---

In today’s learning, I explored the concept of Load Balancing in AWS — a critical part of designing highly available and scalable applications.

🔄 A Load Balancer automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances. It's like a traffic cop that makes sure no server is overwhelmed, improving both performance and fault tolerance.

---

💡 Real-World Use Case:

Imagine you're running an e-commerce site. During a sale, thousands of users visit your site at once. Instead of relying on one server, you launch multiple EC2s and set up an Application Load Balancer. It ensures:

Users are automatically routed to healthy servers

No single instance bears all the load

Zero downtime during peak traffic

---

🔧 What I Practiced Today:

Created an Application Load Balancer

Registered multiple EC2 instances

Verified automatic traffic distribution

Tested health check failures and auto-removal of failed instances

---

📚 Key Takeaways:

Load Balancers ensure availability, scalability, and fault tolerance

ALB works best for web apps (HTTP/HTTPS)

You can combine Load Balancer with Auto Scaling for full resilience

---

🔥 Every day, I realize that building reliable infrastructure is more about smart design than just writing code.

#Day10 #AWS #DevOps #CloudLearning #100DaysOfCloud #LoadBalancer #EC2 #DevOpsWithSukaran #LearningInPublic #Hashnode #LinkedInTech

Today in my AWS learning journey, I explored one of the most fundamental yet confusing topics for beginners:

\> 🔄 Amazon EBS vs Instance Store – When to use which? What’s the difference?

Let’s break it down 👇

---

💡 What is Amazon EBS?

Elastic Block Store (EBS) is like a persistent virtual hard drive for your EC2.

Your data remains intact even if you stop or restart the instance.

You can detach it from one EC2 and attach it to another.

🧰 Use case: Hosting a web app that stores user files, database data, or logs you don’t want to lose.

---

⚡ What is Instance Store?

Instance Store is temporary storage that comes physically attached to certain EC2 instance types.

Data is lost when the EC2 is stopped, terminated, or fails.

Extremely fast (great for caching, temp files, etc.)

🧰 Use case: Temporary buffer for video processing or storing logs that don’t need to be saved permanently.

---

🧪 Hands-on Use in EC2

✅ To Use EBS:

Launch an EC2 instance.

In the storage section, add a new EBS volume.

Mount it inside EC2 (e.g., /mnt/data).

Format and use it like a regular disk.

✅ To Use Instance Store:

Choose an EC2 instance that supports instance store (e.g., c5d, i3).

Instance store appears as a separate device (e.g., /dev/nvme1n1).

Format and mount it manually.

---

🔍 Quick Comparison Table

Feature EBS Instance Store

Durability Persistent Temporary (lost on stop/terminate)

Backup Support Snapshots (to S3) No backup or snapshot

Use Case Databases, logs, user data Cache, temp files, buffer

Detachable Yes No

Performance Good Faster for short bursts

Cost Pay for what you allocate Included in instance cost

---

🧠 Key Takeaway

\> Use EBS when you need reliable storage tha

t survives restarts.

Use Instance Store when you need high-speed temporary storage.

Today is Day 8 of my journey toward becoming a Cloud & DevOps Engineer, and it was a productive one! I focused on structuring a real project using Docker and pushing it to GitHub for the first time. 🚀

---

📌 What I Did Today

🔹 1. Created My First Docker Project Repo

I created a GitHub repository for my Docker + Flask project:

Project: Flask app inside Docker container, deployed on EC2

Repo Name: flask-docker-app (public)

Added:

Dockerfile

app.py

requirements.txt

README.md

✅ This is now ready to be shown in resumes, interviews, and LinkedIn!

---

🔹 2. Dockerfile Breakdown

I created a clean and simple Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.9-slim

WORKDIR /app

COPY requirements.txt .

RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

COPY . .

CMD ["python", "app.py"]

✅ This builds a lightweight container running a Python Flask app.

---

🔹 3. Published Project to GitHub

Steps I followed:

1. Initialized Git repo: git init

2. Connected to GitHub:

git remote add origin https://github.com/Sukaran-233/flask-docker-app.git

3. Added + committed files:

git add .

git commit -m "Initial commit"

4. Pushed project:

git push -u origin main

🧠 Lesson: Keep your README file u

pdated. It helps recruiters and peers understand your project quickly!

