The AWS Architecture Blog

As many of you may know, I'm a huge fan of learning about how companies deploy and use AWS to solve their business problems. In our daily jobs, we typically only get exposure to our own problem domain and it's helpful to see how other companies leverage services that we previously may have never touched. In other words, learning through others exposes our blind spots and broadens our horizons.

For many years, I've been making videos reviewing AWS reference architectures. I enjoy looking through these from time to time to learn about interesting use cases, but always felt they were a little shallow and could use more detail on how the architecture worked.

I recently stumbled upon the AWS Architecture Blog and it looks like my prayers have been answered. In their blog articles, they provide detailed explanations of a company's AWS architecture. Take this one for instance that analyzes the company SeatGeek, a ticketing platform like TicketMaster, to evaluate how their platform sells hundreds of thousands of tickets per day.

These articles are written by AWS staff including Solution Architects and are top notch quality. Not only do they discuss the architecture itself, but they go multiple levels deeper to discuss important concepts like scalability, edge cases, and optimization.

If you haven't already, I highly suggest checking out their website and poking through a couple of their articles. I'll be making a video recapping the SeatGeek architecture this week - so look forward to its release!

Other News - Step Functions Masterclass Course Launch

In other news, I'm sure many of you have seen the emails about my recent course launch, titled the AWS Step Functions Masterclass. I've been hard at work the past few months creating the course outline, putting together the material, and finally recording and uploading the content. The course is about 10.5 hours in length and covers all the important bits about AWS Step Functions.

As I've discussed before, I'm a big fan of Step Functions and I'm a huge believer that Workflow type applications are going to become increasingly popular in the future. The daisy chaining of event driven architectures can get way too complicated and result in almost un-solvable race conditions. Having a centralized application like a Step Function Workflow that co-ordinates a series of actions solves many of these problems.

If you're not convinced, check out this YouTube video by one of the original creators of AWS Simple Workflow Service (the predecessor of Step Functions) where he discusses the importance and value of workflow applications. It's a great watch, I promise!

August/September Video Recaps

How I Would Learn AWS Today (after 10 years of cloud experience)

I put a lot of thought into this video--reflecting on my own career and gaps that I experienced along the way. I put together a guide for learning AWS that I wish I had nearly a decade ago. This longer form video includes a link to a mind map with embedded hyperlinks for every piece of reference content.

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AWS CDK v2 Project Setup and Introduction (with a Lambda + SQS Example in Python)

Everyone loves CDK, right? In this updated video, I take it slow and show you how to set up your first CDK project in Python. I explain how to use the CDK CLI, how to create a Lambda + SQS setup, add some lambda code, and deploy to AWS. This is all using the newer version of CDK--CDK v2.

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What REALLY is included in the AWS Free Tier?

I've seen far too many people get screwed by AWS' confusing pricing model. In this video, I break down the semantics of the Free Tier and give you helpful tips to ensure you don't get charged a dime - unless you intend to, that is.

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Text to Speech with Amazon Polly

This step by step tutorial video walks you through Amazon Polly - AWS text to speech service. I walk you through the AWS Console and show you how to convert some simple text to audio files. I also explain some of the settings / details of the service and how to customize it to your needs.

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And that's all folks! I'll see you in a few weeks.

-Daniel

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