Managing Secrets for AWS Lambda

It’s not uncommon to work with external systems from within a Lambda function: databases, web services, legacy systems, etc. Oftentimes it is necessary to authenticate against these systems via API keys or actual usernames and passwords. Now the questions is how to securely handle these secrets.

Launch and use a Bastion Host on AWS

It’s a best practice to launch servers into private subnets so that they are not available from the public internet. But how can they be easily accessed in case of some administrative task? This is where a so-called bastion host comes in. This blog post shows how to launch a bastion host and how to use it.

Best Practices for setting up a VPC

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is one of the basic building blocks you need when running workloads on infrastructure in AWS. There are some best practices that should be followed when setting up a VPC which are outlined in this blog post.

Embrace Lock-in in the Age of Cloud

When it comes to migrating applications to the cloud or building new Cloud-native applications the traditional mindset regarding a fear of vendor lock-in must be overcome. Instead, the focus should be shifted to the question how the usage of the services offered by cloud providers can be utilized to create value for the business and therefore helps in getting an edge over the competition.

Send commit status from CodePipeline to GitHub

GitHub provides a simple API for updating the status of commits based on the results of Continuous Integration (CI) builds. This can easily be integrated with AWS CodePipeline which has no out-of-the-box support for this feature.

Configure AWS API Gateway with Swagger

The OpenAPI Specification (aka Swagger) provides a structured way for describing REST APIs. The AWS API Gateway can be configured based on this Swagger configuration files. This way the configuration of the API can be done in “code”, can be automated completely and from the configuration the documentation can be generated.

Learnings from using Java in Lambda functions

In a previous blog post I described the steps for implementing Lambda functions in Java. While working on the implementation of the simple microservice presented in that blog post I ran into some unexpected obstacles compared to my previous experiences working with other runtimes for AWS Lambda.

How to build a serverless microservice with Java

Most of the time I’ve been using Node.js for building Lambda functions running on AWS. Recently, I wanted to experiment with Java for building a serverless application. In this blog post I describe the necessary steps for building a very simple microservice.