Integration & Automation

diagram showing i a m roles and a w s s t s connecting bastion host ec2 instance cloudwatch and s3 bucket.

Best practices for deploying EC2 instances with AWS CloudFormation

Best practices for addressing security and access control and configuration when bootstrapping EC2 instances in the Amazon Web Services Cloud.

cross account cross region architecture diagram

Recap: Five ways custom resources help your automated deployments

In this quick recap, I feature five blog posts that show how you can use custom resources to extend AWS CloudFormation templates, from start to stack cleanup, when you’re building automated deployments.

Introduction to quickstart-linux-utilities

Learn how to automate the installation of cfn-init helper scripts across operating systems by invoking quickstart-linux-utilities at stack launch.

Speed up instance bootstrapping by using dynamically created images

Learn how to build an AMI from an Amazon EC2 instance at CloudFormation launch time, and then use the AMI for fast bootstrapping of the Auto Scaling group instances.

Logging Windows Amazon EC2 UserData activity in Amazon CloudWatch

Track what is happening with your Amazon EC2 instance at creation time by leveraging CloudWatch to externalize log data. Use AWS Secrets Manager for credential security with PowerShell scripts, and create a reusable AWS CloudFormation template.

Enhanced deployment support with the Amazon EKS Quick Start

While Quick Start reference architectures eliminate code that customers would have to write themselves, technology partners actively contribute to improve the standards and feature sets. As an example, read about how Alfresco achieved key enhancements to the Amazon EKS Architecture Quick Start.

Securing your bastion hosts with Amazon EC2 Instance Connect

In this second post of a two-part series, learn how to enhance the security of your bastion hosts by using Amazon EC2 Instance Connect. With EC2 Instance Connect, you no longer have to associate a key pair to the instance, and you don’t need to permanently add user keys to authorized keys.

a w s code build signaling to a w s cloud formation

Using a long-lived compute resource as a custom resource in AWS CloudFormation

Learn how to extend AWS CloudFormation by using AWS CodeBuild as a long-lived compute environment. This example is based on the AWX Quick Start.

AWS CloudFormation custom resource creation with Python, AWS Lambda, and crhelper

Learn how to create robust AWS CloudFormation custom resources by using the custom resource helper (crhelper) and AWS Lambda.

Toward a bastion-less world

Looking for a way to improve your security posture by eliminating open ports on your private Amazon EC2 instances? Learn how you can use the AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to securely connect to your instances without requiring open ports or a key pair.