Author Archives: chrisfwilliams

Use AWS Lambda to schedule instance starts/stops and save some money!

By | September 30, 2017

I’m currently running a PoC and I only want the systems available to play with Monday – Friday, 9am to 5pm EST.  In order to save a good bit of money I’ve decided to turn off the instances at night.  I’m also super lazy, so I don’t want to have to log into the servers… Read More »

Category: AWS

Changing the size of your EBS-backed Windows EC2 instance in 5 easy steps

By | September 21, 2017

I’ve been playing with Jenkins recently and came to find out that the I3.large instance that I created for it doesn’t have enough CPU to satisfy my requirements. The instance is all configured, installed and happy, so now I just want MOAR POOTER!!! Here is a step-by-step on how to do exactly that. Note: this… Read More »

Category: AWS

The AWS Portsmouth User Group is now official!

By | April 18, 2017

Steve Viens, Tim Durgan and I started a new AWS User Group for the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area! We had our first meetup 4/11 at the GreenPages office (Thanks Ron!). If you are in the area, you can join us by signing up here: https://www.meetup.com/aws-portsmouth-user-group/ Here is the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCTFF5am-14H93VSg3fk_4Q Our first presenter was Brian Tarbox… Read More »

Category: AWS

Connecting the Mistwire VMware Homelab to an AWS VPC

By | February 20, 2017

Something that I had been meaning to do for a long time was to create a VPN connection between my home lab (a VMware based nested ESXi environment in my basement) to one of my AWS VPCs. Overview – As this is a simple setup, we’re going to go with a single VPN connection scenario:… Read More »

Category: AWS

vROps – Create & Enable 6.0 Hardening Alerts

By | February 17, 2017

I’ve been spending a lot of time in vROps recently, so I’m going to do a little write up on 5.5 and 6.0 Hardening Alerts found in vRealize Operations Manager 6.4 In the vROps policy section, you’ll see that there is a default policy in the Policy Library called the vSphere 5.5 Hardening Guide: “But… Read More »

My Experience with the AWS Solutions Architect Pro (AWS-PSA) Exam

By | January 15, 2017

It took me 2 times to pass this test and I have to say, it is a very difficult and rather sneaky exam 😉 To start off, this is the progression of study material that I used, in order: Watched the excellent acloud.guru video series. Read all of the whitepapers in the recommended reading list as… Read More »

Log Insight – Upgrade 3.6 to 4.0

By | December 14, 2016

Today I’m going to upgrade my 3 node Log Insight environment from 3.6 to 4.0. Here are the steps: Go to VMware.com and download the upgrade package: Log into your Log Insight 3.6 environment and choose the menu option in the upper right corner and select Administration: Select “Cluster” and click the “Upgrade Cluster” button:… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 8

By | November 29, 2016

Domain 8.0: Cloud Migration and Hybrid Architecture (10% of exam) 8.1 Plan and execute for applications migrations 8.2 Demonstrate ability to design hybrid cloud architectures VMware Integration AWS management portal for vCenter: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vcenter-portal/ Portal installs as a vCenter plug-in Enables you to migrate VMware VMs to EC2 & Manage AWS resources from within vCenter Use… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 7

By | December 4, 2016

Domain 7.0: Scalability and Elasticity (15% of exam) 7.1 Demonstrate the ability to design a loosely coupled system 7.2 Demonstrate ability to implement the most appropriate front-end scaling architecture 7.3 Demonstrate ability to implement the most appropriate middle-tier scaling architecture 7.4 Demonstrate ability to implement the most appropriate data storage scaling architecture 7.5 Determine trade-offs… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 6

By | December 3, 2016

Domain 6.0: Security (20% of exam) 6.1 Design information security management systems and compliance controls 6.2 Design security controls with the AWS shared responsibility model and global infrastructure 6.3 Design identity and access management controls 6.4 Design protection of Data at Rest controls 6.5 Design protection of Data in Flight and Network Perimeter controls AWS… Read More »