Four Things I've Learned From Running AWS Bootcamps
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of running several AWS boot camps for customers in Mississauga, Dallas, and Chicago. Spending the day showing customers how they can get started on the AWS platform is one of my favourite aspects of my job - outside of getting to use some impressive technology every day. When I think back to when I got started with AWS, I’m amazed at just how different the conversations I have today are compared to just a few months ago.
In this article, I’ll tell you about the four things that I most often hear customers discussing amongst themselves or asking about during the boot camps.
The days of IaaS only solutions are almost behind us
When we first started building the AWS practice customers routinely asked for help in shifting workloads from their on-premise environments or co-location facilities to AWS. We commonly referred to these as ‘lift and shifts’. If the customer was running a virtual instance with 4 CPUs, and 16GB RAM they wanted exactly that on AWS.
Very rarely do customers ask for help with this type of work anymore. AWS (and other cloud providers) have made it so simple you can stand up infrastructure in the cloud in a matter of minutes with a few clicks on your keyboard.
More often than not customers are asking how they can ’modernize’ their applications on the AWS platform or want to understand how they can build ‘loosely’ coupled, highly available solutions that leverage multiple AWS services rather than just EC2 and EBS.
‘Infrastructure as Code’ is a fundamental component of your cloud strategy
The most fun part of the day for me is when we start discussing what ‘infrastructure as code’ is and how customers can use it to streamline the deployment of solutions on the AWS platform. During the boot camp, attendees are using the AWS Management Console to deploy various services. Within a few hours, they are well aware of how error prone (and time-consuming) deploying cloud infrastructure via the console can be. When I mention how we could deploy all of what we’re building via CloudFormation, I immediately get questions about how it works and if I have templates I would be willing to share.
The more automation, the better
I’ve always been interested in the automation of routine tasks. It’s what got me interested in technology over twenty years ago. The importance of automation has only grown as more organizations embrace cloud computing platforms like AWS. While we don’t dig deep into Continuous Deployment or Configuration Management during the boot camp, we do touch on how to ‘bootstrap’ compute infrastructure on the AWS platform and use autoscaling groups to automate horizontal scaling. We create some simple user-data scripts that install packages on EC2 instances and pull source code from Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets.
Gone are the days of static infrastructure and discussions about how to get out of your data center. Now the conversations at the end of the day revolve around how organizations can leverage what they learned to build dynamic infrastructure when you need its solutions.
Faster is better
IT departments are under immense pressure to deliver solutions to their customers faster than ever before with few resources. Back when I first started working with AWS customers were most interested in how much money could they save. I can’t remember the last time I discussed cost savings with a client. I’m not saying budgets aren’t important - they are, but more important is ITs ability to quickly deliver a solution to their clients (internal or external).
During the boot camp I see attendees connecting the dots between ‘infrastructure as code,’ automation and building ‘loosely’ coupled systems using a mix of Platform, Application, Serverless (and Infrastructure) solutions to meet their customers demand to move faster.
The AWS boot camp typically takes about six hours. During that time we deploy a broad range of different solutions on the AWS platform. The conversations in the morning are focused on deploying infrastructure. By the end of the day, folks are brainstorming with their team members on how they can leverage ‘infrastructure as code’, automation and platform, application and serverless concepts when they get back to their office. ‘Lift and Shift’ and cost-savings conversations are long in the past.