AWS Boston Networking Event

Event Details

When:  June 30^th, 6:00-8:00PM

Where: Amazon Web Services, Cambridge Office

RSVP:    Please RSVP to Jill Bentley, jilliab@amazon.com, by June 26, 2015 with the Subject Title: AWS Cambridge Networking Event

*Note:  Space is limited. Sign up Today! Confirmation and location details will be emailed to you upon registration

Solutions Architect:

Do you have a passion for helping customers design large distributed systems? Would you like to do this using advanced cloud computing technologies? Do you have a knack for helping an organization to understand application architectures and integration approaches, to architect advanced cloud-based solutions, and to help launch the build-out of those systems? Are you one of those rare technologists with the communications, consultative, and leadership skills to help guide major projects to success? The Amazon Web Services Solutions Architecture team is hiring!

In this role, you will have the opportunity to help shape and execute a strategy to build mindshare and broad use of Amazon Web Services (including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB & RDS databases, Amazon CloudFront CDN, and many more) within organizations ranging from new start-ups to large enterprise customers. You will possess customer facing skills that allow you to represent AWS well within a customer’s environment and drive discussions with senior personnel regarding trade-offs, best practices, and risk management. You should also have a demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges.  

Professional Services Consultants:

Are you an IT Leader/Advisor that can transform how an Enterprise uses the public Cloud as part of a Hybrid IT model to transform costs and business agility? Can you work equally well with executives and technologists, leading high-visibility, high-impact projects that are technically broad and deep? Do you understand the strengths and weaknesses of IT process standards? Do you have experience leading diverse global teams driving change and business value at significant scale?

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we're hiring enterprise IT Leaders to work with our top-tier global 1,000 customers and their partners in transforming their enterprise IT landscapes. Our transformation experts engage with customers to understand their business drivers, assess application portfolios, design reliable and cost-effective hybrid cloud infrastructures, create transition plans and develop business cases to justify the programs. Our engagements include projects covering thousands of applications across tens of thousands of servers and involve developing a shared vision, leading the customer through the challenges of cloud adoption, demonstrating the reality of the vision and then enabling them to achieve full operational integration. 

AWS common command line interface

The AWS Common Command Line interface can be found here:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-getting-started.html

Installing PHP and AWS PHP SDK on Mac

Many instructions for PHP and AWS PHP SDK installation and configuration assume deep knowledge of PHP and ability to locate configuration files.

To get the AWS PHP SDK, you first need to get PHP running on Mac.  PHP comes preinstalled but not running, here is how to get it running:

1. Modify https.conf in directory /private/etc/apache2.

2. To change this file, you need to have access as root or super user.  I attempted to su - root and sudo vi but this did not work as not supported on Mac. I had to sudo su as specified here: http://serverfault.com/questions/43362/su-not-working-on-mac-os-x

3. Change httpd.conf as listed here: http://jason.pureconcepts.net/2012/10/install-apache-php-mysql-mac-os-x/

4. Test if PHP is running.  

a. First need to create php.info file in eh DocumentRoot directotoy.  The default directory (DocumentRoot) on the Mac is "/Library/WebServer/Documents". You can always check: /private/etc/apache2/httd.conf to find the DocumentRoot directory.

The php.info looks like:

            <php phpinfo(); ?>



Some good information here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.macosx.bundled.php

b. Test using this in browser: http://localhost/info.php

6. Install AWS PHP SDK using Composer. The instructions are here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-sdk-php/guide/latest/installation.html

Follow these instructuions with these caveats/changes. 

WARNING: Be careful where you run the install from. I ran from /private/etc and my AWS SDK was installed in /private/key/vendor.  So my AWS PHP SDK is here:  /private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php

a. During this step-  curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php,

you will get this error. 

#!/usr/bin/env php

Some settings on your machine make Composer unable to work properly.

Make sure that you fix the issues listed below and run this script again:

The detect_unicode setting must be disabled.

Add the following to the end of your `php.ini`:

            detect_unicode = Off

A php.ini file does not exist. You will have to create one.

