Posts in AWS

Tracking your EC2 instances can be overlooked especially when you have large amount of instances running.

so how do you know how many are currently active and on what regions?

it’s better to run your infra as groups or clusters so you’ll know your company stack is efficiency and optimized, using only what you need.

but if you did start single instances you’ll probably need to keep track on those instances for security and costs reasons.

Start the list_ec2_instances.sh to check how many instances are active across all regions.

also you can use list_ec2_instance_and_region.py to list regions, list instances ID’s and delete instances straight from your laptop’s bash shell.

S3 buckets are very useful expecially if you’re using them to store your data, so how can you list all the buckets?

Run the s3_print_buckets.py to get all your buckets output.

As a cloud administrator you’re responsible for cloud billing as well as infrastructure.

Do you monitor your current billing amount?

So how do you get the current AWS billing in a few lines of code?

run the ce.py script to find out the current amount.

How do you manage your CloudFront distribution? if you have one it’s easy but what if you have many CF distributions?

Listing CF distributions can help organize and operate your CDN.

How to list CloudFront distributions with a few lines of code?

Run the get_cloudfont_id entering your domain name to filter your CF distribution, once the output of the distribution ID is displayed you can use it to manage your CloudFront distributions.

CDN have many benefits and it’s improving your content delivery speed and security, CloudFront with S3 hosted website or your custom app that hosted on EC2 can improve your app delivery.

How can we create a new distribution?

You can use the dashboard but if you need to create more than one or have this task repeated it’s better to use a script to create and manage your distributions.

run the create_cloud_front_distibution to create a new dist, add your domain name as the parameter in the function.

it will take a few minutes to create the new distribution.

If you’re using AWS it’s very easy using ACM for your SSL certificates, the integration is the best option in my opinion for your stackm again if you’re using AWS.

How to create a new ACM with just a few lines of code?

You only need one function:
1. create_acm

You can use the list_acm_certs function to verify the certificate creation.

How to use the scripts?

• Run the create_acm function with your domain name as the variable
• verify the acm was created with the list_acm_certs function
• update your CNAME DNS record for the domain and check at the AWS ACM dashboard that the certificate was approved.

You can download the code from github

Sometimes you need a static website for your company or clients, static websites are still a thing that can be useful and can be used for many tasks such as: information, LP or any other content that does not require a database.

How to create a static website hosting in a few lines of code?

You only need three functions:
1. create bucket
2. create bucket policy
3. enable static website hosting

also don’t forget uploading your website files to the bucket.

Additional tasks to make your website faster and add SSL

Create CloudFront distribution and add your website bucket as origin
Create ACM certificate and add it to the cloudFront for the relevant bucket

If you want to download those functions to create your hosted bucket it’s here

import boto3
import json

# enter bucket name
BUCKET_NAME = 'new-s3-bucket-spinningops'

def s3_client(): s3 = boto3.client('s3') return s3

def create_bucket(bucket_name):
    """ creates a new s3 bucket """
    return s3_client().create_bucket( Bucket=bucket_name,
    CreateBucketConfiguration={ 'LocationConstraint': 'eu-central-1' } )

def create_bucket_policy():
    bucket_policy = { 'Version': '2012-10-17', 'Statement': [ {
        'Sid': 'PublicRead',
        'Effect': 'Allow',
        'Principal': '*',
        'Action': ['s3:*'],
        'Resource': f'arn:aws:s3:::{BUCKET_NAME}/*' } ] }
    # Convert the policy from JSON dict to string
    policy_string = json.dumps(bucket_policy)
    # Set the new policy return s3_client().put_bucket_policy(
    Bucket=BUCKET_NAME,
    Policy=policy_string )

def enable_static_website_hosting():
    """ modify bucket for website hosting """
    website_configuration = {
        'ErrorDocument': {'Key': 'error.html'},
        'IndexDocument': {'Suffix': 'index.html'}, }
    return s3_client().put_bucket_website( Bucket=BUCKET_NAME,
    WebsiteConfiguration=website_configuration )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    ''' execute the function you want, uncomment to reuse
    functions '''
    # create_bucket(BUCKET_NAME)
    # host_static_website(WEBSITE_BUCKET_NAME)
    # create_bucket_policy() enable_static_website_hosting()