AWS Cloud Operations & Migrations Blog

Category: Management Tools

Authorize different sets of interactive session commands for users using SSM documents

Limit interactive session commands by groups of users using AWS Systems Manager

Customers are looking for a way to limit the types of commands that can be run on their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances when using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager interactive sessions. Allowed commands vary by group, meaning you need to allow different sets of commands based on the group of users. For […]

Viewing permission issues with service-linked roles

Each AWS service requires explicit access to resources, endpoints, and objects that reside in the domain of another service. This is referred to as the permission boundary. Services like AWS Config, Amazon Macie, and AWS GuardDuty require an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role that grants access to resources outside of its control. Understanding […]

DevSecOps for auto healing PCI DSS 3.2.1 violations in AWS using custom AWS Config conformance packs, AWS Systems Manager and AWS CodePipeline

If you migrate your workloads to the cloud to modernize your applications or secure infrastructure and operations, you’ll find these migrations are increasingly performed with a DevOps methodology that incorporates continuous development, integration, and testing. It is always a best practice to incorporate security as code in your DevOps workflows to uncover security issues when […]

Migrating to Amazon API Gateway: A Datalex success story

Datalex is an industry leader of omni-channel retail solutions for airlines around the world. The Datalex product portfolio supports end-to-end retail capabilities that include pricing, shopping, and order management. This year, Datalex’s multi-year deal with their API provider was up for renewal. As part of a best practice review, they considered other options. When the […]

Open sesame: Granting privileged access to EC2 instances with Session Manager

In this guest blog post, Herman Lee (Cloud Solution Architect, VP) and Nauman Noor (Managing Director) from the public cloud engineering team at State Street discuss their use of AWS Systems Manager Session Manager for privileged access management of Amazon EC2 instances. State Street Corporation is a financial services company responsible for the management, custody, […]

Manage AWS Managed Microsoft AD resources with Session Manager port forwarding

Manage AWS Managed Microsoft AD resources with Session Manager port forwarding

Active Directory administrators are accustomed to managing domain resources using Remote Server Administrators Tools (RSAT) installed on either their workstations or a member server in the domain.  When it comes to managing resources on a managed Active Directory service, such as the case with AWS Managed Microsoft AD, these tools must be available for administrators […]

cisco csr vpn

Monitoring Cisco CSR 1000v VPN tunnel and BGP status using Amazon CloudWatch

Many organizations get access to their AWS resources using a Direct Connect connection or a Site-to-Site VPN. AWS Site-to-Site VPN creates a secure connection between your data center or branch office and your AWS cloud resources.  In this post, we will see how to monitor your Cisco CSR VPN tunnel and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) […]

Getting Started with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus

4/9/2021 – Updated the Prometheus server deployment setup part by removing the AWS SigV4 side-car proxy container. This is no longer needed as the Prometheus server now directly signs requests made to the AMP remote write API. Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP) is a Prometheus-compatible monitoring service for container infrastructure and application metrics for […]

Amazon Managed Grafana – Getting Started

September 8, 2021: Amazon Elasticsearch Service has been renamed to Amazon OpenSearch Service. See details. Amazon Managed Grafana is a fully managed and secure data visualization service that enables customers to instantly query, correlate, and visualize operational metrics, logs, and traces for their applications from multiple data sources. Amazon Managed Grafana is based on the […]

Service Catalog AppRegistry graphic

Increase application visibility and governance using AWS Service Catalog AppRegistry

Many customers deploy applications with a multitude of resources using AWS CloudFormation templates.  As customers begin to scale, these templates are often re-used across multiple applications.  At this point, important tasks like identifying deployed applications and understanding which CloudFormation stacks are associated with an application become more difficult. Visibility is an important component of a […]