AWS (Amazon Web Services)

“Account” is a slippery word. It’s a noun, it’s a transitive verb, it’s an intransitive verb. It slips into a number of idiomatic phrases.* And when it comes to AWS, it’s a misleading word. It is important to separate the concept of access from the concept of an account. Since…Read More

I’m going to attempt the impossible. I’m going to give a defense of bureaucracy.* One of the workstreams for the Migration engagement is Operations Model. An Operations Model describes an organization with formal rules and responsibilities, both for its members and for everyone who interacts with the organization. In other…Read More

Server migrations will be starting within a month. As a pilot, Enquizit has assembled a highly curated list of applications to move. The intent is to start at the lowest end of the risk spectrum: a development server with few dependencies and only users in Wharton Computing. Later on, we’ll…Read More

We are building a Landing Zone in AWS. More precisely, our own Antonio Vivas and Kevin Vuong from AWS have been creating a Landing Zone (LZ), with assistance from Andrew Romond and Kevin Min. The term 'Landing Zone' is unfortunate. Landing zones remind me of Apocalypse Now and the Battle…Read More

At some point in any presentation on AWS migration you will be confronted with the above diagram. On many levels it is an awful diagram. The color scheme is incoherent, it assumes a left-to-right flow--except for the things that don't flow left to right, and why is there a decision…Read More

In 1085 CE, King William I of England decided to survey his domain. Having taken over the place a dozen years earlier (hence his byname, William the Conqueror*), William decided that he needed to know what exactly he possessed. Commissioners trooped over William’s realm to see what was out there,…Read More

We came to a decision last week about DNS. Or rather, Antonio came to an informed decision about DNS, and I came to an informed decision to trust Antonio's decision. Like most decisions, this one came down to a choice between sub-optimal options based upon imperfect information. We are going…Read More

We come to the end of Week Four of the AWS Migration Readiness and Planning. What have we done? Well, we have had more meetings about creating things in AWS. We have a space for documenting how we create things in AWS. And we have a project plan that includes tasks for…Read More

Wharton Computing is in week three of the Migration Readiness and Planning (MRP) engagement with AWS. In the past two weeks I’ve sat through eighteen hours of official—get a room and set up a Bluejeans--meetings with AWS and their partners, Enquizit. Multiple meetings with Wharton Computing about the MRP engagement…Read More