David K. Shepherd, CISSP, AWS CSA-A, FOCP, PMP, ITIL, SAFe4 http://165.227.104.252/dks Just my Personal Blog Thu, 06 Nov 2025 04:25:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.28 My Initial AWS Course Notes – GovCloud Focused – Jan 2012 http://165.227.104.252/dks/2025/11/06/my-initial-aws-course-notes-govcloud-focused-jan-2012/ Thu, 06 Nov 2025 04:24:22 +0000 http://165.227.104.252/dks/?p=45 Continue reading →]]> AWS GovCloud Course – 1/12/2012

Instructor: Mark Ryland – Chief Solutions Architect

GovCloud Computing with AWS: “Like a giant baby startup”

AWS grew as an internal Amazon Service. Allowed software developers to focus on software development.

Lots of “undifferentiated value” tasks (setting up router, hardware, etc). Everybody is doing the same things. No difference, no value add.

  • Rolph Harms Cloud paper “The Economics of the Cloud“, November 2010.
  • Economics of it are so compelling that the solutions will be developed.
  • Amazon price drops are not competition driven, they are efficiency driven.
  • Speed of turns up is beyond all other models.\]

Service Drill Downs:

From memory, there was an overview of each provided

Access Policy Info:

  • What is the item?
  • Who wants to use it?
  • What is the action?

EC2 permissions are coarse right now. Example: User can start/stop any instance. Coming: User can start/stop a specific instance.

GovCloud in Portland, OR area
Separate region with constrained access.
Requires a sign up.
ITAR only individuals.

No GovCloud Console

API only region. GUI tools that are client side:

Elastic Wolf (beefed up Elastic Fox)

Lots of New Features for AWS GovCloud (US) by Jeff Barr on 10 OCT 2012

NOTE: Billing data can get swept into Cloud watch to alert on billing issues.

 

]]> ‘Back in the day’ we didn’t scale and WE LIKED IT. http://165.227.104.252/dks/2019/10/05/back-in-the-day-we-didnt-scale-and-we-liked-it/ Sat, 05 Oct 2019 17:19:59 +0000 http://165.227.104.252/dks/?p=12 Continue reading →]]> I’ve been in web hosting since 1995. Back in the day I was the Tech Lead for IRS.gov (1998-2000). We had BIG IRON (hand me down HP K Class servers) from a failed IRS project (Cyberfile). They were so big,  at 14U (24.5 inches tall) and weighed so much (~130 pounds), that we placed 1 server per rack.  We had to build to support all traffic on Tax Day (April 15th). Cloud wasn’t even an idea yet. There were few MSPs and while Akamai CDN was established, IRS was leery of using aan external provider. We had a Cisco Local Director Load Balancer and grew to sipport Geographic Load Balancers (Alteons) in 3 locations. I personally had to forecast peak traffic and we built for peak load.

Tax Day was always like the scene in Das Boot (1981) where the the U boat is driving and the hull is being crushed by the pressure. That stress peaked on the 15th.

Months of work and worry all came down to a single day. There was no way to add more capacity and no way to slow the onslaught of late taxpayers. To make it even more ‘fun’, numerous firms (Red Alert, Intuit, etc.) were tracking and reporting our response times throughout the day. There was no escape. Just prayer that we would make it through, without crashing and burning.

These days, we scale automatically, by default.

Yes, it’s better, but not nearly as ‘exciting’.

]]> Hello world! http://165.227.104.252/dks/2018/04/23/hello-world/ Mon, 23 Apr 2018 14:07:14 +0000 http://165.227.104.252/davidkshepherd/?p=1 Welcome to My Personal Blog.
I will drop things I find interesting in here on occasion.

It likely won’t be a huge amount of content, but it will be here.

Thanks!
David

]]> AWS re:Invent 2017 – Guide of Guides http://165.227.104.252/dks/2017/09/02/aws-reinvent-2017-guide-of-guides/ Sat, 02 Sep 2017 17:25:31 +0000 http://165.227.104.252/dks/?p=14 Continue reading →]]> I’m headed to AWS re:Invent this year. Hooray!!

This is my first time and I’ve been reading everything I can to get a feel for the event. I’ve been to some large conferences before (RSA, HIMSS, Atlassian Summit, etc.) but re:Invent looks to be a very different event.

Below are the the things I am reading to get prepped. I’ll update as I find more.

Leave a comment if you find it helpful.
Let me know if you have others to add.
Thanks!
–David

AWS re:Invent 2017 – Guide of Guides

Guide Source Date
A guide to AWS re:Invent 2017 Vault Solutions 12/19/16
AWS re:Invent review: Las Vegas 2016 and what to expect in 2017 Raygun 12/22/16
AWS re:Invent 2017 Guide – An Alternative Look GorillaStack 06/29/17
AWS re:Invent 2017 insider tips for getting the most out of your week in Las Vegas A Cloud Guru 07/11/17
Start planning now for AWS re:Invent 2017 A Cloud Guru 07/23/17
Get Ready for AWS re:Invent 2017 AWS Blog 08/08/17
How to get the most out of your time at AWS re:Invent Cloud Assessments 9/20/17
* The ultimate guide to your first AWS re:Invent conference A Cloud Guru 10/02/17
From Previous Years Source Date
AWS re:Invent 2016 Survival Guide VividCortex 11/28/16
A Survival Guide for AWS reInvent 2016 Sumo Logic 11/15/16
The Top 5 Things to Avoid at AWS re:Invent 2016 2nd Watch 11/9/17
]]> Many, many years ago I dropped this on the web http://165.227.104.252/dks/2017/07/07/many-many-years-ago-i-dropped-this-on-the-web/ Fri, 07 Jul 2017 14:25:15 +0000 http://165.227.104.252/dks/?p=23 The Comic Sans font selection was not my call…

Originally at http://www.WorldWideHR.HQ.DLA.mil.

You can see the partially interactive version on Archive.org

 

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