The Cloud: AWS EBS Snapshot in a Single Click

cloud backupIn my journey through the cloud I often come across great new initiatives. The interesting fact is that although the cloud is a pure revolution terms such as SLA, TCO and ROI remain valid, new methodologies and techniques are presented to support them in the cloud.

How-to Install AWS Command Line (CLI) Tools for Auto Scaling

Scaling is one of the most important factors for Cloud Services. It allows the user to optimize the cost by providing resources only when required. Amazon Cloud Auto Scaling provides horizontal scaling by automatically adding or removing the computer resources for the application hosted on AWS. The changes are on demand based on the triggers configured by the user.

Consider the following scenario: when the user’s web application is hosted on AWS and there is a sudden increase of traffic to that website. If the user fails to scale up based on the need, the application may fail or give a slow response. If the user has configured parameters such that AWS adds more application resources (EC2 Instances) when the traffic increases the application will continue to respond with the same performance as before.

The present guide demonstrates how to install Auto Scaling CLI on a Windows machine.

How to Log AWS CloudFront Access Request Data

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. CloudFront provides the log file option to log the end user access request data, its status and other relevant information. The log file will be stored in the S3 bucket. The log file can be in the same bucket as the distribution origin or it can also be in a separate bucket. The user can configure the same bucket for multiple distributions. The user can specify the prefix to the log file to distinguish the distribution details. The CloudFront stores the data to the log file periodically. Each log record will have the user access details, such as the date, time, the edge location information which served the content, the bytes from the server to the client, the client IP, the protocol (HTTP/s), the query string, and more.

The user account where the CloudFront distribution is located should have full access to the S3 bucket. If the bucket belongs to some other AWS account, provide the access rights.

The present guide demonstrates how to enable logging for the CloudFront download or the streaming distribution.

How to Create a CloudFront Download Distribution with Custom Origin

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. CloudFront serves its content through its ever growing edge locations network. The AWS CloudFront serves its content from the origin server configured during the distribution configuration. For the download distribution, CloudFront supports custom origins similar to a storage device such as an HTTP server. CloudFront supports the AWS services, such as EC2, and ELB as the custom origin. While working with the custom origin, the following is recommended:

  • The clocks of the custom origin is synchronized with AWS
  • Host and serve the same content on all the servers
  • The origin must be available publicly

The CloudFront streaming distribution does not support the custom origin functionality.

The present guide demonstrates how to create a download distribution for the AWS CloudFront using AWS EC2 as the custom origin.

How to List, View and Update the CloudFront Streaming Distribution

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. CloudFront can stream media files using the Adobe Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). It is required that the streams file is on AWS S3 and should not be served from any other origin. The user can stream the file using a JWPlayer, Adobe Flash player or flow player. The user can create a streaming distribution. The end user can view the streamed media file using the player specified by the user.

The AWS allows creating multiple streaming distributions for a single bucket and the user can stream the media objects using any of the valid streaming distributions.

The present guide demonstrates how to list, view or update an existing streaming distribution.

How to Configure the Cache Behavior for a CloudFront Download Distribution

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to serve low latency content with high data speed. CloudFront caches the object to its edge location. The user can configure how long an object can stay in the cache. When creating a CloudFront download distribution, it allows the user to configure the caching behavior for the different path patterns: E.g. one cache behavior is for all .css files while the other is for all .jpg files. When a new distribution is created, CloudFront forwards all requests to the origin specified during the creation of the distribution. The user can add another caching behavior for a different path pattern.

The present guide demonstrates how to configure the cache behavior for a download distribution.

How to Create an Origin Access Identity for AWS CloudFront

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. The user needs to create a distribution of their bucket or of the AWS service.

When CloudFront serves the objects from AWS S3, it is required to provide public access of that object so that the others can access it. When the object permission is set as mentioned above, the end user can also access the object directly from AWS S3 using the URL: http://<bucketname>.s3.amazonawsaws.com/<objectname>

The user can secure access of their CloudFront distribution using signed URLs. If the user wants to setup a signed URL it is also required that the access of the S3 bucket for the general public is restricted. To restrict access to the AWS S3 bucket, the user can configure an origin access identity.

The origin access identity is a special CloudFront user. The user can allow access to only this CloudFront user using the S3 bucket access and policy. If the origin access identity has been configured and some other user tries to access the AWS S3 object directly, access will be denied as it is accessible to only the origin access identity.

The present guide demonstrates how to create an origin access identity for CloudFront streaming or the download distribution.

How to Add Trusted Signers to the CloudFront Distribution

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. The user needs to create a distribution of their bucket or of the AWS service.

The user may want to restrict access of the object distributed through CloudFront. The user can specify access of the object using CloudFront signed URLs such that others cannot access it without the signed URL. To create signed URLs for the AWS S3 objects, the user needs at least one AWS account that has an active CloudFront key pair. This account is called the trusted signer.

When the trusted signer is added to the CloudFront distribution, CloudFront requires that the user uses a signed URL to access the object from AWS S3. CloudFront verifies the signed URL to ensure that it is valid and not tampered.

The present guide demonstrates how to add trusted signers for CloudFront streaming or the download distribution.

How to List, View and Update an AWS CloudFront Distribution

AWS Cloudfront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static content, such as media files, html, js, css, etc. Cloudfront serves its content through edge locations. In Cloudfront, the content is organized into distributions. There are two types of distributions with CloudFront: (1) Download CloudFront  Distribution and (2) Streaming Distribution. When the user updates the configuration distribution, all the changes are propagated to all the edge locations. Until all the edge locations are updated with the changes, Cloudfront continues to serve the content from the previous distribution.

The present guide demonstrates how to view and update the existing Cloudfront download distribution.

How to Create a CloudFront Download Distribution with AWS S3

AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to speed up the distribution of static or dynamic content, such as media files, html, js css, etc as well php. CloudFront serves its content through edge locations. As of Dec 2021, AWS had more than 35+ edge locations across the globe. When the user requests for any static content from CloudFront, it will find the nearest edge location to the user and deliver the content from that edge location to reduce the latency.

The present guide demonstrates how to create a download distribution with the AWS S3 service for CloudFront.

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