We’ll be the first to admit that AWS can be overwhelming. It’s very easy to make mistakes when building applications or configuring services on AWS, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. The best practices below will help ensure that your software is reliable and secure on the AWS cloud platform.
Automate
Automation is an important aspect to consider while developing software. Automate as much as possible, including a new server and deployment setup. This will guarantee that human mistakes are reduced and time is saved.
One method is to use Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC allows you to write code to specify server settings and then apply them throughout your infrastructure, making it easier for teams to collaborate on various portions of the system or even share their environments with others. Because everything is automated, if someone unintentionally deletes a server during an update, it can be recovered from a backup.
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Have A Server Inventory
To start, you should create an inventory of all the servers in your environment. This can be done manually or with a tool like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet. Regardless of how you do it, be sure to include the following information:
- The name and location of each server
- Which software is running on each server?
- Whether the server is currently active (i.e., whether it’s running any processes)
- The age of each instance
Plan For Amazon VPC Peering
When you create an Amazon VPC, you define a virtual network in which your instances will run. The virtual network consists of one or more subnets that are conceptually separated from one another and the internet. Each subnet has its routing table, security rules, and range of CIDR blocks.
Because of this isolation, instances on separate subnets cannot interact directly with one another unless they are peering together through their respective security groups (a network traffic filter). Instances linked through a VPN tunnel are also termed peer-to-peer since they may interact while not sharing the same virtual private cloud (VPC).
The benefits of peering include being able to connect AWS accounts across regions or different accounts within the same region, connecting customer applications in your account with your internal applications, and connecting servers running different workloads inside the same physical data center or across multiple data centers.
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Use IAM For Access And Privilege Management
To begin, determine who will be in charge of managing user accounts and permissions. This will be the responsibility of your AWS account’s security administrator, who should also implement a strong password policy for all users. The Security Administrators group is responsible for creating IAM Users and Groups, granting access to those groups, and assigning rules to your EC2 instances. You may also provide authorization to other users (or roles) in your company to access this functionality by using Amazon Simple AD or any other directory service provider (DSP).
The next step is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA). With MFA enabled, you’ll need one of these physical devices when logging into an AWS account: an RSA SecurID device, an authenticator app on your phone, or a code sent via text message. This additional layer of security helps prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data stored within your AWS environment.
Finally, create IAM groups and users by either starting from scratch with new accounts created by administrators or importing existing accounts from another directory service provider (DSP). When creating groups and users in IAM Console:
- Select Add User as Type if you want only one user per role assigned throughout this section’s instructions for assigning roles; otherwise, select Group as Type so that we will later add users via User Chain Access Roles
Define Your Services Boundaries
Defining your service boundaries is an important step in ensuring that you clearly understand how to build your software. This means understanding the responsibilities of each service, understanding how they interact with each other, and working out how to scale them.
This also includes understanding any dependencies between these services (for example, if one service relies on another for some information).
Plan For Disaster Recovery
- Define the problem before starting on a solution.
- Set goals and define success beforehand, rather than trying to figure out what you’re doing along the way.
- Don’t worry about other people’s goals—be ambitious, but stay realistic. When it comes to building software on AWS, your goal might be “I want to have all of my data backed up in another location” or “I want to learn how to use AWS Lambda functions.”
Know About Your Security Posture And Options At Scale
The above can be executed in various ways, but the most important one is to set up your security posture and options at scale.
You should ensure that you can trace all access to your infrastructure and visibility into what resources are being accessed or modified by whom. AWS provides various tools and features to provide this information, so make sure you use them.
Use IAM groups and roles instead of sharing credentials with everyone who needs access. You should only give users the minimum amount of permissions needed to do their job—no more than that. Users who have been granted too much access can accidentally or intentionally cause damage if they make mistakes while working on behalf of an organization’s cloud environment (e.g., accidentally deleting a production database). The use of IAM roles helps prevent these kinds of errors by giving IT visibility into which permissions are being used by each role rather than trying to keep track of individual user accounts’ activities across different systems on AWS instances. This method also allows IT teams more granular control over how users interact with different parts within their environment(s) and fewer problems caused by unexpected changes.
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Build Out Ci/Cd Pipelines Everywhere, Even If You Don’t Think It’s Needed At First.
You should build out your CI/CD pipeline, even if you don’t think you need it first. It’s easy to get started and can be modified as your needs change.
Best Approach For Building Software On AWS with CI/CD
Continuous integration (CI) refers to automatically developing and testing software following each change. CD stands for “continuous delivery,” which entails deploying new code into production settings based on the findings of continuous integration. Typically, the two processes are used in tandem to establish a feedback loop: code is produced, tested, and integrated with other components in the development environment before being released into production, where all of those tests may be rerun against actual data (not just simulated). Contact us for solutions related to the Best Approach For Building Software On AWS.
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