On-premise data centers do not need to be legacy

 September 6, 2023 -  Vilnius, LT

Implement WebFinger with AWS CloudFront and AWS Lambda

 July 24, 2023

This website is hosted on AWS S3 and uses AWS CloudFront as CDN. I use a couple of AWS Lambda@Edge functions to make AWS CloudFront a little brighter. When I decided to self-host a Fediverse instance, it became immediately evident that I would have to set up WebFinger on my domain to be able to use my root domain as the account domain. There is documentation on the web on how to set up WebFinger, but it is aimed at different setups, so I had to configure it myself.

EU EDPB vs. Irish DPC vs. Meta Platforms

 May 24, 2023

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has evaluated the legality of Facebook’s (now Meta Platforms) data transfer for over 10 years. In those 10 years, we have seen the Irish DPC trying to avoid ruling on the matter multiple times and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) forcing them to do it. We now have a final ruling on the matter, which is unfavorable to Meta. In fact, in addition to having to stop the data transfer within 5 months and having to move back all data within 6 months, Meta has to pay a € 1.2 billion fine.

On-premise data centers do not need to be legacy

 February 4, 2023 -  Bruxelles, BE

AWS SSA-C03 exam

 October 30, 2022

Three years passed from the last AWS exam I took, and my AWS certifications were due a renewal. The first thing I checked was what was the exam code and which one I had taken three years ago. It turns out that the last time I took SAA-C01, this time, the only available version for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam was SAA-C03. SAA-C03 is still very new since it got released last month, so not much third-party material is available.

Product vs. Technology

 October 10, 2022

Every so often, I have a conversation with someone, and we end up in a sub-conversation around the differences between products and technologies. This phenomenon frequently happens to me because I consider a product and a technology two completely different things. At the same time, many people use them interchangeably when discussing IT products and technologies.

I think this distinction’s value is clearly distinguishing the solutions that are resilient to a single entity failure and those that are not. Suppose the producer of a product goes out of business or, for any reason, will not do additional business with you. In that case, you lose the ability to buy that product and, sometimes, even use it completely. This limitation does not apply to a technology since you should be able to access it, regardless of the specific vendor.

Can you trust a cloud provider for HA?

 May 23, 2022

We have seen a massive increase in the “real world” dependency on digital services in the last few years. This process will probably continue in the future, and we are not ready for it. In the same few years, we have seen a lot of cases where digital services went offline or got hacked. In a society that relies more and more on digital services, we can not afford such services not to be available or secure. Although security is essential, I want to focus on availability for now.

The risk of a Cloud shutdown

 October 31, 2021

I often see people and companies moving their workloads to the cloud. Speaking with them, they explain that the cloud is cheaper, more flexible, and more reliable than their current infrastructure. To further increase investment return, they often target a specific (single) cloud to reduce management costs and complexity.

By itself, this trend seems a very reasonable one. The risk is that, sometimes, people do not consider the less immediate risks around this move. There are many of those risks, and if there is an appetite for it, I’ll be talking further about the other dangers, but now I would like to focus on a specific one: the risk of a shutdown.

Google Professional Cloud Architect

 September 20, 2021

After having renewed the Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification, it was the moment to renew the Google Professional Cloud Architect certification as well.

Since I wanted to keep Windows on my laptop for the smallest amount of time possible, I decided to book the Professional Cloud Architect exam the day after the Associate Cloud Engineer one.

On the exam day (18th of August), having had experience the previous day, I ensured to set up everything correctly. As I did the previous day, I decided to use my Lenovo Bluetooth Laser Mouse. The exam started without any hiccups at 15:00. At around 15:30, I moved the mouse wheel to the left, triggering a “back” signal, equivalent to press the “back” button in a browser. Kryterion Sentinel decided that the proper way to handle such a signal was to interrupt the exam. I tried to call the Kriterion call centers, but a recorded voice informed me that the fastest way to access their customer care was via chat. I opened a chat with their support and got put in a queue of about 20 people. After 40 minutes, I managed to chat with a support representative, and they managed to schedule a new exam session for me a couple of minutes later (16:15).

Google Associate Cloud Engineer

 August 25, 2021

A couple of years ago, I obtained the Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification, so it was re-certification time.

Since it is August and probably also due to the whole ongoing health situation, I’ve not found any test center at a reasonable distance. Therefore, I’ve decided to use the Online Proctored option.

Google relies on Kryterion for their exams, as many other companies do, since Kryterion has more than 1100 associated test centers and, at least in the ICT certification space, it’s one of the most commonly used networks. Having had experience with Red Hat remote certifications, I was expecting at least the same level of user experience with Kryterion.