Cloud - Category - IT Guy Journals https://www.itguyjournals.com/categories/cloud/ Cloud - Category - IT Guy Journals Hugo -- gohugo.ioenluka.krapic@gmail.com (Luka Krapić) luka.krapic@gmail.com (Luka Krapić)Fri, 02 May 2025 20:59:24 +0100 Building a Portable FastAPI Backend for AWS Lambda and ECS Using Terraform https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-fastapi-backend-for-aws-lambda-and-ecs-using-terraform/ Fri, 02 May 2025 20:59:24 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-fastapi-backend-for-aws-lambda-and-ecs-using-terraform/ In the previous post, we explored how to deploy a FastAPI application on AWS Lambda using an ASGI adapter. This is a great option for early-stage projects: it requires zero infrastructure management, supports rapid iteration, and scales automatically.

But as your application matures, Lambda’s trade-offs can become limiting:

  • Cost scaling with consistent traffic
  • Compute/memory coupling and lack of vertical scaling
  • Package size limits and cold starts

That’s why many teams adopt a container-based workflow that can run on both Lambda (via container images) and ECS Fargate. With a little planning, you can build once and deploy to either platform with minimal friction.

]]> Building Backend APIs with FastAPI on AWS Lambda https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-backend-apis-with-fastapi-on-aws-lambda/ Sat, 12 Apr 2025 19:24:32 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-backend-apis-with-fastapi-on-aws-lambda/ One of the trade-offs of working in the cloud is the risk of vendor lock-in. While cloud platforms offer powerful tools and scalability, they can also tie you into their ecosystem, making it harder to pivot or migrate down the road.

When it comes to building backend APIs in Python, you have a few great frameworks at your disposal—Django, FastAPI, and Flask—each with its own level of complexity and opinionation. Django is feature-rich and great for full-stack apps, Flask is minimal and flexible, but FastAPI stands out as a modern, async-first framework that makes it incredibly easy to build fast, clean, and production-ready APIs.

]]> Building Websites at Scale With Aws CloudFront and Hugo https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-websites-at-scale-with-aws-cloudfront-and-hugo/ Tue, 14 Jan 2025 10:34:47 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/building-websites-at-scale-with-aws-cloudfront-and-hugo/ Building websites has become easier than ever. Numerous platforms and third-party providers now offer tools to create and host websites within minutes, complete with custom domains, analytics, and sleek graphical interfaces.

For straightforward websites or smaller-scale projects, these platforms can be a convenient choice. However, they often fall short when it comes to flexibility, automation, and cost-effectiveness at scale. Many lack robust CLI (Command Line Interface) support for streamlining tasks, can become expensive as your needs grow, or demand significant management effort and a steep learning curve.

]]> Tiered Access To CloudFront Content With Self-Signed Cookies https://www.itguyjournals.com/tiered-access-to-cloudfront-content-with-self-signed-cookies/ Fri, 19 Jul 2024 16:56:47 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/tiered-access-to-cloudfront-content-with-self-signed-cookies/ This blog post is a follow-up to our previous post, where we implemented tiered access to S3 data using presigned URLs.

In most production applications, CloudFront is used to serve static content to users. In this post, we will explore how to implement restricted access when serving content through CloudFront.

You can find the complete example here.

What is CloudFront?

In simple terms, CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) managed by AWS. A CDN is a network of servers deployed close to end users, serving as a caching layer to improve content delivery speed and reliability.

]]> Multi-Account Cloud Deployment With Terraform And Github Actions https://www.itguyjournals.com/multi-account-cloud-deployment-with-terraform-and-github-actions/ Wed, 26 Jun 2024 16:56:47 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/multi-account-cloud-deployment-with-terraform-and-github-actions/ In this blog post, we will look at how to implement a multi-account deployment pipeline on AWS using GitHub Actions and Terraform.

We will assume that you have access to at least two AWS accounts: one to hold pipeline resources and one target account where resources will be deployed.

Architecture

Fig 1. Architecture

We will use two accounts: a pipeline account and a target account. The target account is your dev/staging/prod account. Usually, there is more than one target account in a given pipeline, but we will use one for simplicity. The same approach can be extended to an arbitrary number of target accounts.

]]> Tiered Access To S3 Data With Presigned URLs https://www.itguyjournals.com/tiered-access-to-s3-data-with-presigned-urls/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:56:47 +0100 Luka Krapić https://www.itguyjournals.com/tiered-access-to-s3-data-with-presigned-urls/ Managing access to your Amazon S3 data is crucial for ensuring security and efficiency in your cloud architecture. You typically have three options for managing access to S3 data for client applications: using Amazon CloudFront distribution, leveraging S3 presigned URLs, or routing through backend APIs.

In this blog post, we will delve into S3 presigned URLs as an effective method for implementing tiered access to your S3 data. We’ll discuss their benefits, limitations, and provide a straightforward example to illustrate their use.

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