The file is in /private/etc/php.ini. You can copy /private/etc/php.ini.default to /private/etc/php.ini and then modify php.ini to add detect_unicode = Off.

Note: You need to be su and also need to chmod 666 to the php.ini file to be able to edit it.

b. If you try this command "php composer.phar install", you will probably get this error unless you did the first step. So do the first step, if not done.  It does not tell you this in instructions but file needs to be here: /private/etc

The instructions for testing the installation are here:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/SettingUpTestingSDKPHP.html.  I did the test for DynamoDB as this what I was going to be using.

1.The following is an example of such a configuration file, named config.php:

This file can be placed anywhere. I decided to put it here: /private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php

1. The instructions tell you to execute these commands (it may appear as thought they need to be issued from the command prompt, this is not the case):

use Aws\DynamoDb\DynamoDbClient;

// Instantiate the client with your AWS access keys

$aws = Aws\Common\Aws::factory('./config.php');

$client = $aws->get('dynamodb');

This actually needs to be in a php file:

<?php

use Aws\DynamoDb\DynamoDbClient;

// Instantiate the client with your AWS access keys

$aws = Aws\Common\Aws::factory('/private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php/config.php');

$client = $aws->get('dynamodb');

?>

When you run the test php fle (“php test.php”, or whatever you called it), you will get the error: PHP Fatal error:  Class 'Aws\Common\Aws' not found in /private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php/dynamodb/test.php on line 

You need to add this line to all you php files:

1.require '/private/etc/vendor/autoload.php';

This is actually documented here but unless you know PHP makes no sense:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-sdk-php/guide/latest/installation.html


Your updated test.php file will look like this:


            <?php

            require '/private/etc/vendor/autoload.php';

use Aws\DynamoDb\DynamoDbClient;

// Instantiate the client with your AWS access keys

$aws = Aws\Common\Aws::factory('/private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php/config.php');

$client = $aws->get('dynamodb');

?>


2. Also change line “$aws = Aws\Common\Aws::factory("./config.php");” to point to location of configuration file.  In my case, you can see the change made above: Aws\Common\Aws::factory('/private/etc/vendor/aws/aws-sdk-php/config.php');

AWS : Storing Session State

AWS SimpleDB, Memcache and DynamoDB can all be used.  DynamoDB is a good option as there is already a session provider for DynamoDB :

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/09/managing-aspnet-session-state-with-dynamodb.html

For SQL Server, you can also look at session management in SQL server for persistence  and use built in .net session provider modules.

You can also manage session state using AWS RDS for SQL Server, MySQL or Oracle.

AWS Services that need a IGW, NAT instance or VPN server to access in VPC

The the following services can NOT be accessed via a private IP address in your VPC. Therefore, they require the use of the AWS Internet Gateway (or NAT instance):

1. EMR : Because access to and from the AWS cloud is a requirement of the cluster, you must connect an Internet gateway to the VPC subnet hosting the cluster. If your application has components you do not want connected to the Internet gateway you can launch those components in other subnets you create within your VPC. In addition, because of the need to access the AWS cloud, you cannot use Network Address Translation (NAT) when you are running Amazon EMR on a VPC.
2. S3 : This is straight forward as S3 is accessed via a URL.  Therefore, the requests hits the IGW and accesses the S3 bucket.  NAT can not be used here.
3. DynamoDB : The AWS API endpoints are external to a VPC and the instance requires an Internet connection in order to reach them. You can either assign an Elastic IP and route the traffic directly out through the Internet Gateway, or use a NAT instance. The latter makes it possible for instances in private subnets to get access to the Internet. These instances will not need any public IP addresses. Instead, they go out to the Internet through a NAT instance in your public subnet.

Requires IGW or VPN server:
4. VPC to VPC : You can use an open source VPN server like OpenVPN (this allows you to not open up your instances by placing them in a public subnet and using elastic IPs).  You could use IGW with elastic IPs attached to the instances.

DynamoDB cross region support

DynamoDB does currently not support cross-region replication. Therefore, were you to store your data in two (or more) regions, you would have to roll out your own implementation to replicate.