---

🚀 What I Learned

✅ What Are Distroless Images?

Distroless images are minimal Docker images without a full Linux distribution.

They contain only the application and its runtime, nothing more.

Why use them?

Smaller image size (faster pull/push)

Improved security (reduced attack surface)

Better performance

🧪 Real-World Example:

Imagine you're building a banking microservice where security is a top priority. A distroless image ensures there’s no shell access or package manager, reducing risk.

---

🔧 Project: Flask App in Distroless Docker Image

Step-by-step:

1. Create a Flask App (app.py)

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")

def home():

return "Hello from Distroless Flask!"

if __name__ == "__main__":

app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=5000)

2. Requirements File

Flask==2.3.2

3. Dockerfile (Multi-stage build using Distroless)

# Stage 1: Builder

FROM python:3.10-slim as builder

WORKDIR /app

COPY requirements.txt .

RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

COPY . .

# Stage 2: Distroless runtime

FROM gcr.io/distroless/python3

WORKDIR /app

COPY --from=builder /app /app

CMD ["app.py"]

4. Build & Run Docker

docker build -t flask-distroless .

docker run -p 5000:5000 flask-distroless

5. Access the app

Open your browser: http://localhost:5000

---

🧠 What I Understood Clearly

Difference between __name__ and __main__

Multi-stage Docker builds

How to access apps running inside containers

Security benefits of distroless images

---

📌 Challenges I Faced

Typing __name__ correctly with underscores 😅

Error due to case-sensitive From in Dockerfile (FROM is correct)

Ensuring proper file structure while copying in multi-stage build

---

🔄 Tomorrow’s Plan

Push this project to GitHub

Connect this Docker container to an NGINX reverse proxy

Start experimenting with Ansible playbooks

---

🙌 Stay Connected

I’m documenting this journey daily — follow along and let’s grow together in Cloud + DevOps!

📍Hashnode: DevOpsWithSukaran

🔗 GitHub: github.com/Sukaran-233

💼 LinkedIn: mahajansukran

Today, I explored two powerful concepts in Ansible:

🔁 Dynamic Inventory

🏢 Ansible Tower

Let’s understand both with real-world examples!

---

📦 What is Ansible Dynamic Inventory?

By default, Ansible uses a static inventory file (like hosts) to know where to connect. But what if your infrastructure keeps changing (like in AWS)? That’s where Dynamic Inventory helps!

✅ Real-World Example:

Imagine you're working in a company using AWS EC2. Every time a new server is launched or terminated, you’d need to manually update the static inventory. Tedious, right?

With Dynamic Inventory, you can connect Ansible to AWS using plugins or scripts, so it automatically fetches all your current EC2 instances in real time.

ansible-inventory -i aws_ec2.yaml --graph

This command lists all EC2 instances dynamically based on filters, tags, and regions.

---

🏢 What is Ansible Tower?

Ansible Tower is a web-based UI and REST API for managing your Ansible projects at scale. It gives you features like:

Role-based access control

Real-time job monitoring

Notifications

Logging & auditing

✅ Real-World Example:

You're a DevOps engineer in a team of 10. Everyone needs to run playbooks, but not everyone is a command-line expert.

With Ansible Tower, your team members can:

Click a button to run a playbook

See the live output

Manage credentials safely

Schedule tasks (like backups or patching)

It’s like giving Ansible a dashboard, so even non-technical teams can interact with automation.

---

🧠 Key Takeaways:

Use Dynamic Inventory when your infrastructure is dynamic (e.g., AWS, Azure).

Use Ansible Tower when working in teams or managing complex projects with UI and role-based access.

---

📚 Tomorrow’s Plan (Day 7):

➡️ Hands-on Ansible project using Dynamic Inventory

➡️ Explore Host Variables and Group Variables in Ansible

---

🔗 Follow my journey:

📘 LinkedIn

🐙 GitHub

📓 Hashnode Blog

Today was all about security and access control in AWS. I explored one of the most critical services — IAM (Identity and Access Management). Here's what I learned and practiced:

---

🔐 What is IAM?

IAM stands for Identity and Access Management. It lets you:

Securely manage users, groups, and roles

Control who can access which AWS services and resources

Apply least privilege principle — giving only the permissions required

---

🧠 Key Concepts I Covered

✅ IAM Users

Individual identities with long-term credentials.

