Cloud Resume Challenge

April 2023

Built a static webpage to host my resume utilizing AWS Route 53, S3, CloudFront, Certificate Manager, DynamoDB, API Gateway, and Lambda.

Challenge Walkthrough

The Cloud Resume Challenge consists of the following:

• Pass the AWS Certified Cloud Practioner exam
• Front-End: Deploy your website to S3 and fronted with DNS / CloudFront
• Back-End API: Get the visitor counter saving to the database
• Front-End / Back-End Integration: Get the visitor counter displaying on the homepage
• Automation & CI/CD: Get your infrastructure automated with SAM and deploying via GitHub Actions
• Mods: Repeat the challenge with suggested modifications

AWS Cloud Practioner Cert

A bit challenging since I had zero experience. I used Stephane Maarek's Udemy course to study. Passed the exam with a score of 843.

Deploying Infrastructure

Steps to deploy my infrastructure:

• Set up AWS
• Deploy S3 using AWS SAM
• Deploy HTML & CSS with the AWS SDK
• Deploy and configure CloudFront
• Configure CloudFront, Route53 and DNS
• Set up HTTPS and ACM with CloudFront
• Attach a CloudFront Custom Domain

Visitor Counter REST API with Lambda and DynamoDB

Steps to create the webpage visitor counter:

• Deploy and configure Lambda and API Gateway
• Set up CORS with Lambda and API Gateway
• Call the HTTP API using JavaScript
• Set up DynamoDB with AWS SAM
• Insert data into DynamoDB
• Get data from DynamoDB using AWS SDK

CI/CD with GitHub and CodeBuild

Steps to automate CI/CD:

• Create GitHub repo for the project
• Make first commit to the repo
• Create CodeBuild project and connect to GitHub repo
• Push changes to GitHub repo and verify CodeBuild project builds successfully

The Finished Project

I made two different versions that acheive the same result:

• Version #1: A single API call is made to update and retrieve the count.
• Version #2: Two API calls are made - one to update the count and one to retrieve the count.

For Version #1 visit andrzejwsol.com. The visitor counter is at the bottom of the page. The visitor counter API utilizes a monolithic function to increment and retrieve the count via a single API call.

andrzejwsol.com has been viewed times.

For Version #2 visit super-special-test-domain.com. The visitor counter API utilizes two single-purposed functions to update and retrieve the count - PUT to increment the count and GET to retreive the count.

super-special-test-domain.com has been viewed times.

Recap

The Cloud Resume Challenge was exciting, difficult and worth the frustration. Here is a list of modifications I would like to implement when I redo the challenge:

• JavaScript framework for the front-end
• Convert my AWS resources to infrastructure-as-code (IaC) using Terraform
• Create GitHub Actions to automatically deploy updates
• Integration/End-to-end testing with Cypress
• Configure DNSSEC for my site domain name to protect my DNS setup from potential spoofing attacks
• CloudWatch and SNS to establish metrics, alarms, and notifications
• Create a new API method to only count unique visitors
• Clean up the API calls
• Secure access to the visitor counter APIs by putting a web application firewall in front, such as AWS WAF

Top