Simple Serverless Telegram Bot with AWS Lambda

Previously, I created a simple reminder application with AWS Lambda and Simple Notification Service (SNS) SMS messages. With so many instant messenger applications these days, it is about time I move away from using SMS messages, specifically to Telegram. Requirements There are no changes to the previous requirements. To recap: To send a text message… Continue reading Simple Serverless Telegram Bot with AWS Lambda

Why I won’t be pursuing another IT cert soon

My Certification Journey Over the years in my career, I have taken quite a few IT certifications, starting with networking, virtualization, and for the past 2 years, cloud computing. Initially, I did them as a personal challenge and as a way of quickly learning about specific technology related to my work area at that time.… Continue reading Why I won’t be pursuing another IT cert soon

Passing the AWS Solutions Architect Professional without breaking your bank

This will just be a short post on how I passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) exam with a score of 873/1000. I will share some exam tips at the end. Disclaimer: What worked for me might not work for you. Please assess and adjust your strategy accordingly. Prerequisite (preferrably) Before embarking… Continue reading Passing the AWS Solutions Architect Professional without breaking your bank

Lessons Learnt: Cloud Resume Challenge

One day, while browsing Twitter (@zhenkai_xyz), I stumbled upon this post by Forrest Brazeal: Although I am not looking for my next job, I thought this challenge seemed rather fun to do. Coincidentally, I am drawing many parallels from the challenge and a personal project of mine. “Feel free to use different cloud providers, DevOps… Continue reading Lessons Learnt: Cloud Resume Challenge

Book Review: The Phoenix Project

There will not be spoilers in this post. The Phoenix Project is a fictional novel on DevOps, IT and Business Transformation. Bill Palmer, the protagonist, took on an upper management role at “Parts Unlimited”. Along with the new role, he inherited IT Operations and the company’s struggling mega project, “Phoenix”. Thin the line between IT… Continue reading Book Review: The Phoenix Project

Serverless Wedding Website: Planning & Designing

This will be the start of my Serverless Wedding Website series, where I will be writing about the journey of developing and implementing my wedding website from scratch. The project is still ongoing and will continue to develop as this series continues. <Update on 13th August 2020. The wedding has been postponed due to COVID-19,… Continue reading Serverless Wedding Website: Planning & Designing

Learning Modern Web Development with Full Stack Open

I was hunting for a course to pick up some web development skills to prepare for an upcoming project. There is an insane amount of learning resources for web development on the Internet. My requirements were: Free Up-to-date content Full Stack (front end + back end) Beginner-friendly Full Stack Open by University of Helsinki While… Continue reading Learning Modern Web Development with Full Stack Open

Lessons Learnt: CI/CD for React App on AWS S3

When I first started to host my React application (create-react-app) on AWS S3, I would test locally, build, copy the build artifacts into the S3 bucket and commit my code. I wanted to try to set up a CI/CD pipeline for the first time to automatically deploy the artifacts to S3 every time I commit… Continue reading Lessons Learnt: CI/CD for React App on AWS S3

Serverless SMS Reminder – Terraform

I wrote about configuring this simple serverless application in a previous blog post. In this part, I will go through how I turned this into Infrastructure as Code (IAC) with Terraform, and why IAC is truly a game-changer when provisioning Cloud resources. Why Infrastructure as Code? IAC is not new on this blog. I have… Continue reading Serverless SMS Reminder – Terraform