I created a user named dev-admin and attached specific permissions.

✅ IAM Groups

Used to group users with similar permissions (e.g., Developers, Auditors).

Easier permission management.

✅ IAM Roles

Used for temporary access, especially for EC2 or Lambda to access other services securely.

✅ IAM Policies

JSON documents that define permissions.

Example: A policy to allow only S3 Read access.

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": ["s3:GetObject"],

"Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket-name/*"]

}

]

}

---

🛠 Hands-on Practice

Created a custom IAM policy using the policy generator.

Attached policies to a user and group.

Assigned a role to an EC2 instance to allow S3 access without storing AWS credentials.

---

🧩 Real-World Example

Imagine you're a system admin in a company where developers only need access to deploy on EC2 and read logs from CloudWatch. You:

Create a Developer group

Attach a custom policy that only allows ec2:* and cloudwatch:Get*

Add developers to the group — Simple and Secure ✅

---

🔍 Lessons Learned

IAM is foundational for cloud security.

Always follow least privilege access.

IAM roles are better than hardcoding access keys in code.

---

📌 What’s Next?

Tomorrow, I’ll be diving into AWS CLI to manage resources from the terminal. Stay tuned! 💻

📌 Definition:

AWS CloudTrail is a service that records all the API calls made in your AWS account. It helps track who did what, when, and from where.

💡 Real-World Example:

Imagine you're managing a production server, and suddenly an EC2 instance is terminated. You didn’t do it — who did?

CloudTrail helps answer that!

➡ Go to CloudTrail logs

➡ See who ran the TerminateInstances API

➡ Know the time, IP address, and user

🔐 Use Case:

Security auditing, compliance, and troubleshooting suspicious activities.

---

🔗 2. What are Pre-Signed URLs in AWS S3?

📌 Definition:

A pre-signed URL gives temporary access to private files in S3 without making them public.

💡 Real-World Example:

Let’s say you store customer invoices as PDFs in a private S3 bucket. A customer wants to download their invoice.

Instead of making the file public: ➡ You generate a pre-signed URL

➡ Send it to the customer

➡ It works for 10 minutes (or any time you set)

➡ Secure, simple, and temporary

🔐 Use Case:

Sharing files securely with clients, partners, or internal teams without exposing your S3 bucket.

---

🌐 3. What are VPC Endpoints in AWS?

📌 Definition:

A VPC Endpoint allows your EC2 or other AWS services to communicate with AWS services like S3 or DynamoDB without going through the public internet.

💡 Real-World Example:

You have a backend app in a private subnet that needs to access S3. Without a VPC endpoint, your data goes to the internet and back (even within AWS!).

With a VPC Endpoint: ➡ Your traffic stays inside AWS's private network

➡ Faster, safer, and more cost-effective

🔐 Use Case:

Private EC2 instance uploading logs to S3, without exposing the instance to the internet.

---

✅ Summary of Today:

Feature Purpose Real Use Case

CloudTrail Audit API calls Check who terminated an EC2 instance

Pre-Signed URL Temporary file access from S3 Share invoice PDFs securely with customers

VPC Endpoint Private communication with AWS services EC2 accessing S3 without internet exposure

---

🧠 What I Learned:

Today I realized that security, access control, and auditing are core parts of DevOps in the cloud. Even simple actions like sharing a file or accessing logs require thoughtful design.

---

📌 Next Steps for Day 5:

I'll explore IAM Roles vs IAM Policies, and start hands-on with creating a secure S3 bucket using the AWS CLI.

---

🔗 Follow My Journey:

💼 LinkedIn

💻 GitHub

📝 Hashnode Blog

🙌 Thanks for reading! Let’s keep building and learning together.

#100DaysOfCloud #AWS #DevOpsWithSukaran #LearnInPublic

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) lets us rent virtual servers (called instances) in the cloud. You can run applications, host websites, test software, and much more—without needing physical hardware.

\> 💡 Real-Life Example:

Just like you’d rent a hotel room, EC2 lets you rent a remote computer to run your app or site.

