This session is ideal for IT/Infrastructure Manager, Application Developers, System Architects/Administrators and anyone who is growing their AWS footprint. We will uncover recent customer experiences at every stage while you can network with peers that face similar challenges.

1. 7/12/16
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6 Commonly Asked
Questions from Customers
Building on AWS
Mitch Beaumont
AWS Technical Consultant
Fanatical Support for AWS, Rackspace
How do I choose the right EC2 instance?
It depends

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How do I choose the right EC2 instance?
It depends
• What are your performance
requirements?
• What are you scaling requirements?
• What are your budgetary constraints?
• When do you need it done by?
• How do you measure success?
Feels like
this
Or this

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Feels like
this
On a
good day
This would be great!
Know your workload
Are you running HPC apps?
How large is your working set?
Do you need to scale?

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Know your workload
Are you running HPC apps?
How large is your working set?
Do you need to scale?
Filter by instance
General purpose
Compute, Memory, Storage Optimized
GPU, etc
Know your workload
Are you running HPC apps?
How large is your working set?
Do you need to scale?
Filter by instance
General purpose
Compute, Memory, Storage Optimized
GPU, etc
Filter by capability
Network IO
EBS Optimized
Local Storage

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Know your workload
Are you running HPC apps?
How large is your working set?
Do you need to scale?
Filter by instance
General purpose
Compute, Memory, Storage Optimized
GPU, etc
Filter by capability
Network IO
EBS Optimized
Local Storage
Profile you application
Establish baseline performance envelope
Test with each new instance
Know your workload
Are you running HPC apps?
How large is your working set?
Do you need to scale?
Filter by instance
General purpose
Compute, Memory, Storage Optimized
GPU, etc
Filter by capability
Network IO
EBS Optimized
Local Storage
Profile you application
Establish baseline performance envelope
Test with each new instance
Punt and go serverless
Lambda, S3

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When does it matter?
Probably not day 1 Maybe year 1
How should I build AMIs for my app?
It depends
What tools are you using?
How often do you make updates?
How quickly do you need to scale?
What artifacts do you want to maintain?

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7
Foundation Dependencies Application Configuration
AMI Anatomy 101
Foundation Dependencies Application Configuration
Operating
System
Agents
Logging
Monitoring
AMI Anatomy 101

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Foundation Dependencies Application Configuration
Operating
System
Agents
Logging
Monitoring
Applications
Services
Libraries
Frameworks
AMI Anatomy 101
Foundation Dependencies Application Configuration
Operating
System
Agents
Logging
Monitoring
Applications
Services
Libraries
Frameworks
Scripts
Binaries
AMI Anatomy 101

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Foundation Dependencies Application Configuration
Operating
System
Agents
Logging
Monitoring
Applications
Services
Libraries
Frameworks
External
Services
Credentials
Database
Endpoints
Environment
Scripts
Binaries
AMI Anatomy 101
Flexible Simple

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Flexible Simple
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration
Flexible Simple
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration

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Flexible Simple
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration
Foundation
Dependencies
Application
Configuration
What metrics are important for my app?
It depends
• How do you know when there is a
problem today?
• What common tasks do you perform
when your app breaks?
• What's your biggest challenge with
your application?
• What makes your
customers/developers/business
happy?

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The Basics:
Memory
Disk
Compute
Health

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The Basics:
Memory
Disk
Compute
Health
Customers:
Latency
Responsiveness
Availability
Security
The Basics:
Memory
Disk
Compute
Health
Customers:
Latency
Responsiveness
Availability
Security
Developers:
Dependencies
Consistency
Cache rates
Connections

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The Basics:
Memory
Disk
Compute
Health
Customers:
Latency
Responsiveness
Availability
Security
Developers:
Dependencies
Consistency
Cache rates
Connections
Business:
Orders
Clicks
Growth
Capacity
-- Identify key indicators
-- Publish metrics
-- Setup alerting
-- Create runbooks
-- Build dashboards
-- Instrument everything
-- Log it all …
Monitoring best practices

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How highly available should my app be?
It depends
ü What does it mean to be ‘highly available’?
ü What is the difference between HA and DR?
ü What is your tolerance for operational pain?
Risk is subjective
Are 3 nines good enough?
Keys to High Availability:
• Build in redundancy
• Mitigate single points of failure
• Externalize state
• Monitor performance, health
• Fail gracefully
• Automate everything
• Test everywhere

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How do I dynamically configure my app?
It depends
o What type of state does your app
maintain?
o What kinds of configuration does
your app require?
o What level of security do you
require?
It’s Not All Unicorns and Rainbows
š The Twelve-Factor App: http://12factor.net/
š The Reactive Manifesto: http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/
š AWS Well-Architected Framework: http://bit.ly/1VH5DNs or
https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/architecture/AWS_Well-
Architected_Framework.pdf
š AWS AMI Design: https://d0.awsstatic.com/aws-answers/AWS_AMI_Design.pdf

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How do I connect my existing
network to AWS?
It depends
o How and where is your existing
network setup?
o What type of data will you be
transferring?
o What hardware and skills do you
have available to you?
o Is latency and available bandwidth
important?
o When do you need to establish
connectivity?
Direct Connect Hardware VPN Software VPN
1 & 10 Gbps.
Cheaper
bandwidth.
Predictable
Performance.
Lead Times.
Telco. Relationships.
Re-use existing
equipment.
AWS Managed VPN
endpoints are HA.
Data Transfer
charges.
Uses the Internet as
a backbone.
Customer managed
HA.
Re-use existing
equipment.
Re-use existing
equipment.

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Thank You!
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