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Ask HN: What AWS topics would you like more information on?

9 points by bobf ↗ HN
I'm currently writing a book about AWS best practices. With Amazon's re:invent conference going on, this seemed like a good time to ask for feedback on content. What AWS topics are you interested in learning more about? Are there any areas that have particularly painful learning curves you would like to see addressed in a book?

10 comments

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bobf
Any feedback on topics will be awesome. Also, there's a free 30 day course on AWS best practices at the book launch site (http://awsarchitecture.com) if you're interested.
sdoowpilihp
Auto scaling.

Fault tolerance specifically in regards to AWS

bobf
Definitely! Fault tolerance is one of the biggest goals people have with moving to "The Cloud", but one of the least well-understood AWS topics when it really comes down to the implementation details.
nakkiel
Opsworks.
bobf
Sure! Can you expand on what you're interested in specifically, if anything? (Or is it just top to bottom/ basics to advanced OpsWorks that you're looking for?)
josh-wrale
HIPAA compliance, multi-region deployments, VPC outbound proxies, encryption at rest, cfndsl (CloudFormation DSL)
bobf
Great suggestions, thanks! I'm sure a whole book could be written about HIPAA compliance and AWS, but a lot of general AWS security best practices will end up being useful towards a goal of HIPAA compliance. I'll definitely be covering encryption at rest, VPC, and multi-region deployments. CloudFormation DSL also seems like it could be a separate book (or even a series of books, like you see with Puppet/Chef), but I'll try to include what I can when it is relevant to architectural decisions.
joenied
I'm interested in hearing more about Amazon beanstalk. Haven't personally used it. But does having my ec2 under beanstalk take care of securing my instances?
bobf
Securing your instances in what way? Elastic Beanstalk should initially provide you with instances that one would expect to be reasonably secure, but I wouldn't rely on that level of presumed security for anything important. It definitely does not provide a fully managed environment on an ongoing basis. One glaring example is that it does not handle things like OS-level security updates/patches, or provide you with instances running updated AMIs unless you re-setup your EB environment.
OafTobark
Optimize cost structure and monitoring.