

Ask HN: What AWS topics would you like more information on? - bobf

I&#x27;m currently writing a book about AWS best practices. With Amazon&#x27;s re:invent conference going on, this seemed like a good time to ask for feedback on content. What AWS topics are you interested in learning more about? Are there any areas that have particularly painful learning curves you would like to see addressed in a book?
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bobf
Any feedback on topics will be awesome. Also, there's a free 30 day course on
AWS best practices at the book launch site
([http://awsarchitecture.com](http://awsarchitecture.com)) if you're
interested.

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joenied
I'm interested in hearing more about Amazon beanstalk. Haven't personally used
it. But does having my ec2 under beanstalk take care of securing my instances?

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bobf
Securing your instances in what way? Elastic Beanstalk should initially
provide you with instances that one would expect to be reasonably secure, but
I wouldn't rely on that level of presumed security for anything important. It
definitely does not provide a fully managed environment on an ongoing basis.
One glaring example is that it does not handle things like OS-level security
updates/patches, or provide you with instances running updated AMIs unless you
re-setup your EB environment.

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josh-wrale
HIPAA compliance, multi-region deployments, VPC outbound proxies, encryption
at rest, cfndsl (CloudFormation DSL)

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bobf
Great suggestions, thanks! I'm sure a whole book could be written about HIPAA
compliance and AWS, but a lot of general AWS security best practices will end
up being useful towards a goal of HIPAA compliance. I'll definitely be
covering encryption at rest, VPC, and multi-region deployments. CloudFormation
DSL also seems like it could be a separate book (or even a series of books,
like you see with Puppet/Chef), but I'll try to include what I can when it is
relevant to architectural decisions.

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sdoowpilihp
Auto scaling.

Fault tolerance specifically in regards to AWS

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bobf
Definitely! Fault tolerance is one of the biggest goals people have with
moving to "The Cloud", but one of the least well-understood AWS topics when it
really comes down to the implementation details.

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OafTobark
Optimize cost structure and monitoring.

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nakkiel
Opsworks.

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bobf
Sure! Can you expand on what you're interested in specifically, if anything?
(Or is it just top to bottom/ basics to advanced OpsWorks that you're looking
for?)