---

🛠️ What I Did Today

✅ Launched My First EC2 Instance

Opened EC2 Dashboard

Clicked Launch Instance

Chose:

OS: Amazon Linux 2

Instance Type: t2.micro (Free Tier)

Key Pair: Created .pem file

Network: Default VPC

Storage: 8GB

Launched the instance

✅ Connected via SSH (from WSL or CMD)

chmod 400 my-key.pem

ssh -i my-key.pem ec2-user@<your-ec2-ip>

✅ Installed and Ran a Simple Python Web Server

sudo yum update -y

sudo yum install python3 -y

echo "Welcome to Day 3!" > index.html

python3 -m http.server 8000

🧪 Accessed Webpage in Browser:

http://<your-ec2-ip>:8000

---

🔐 EC2 Security Note

Make sure your Security Group allows inbound rule on port 22 (SSH) and 8000 (for web access).

---

✅ Key Takeaways

EC2 gives you full control of a virtual server in the cloud

You manage storage, access, and software

Great for hosting, testing, and deploying apps

Easy to scale, stop, or terminate when needed

---

🔜 What’s Next?

Tomorrow I’ll be exploring:

S3 Buckets

Uploading files

Hosting a static website from S3

---

🔗 Stay Connected

📝 Blog: DevOpsWithSukaran

🔗 Tags: #AWS, #DevOps, #EC2, #100DaysOfCloud

📝 Title:

Day 2: Building My First Flask App with Docker – DevOps Journey Begins

---

🧠 Description (For Hashnode SEO):

Today I containerized my first Python Flask application using Docker. I learned how to write a Dockerfile, run a container, and understand the importance of __name__ in Flask. Follow along my DevOps journey from scratch!

---

📄 Blog Content:

# 🚀 Day 2: Building My First Flask App with Docker

Hey everyone! 👋

Welcome to **Day 2** of my DevOps learning journey. I'm sharing everything I learn each day as I move toward my goal of becoming a DevOps engineer. Today, I built my first Flask application and containerized it using Docker.

---

## 🔧 What I Did Today

I created a small Flask web application, then used Docker to containerize and run it. This is my first step toward understanding how apps run in isolated environments — something essential in DevOps.

---

## 📁 Project Structure

flask-docker-app/ ├── app.py ├── requirements.txt └── Dockerfile

---

## 🧠 app.py Code

```python

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')

def home():

return "🚀 Hello from Flask inside Docker on EC2!"

if __name__ == '__main__':

app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000)

\> I learned the difference between __name__ and --name--, and why it's important to write it properly.

---

📦 Dockerfile

FROM python:3.9-slim

WORKDIR /app

COPY requirements.txt requirements.txt

COPY app.py app.py

RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

EXPOSE 5000

CMD ["python", "app.py"]

---

⚙️ How I Built and Ran the Image

docker build -t flask-py .

docker run -p 5000:5000 flask-py

Then I opened my browser and visited:

http://localhost:5000

✅ My app worked!

---

💡 Key Learnings

Flask basics and routing

Difference between Flask(__name__) vs Flask(--name--)

Docker basics: image, container, ports

How to write a Dockerfile

---

🔜 Next Steps (Tomorrow)

Deploy this Docker app on AWS EC2

Learn to SSH into EC2 and run containers

Link GitHub and LinkedIn to showcase the project

---

💬 Final Thoughts

Even though I come from a system administration background, learning Docker and Flask felt very exciting. I now understand how containers work and why they’re so useful in DevOps pipelines.

Stay tuned for more updates. If you’re on a similar path, let’s connect on LinkedIn!

#DevOps #Docker #Flask #AWS #100DaysOfCloud #HashnodeBlog

---

Hello everyone! I'm Sukaran Mahajan, and I’ve recently started my journey into the world of AWS Cloud and DevOps.

👨‍💻 My Background

I come from a basic tech background with knowledge of Linux, Docker, and Git. Now, I aim to become job-ready in 2–3 months by mastering cloud tools like:

• ✅ AWS EC2, S3, IAM

• ✅ Terraform

• ✅ Docker & Kubernetes

• ✅ Ansible & Jenkins

💡 Why I'm Writing This Blog

I'm using this blog to:

• Track my daily learning progress 📚

• Share tutorials and guides to help others 💬

• Build my online tech portfolio 🌍

🔜 What's Coming Next?

My next blog post will be: “How I Created My First EC2 Instance on AWS (Step-by-step Guide)”

Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Stay tuned 🚀d my AWS Cloud and DevOps Journey