Posts

Introduction Product Management is a pivotal role at the heart of innovation, demanding a blend of technical acumen, customer empathy, and strategic thinking. Like many PMs, I took a circuitous route here. My background spans over 20 years, primarily in Linux, networking, and cloud consulting, but the shift to Product Management has been one of the most rewarding transitions in my career. Building on that experience and moving into Product Management has been an exciting and enlightening journey....

AWS Windows Server Deployment with Terraform This is a simple Terraform configuration for deploying a Windows Server instance on AWS—a useful setup if you occasionally need a quick Windows environment for testing, development, or troubleshooting. It provisions a basic infrastructure including a VPC, subnet, and an RDP-accessible Windows Server instance. Access is restricted to your own IP address to provide a reasonable layer of security without over-complicating things. Code The code can be found in this github repository ....

As I prepared for the CompTIA DataSys+ exam, I gathered a series of notes and observations that helped me deepen my understanding of the database concepts which are covered in the exam's syllabus. In this post, I’m sharing some of those details. Some of the topics discussed extend beyond the scope of the exam, and not everything included in the exam's syllabus is documented. This post also contains details of the test database I designed for hands-on practice....

This post explains how I run samba and avahi-daemon inside a docker container to act as a time-machine server for all the Mac computers on my home network. Dockerfile I used ubuntu:focal as a base image and created the following Dockerfile: FROM ubuntu:focal #Install samba and avahi-daemon inside the image RUN apt update && apt install samba avahi-daemon -y #Expose the ports which are needed for samba and avahi-daemon EXPOSE 137/udp 138/udp 139 445 5353/udp #Copy config files into the image COPY smb....

This quick terraform project sets up an EC2 instance, configures wireguard, generates the required keys (including a PSK) and provides the wireguard “Client” configuration. The code can be found here WARNING: Cloud network egress/throughput will incur costs which can vary from region to region. Purpose This terraform code (and associated template file containing a bash script) will create an EC2 instance which is running wireguard and can be used as a VPN endpoint....

Github Repo All the code required can be found in the github repo: github.com/edrandall-dev/kubernetes-on-ec2 Introduction Last year, when I was learning Kubernetes, I wanted to create my own cluster on AWS using EC2 instances. The idea behind this was go through the installation of Kubernetes from start to finish, learning everything I needed to along the way. I’ve also used Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) to deploy Neo4j using the official Neo4j Helm Charts....

Setting up your own VPN can be complex In this post , I went through how I’ve setup Wireguard to be able to connect back to my home network when on the road. When it comes to choosing a VPN, Wireguard stands out for me in terms of speed, security and ease of configuration. However, there are a few complexities associated with setting up any VPN to securely connect back to a home network....

Overview This post covers 3 major topics: Kubernetes Lab Environment: The steps that I took to setup a Kubernetes cluster from scratch, in a self-hosted virtualised environment using Oracle Virtualbox and Hashicorp Vagrant Kubernetes Notes, Commands and Manifests: A collection of commands which I noted down as part of my preparation for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam Information Sources: A list of links to the main sources of information which I used when creating this environment and learning Kubernetes Kubernetes Lab Environment The VMs which formed the Kubernetes cluster were deployed on a Dell Precision workstation with plenty of CPU and RAM resources:...

What is SaaS? Software as a Service (SaaS) is everywhere. Put simply, SaaS is way of providing an application that can be used directly over the internet. Typically, there’s no need to install anything on a computer, and all that’s usually required to get started (as a user) is a web browser. A huge number of people rely on SaaS applications everyday without giving it too much thought. Below are some examples of “everyday” SaaS products which are widely used:...

In this post, I will go over the steps needed to provision a Kubernetes cluster in AWS, and deploy a Neo4j cluster using Neo4j’s helm charts. This post takes steps from the official Neo4j Kubernetes Documentation Prerequisites An AWS Account Configured AWS Command Line Interface An SSH Key named id_rsa.pub. If you do not have one, you can generate it by running: ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]" Setting up a Kubernetes Cluster in EKS Installation of tools and applications In order to create a Kubernetes (EKS) cluster in AWS, you will need to download the following applications: kubectl...