1. Perl and Amazon Web
Services
London Perl Workshop 2019
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2. Introduction
In this talk I will
● give a very short introduction to cloud computing in general
● introduce a few AWS resources (CloudFormation, EC2, S3, Lambda)
● demonstrate running Perl on an EC2 instance
● demonstrate using AWS::Lambda to create a Perl runtime for AWS Lambda
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3. But, first
About me:
● My name is Søren Lund and I’m from Denmark
● I’ve been a SW developer for more than twenty years
● I’ve used many programming languages (C/C++, Perl, Java, JavaScript, …)
● I’ve also worked a lot with build automation, CI/CD and automated tests
● I’ve worked as a AWS consultant for the last couple of years
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4. Disclaimer
● I’ve no experience running Perl on AWS!
However,
● I know Perl
● I know AWS
Or, as the meme goes
● “Trust Me, I’m an Engineer”
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5. Cloud Computing
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6. Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system
resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active
management by the user.”
“Cloud computing was popularized with Amazon.com releasing its Elastic
Compute Cloud product in 2006.”
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
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7. Service Models
● Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
● Platform as a service (PaaS)
● Software as a service (SaaS)
● Serverless computing
● Function as a service (FaaS)
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8. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
“...online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-
level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing
resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc.”
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_a_service
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9. Function as a service (FaaS)
“...category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing
customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the
complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with
developing and launching an app.”
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_as_a_service
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10. Amazon Web Services
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11. Amazon Web Service (AWS)
● From 2000 to 2005 Amazon.com works on infrastructure
● AWS is launched on March 19 2006, first service is Amazon S3 (Simple
Storage Service)
● Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) follows on July 13
● And on August 25 Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is launched
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Services
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12. AWS now has many more services
“...137 top level services spread across 23 categories… many of these top level
services further expand into multiple sub services” (January 2019)
From https://www.quora.com/How-many-AWS-services-are-there
See https://aws.amazon.com/products/
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13. Getting started with AWS
Sign up at https://aws.amazon.com/
Free tier: https://aws.amazon.com/free/
● Always free - e.g. 1 million free requests on AWS Lambda every month
● 12 month free - e.g. 750 hours EC2 t2.micro instance usage every month
● Trials - e.g. 250 device minutes on AWS Device Farm
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14. AWS Management Console
From the “Console” you can create/modify/maintain/destroy resources.
See https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home
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15. Launching an EC2 instance from the Console
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16. AWS CLI
The AWS CLI is a uber command “aws”, that can be used to manage your AWS
resources and services.
● Written in Python (pip install awscli)
● Enables you to write scripts that creates/modifies/maintains/destroys
resources
● You need to create credentials (tokens) in the Console to use the CLI
See https://aws.amazon.com/cli/
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17. AWS SDKs
Official SDKs providing APIs for AWS services are available in
● JavaScript
● Python
● PHP
● .NET
● Ruby
● Java
● Go
● Node.js
● C++
See https://aws.amazon.com/tools/
Image by Jonny
Lindner from Pixabay
?
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18. Paws
● Perl SDK for AWS
● Built by automatically converting Python code into Perl code
● Also includes CLI (paws)
● https://metacpan.org/pod/Paws
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Image by Jonny
Lindner from Pixabay
❤

19. AWS CloudFormation
● Infrastructure as code
● Define resources in templates (JSON or YAML) or visual designer
● Deploy template using CloudFormation using the Consol, CLI or API
● A deployed template is called a Stack
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20. Basic Anatomy of a CloudFormation Template
{
"AWSTemplateFormatVersion" : "2010-09-09",
"Description" : "",
"Parameters" : { },
"Resources" : { },
"Outputs" : { }
}
See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/template-anatomy.html
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21. Running Perl on an EC2 instance
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22. Creating a CloudFormation Templates
AWS has lots of examples and snippets.
● Examples: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/cfn-sample-templates.html
● Snippets: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_TemplateQuickRef.html
There’s also a linter for CloudFormation Templates:
● See https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint
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23. Amazon EC2
● EC2 provides generic computer virtualization
● When using EC2 you will boot an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to create a
running machine, called an instance
● Amazon maintains an AMI called Amazon Linux based on CentOS
○ version 1 has Perl 5.16.3
○ version 2 has no Perl
● Run it locally: docker run -it amazonlinux bash
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24. User Data in EC2 CloudFormation templates
"UserData": {
"Fn::Base64": {
"Fn::Join": [
"", [
"#!/bin/bashn",
"curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --self-upgraden",
"cpanm Acme::Be::Modernn"
]]
}
}
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25. Demo time
Code is available on GitHub.
See https://github.com/soren/perl-and-aws
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26. AWS::Lambda
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27. AWS Lambda
“...an event-driven, serverless computing platform provided by Amazon as a part
of the Amazon Web Services. It is a computing service that runs code in response
to events and automatically manages the computing resources required by that
code. It was introduced in November 2014.”
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWS_Lambda
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28. Console demo
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Using the AWS Lambda runtime provided by
● https://metacpan.org/pod/AWS::Lambda
To execute the following:
sub handle {
my ($payload, $context) = @_;
my $result = encode_json("Hello from Perl!");
return +{ statusCode => 200, body => $result };
}

29. The End… Questions?
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