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AWS for the Real World

Join our community of over 8,800 readers delving into AWS. We highlight real-world best practices through easy-to-understand visualizations and one-pagers. Expect a fresh newsletter edition every two weeks.

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What if there were something like DynamoDB but for SQL? πŸ’Ύ

βŒ› Reading time: 10 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Running Postgres on Aurora DSQL with Drizzle πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Repository ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ With re:Invent 2024, AWS finally came up with an answer to what many people (including us) asked for years: "What if there were something like DynamoDB but for SQL?" With Amazon Aurora DSQL, this is finally possible. It’s not just a β€œscales-to-zero” solution like Aurora Serverless V2. It is a true distributed, serverless, pay-per-use...

βŒ› Reading time: 12 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: CloudWatch Launches re:invent 2024 ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ re:invent happened already two weeks ago and there were some amazing launches πŸ‘€ CloudWatch got a lot of love at that re:invent. This is why we are showing you our top CloudWatch launches for this year. We've worked through all of them, tried to get them working with our example application of the CloudWatch Book, and are now busy updating the book ✍🏽. Let's dive into...

βŒ› Reading time: 14 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Feature Flags with AWS AppConfig πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Repository ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ There's no other field where it's so common to have "a small side-project" like in the software industry. Even though it's possible to build things as quickly as ever before due to cloud providers, tools, platforms, and AI, many indie founders (and also large enterprises) tend to fall into the same trap: they tend to build features that users do not...

βŒ› Reading time: 17 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Observability at Scale with Open-Source πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Repository ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ Welcome to this edition of the AWS Fundamentals newsletter! In this issue, we're focusing on observability with open-source tools on AWS. As most of you already know, we can use Amazon CloudWatch and X-Ray to monitor our application from every angle. But what if we want to hybrid setup where we run certain parts of our ecosystem outside of AWS?...

βŒ› Reading time: 9 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Polling or WebSockets: Choosing with Amazon API Gateway πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Repository ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ What would you use for quick and regular data updates inside your web app? Or let's phrase it another way: how would you choose between Polling and WebSockets? πŸ’­ Understanding the nuances between these two communication methods is important, as they both come with their own advantages, gotchas, and side effects that are not very...

βŒ› Reading time: 6 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: DynamoDB Global Tables πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Repository ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ DynamoDB is one of the most popular AWS services that requires minimal management. However, as Dr. Werner Vogels reminds us: β€œEverything Fails All the Time.” ⚑️ Therefore, even with managed services like DynamoDB, being prepared for a regional outage is important. The good thing: with DynamoDB Global Tables, you can easily replicate tables across multiple AWS...

βŒ› Reading time: 10 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Building a Serverless Platform With SST, Lambda & Next.js ✍️ Read the Full Post Online πŸ”— Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ In this post, we want to guide you through our complete setup for our custom video platform. Our CloudWatch Book's Video Section This starts from the purchase to actually accessing our custom build video-access platform. Overview about our CloudWatch Book Landing Page & Video Platform Architecture We'll explain why we decided against a third-party...

βŒ› Reading time: 11 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Step Functions - Express vs. Standard πŸ‘Ύ GitHub Code ✍️ Blog Post Hey Reader while Sandro is learning something new at the AWS Community Day in Munich today, we'll explore Express and Standard Step Functions, the two types of workflows offered by AWS Step Functions. We’ll break down their differences, when to use each, and the benefits of both. Example Application: running both workflow types to see their performance differences If you want to try...

Hey Reader First things first: we apologize for not providing updates on The CloudWatch Book for a while! 😒 Sometimes, things don't go as planned and unexpected obstacles arise. But now, we're back in action, creating videos and putting the final touches on the book's content! πŸŽ₯ Don't just take our word for it! As an early subscriber, here's a free video from one of our favorite chapters: Anomaly Detection πŸ› In this deep-dive, you'll learn how to detect unusual patterns in metrics without...

βŒ› Reading time: 11.5 minutes πŸŽ“ Main Learning: Host Web Applications on AWS with the CloudFront Hosting Toolkit πŸ‘¨πŸ½πŸ’» GitHub Code πŸ“ Blog Post Hey Reader πŸ‘‹πŸ½ Happy New Week! I (Sandro) will attend the Serverless Days in Milano next week where Jeremy Daley will hold the keynote. I look forward to meeting many of you and the overall AWS community. This week's newsletter is all about hosting your frontend on AWS. AWS launched a new way of deploying your frontend to it: The CloudFront Hosting Toolkit....