In my earlier post, I shared how I clicked a button to migrate Azure CDN to Front Door and then started being charged a lot for hosting a simple blog on Azure. So I decided to end my relationship with Azure and move on to greener pastures with AWS. It was not too much work, so why not. I read about AWS Amplify and saw that it was the perfect solution to my problem. So off I went looking for resources to get onboard. ...
So I recently did something that I didn’t expect to have financial consequences. I switched from Azure CDN to Azure FrontDoor Standard. Sounds like a simple thing to do considering Microsoft was suggesting I do the move - move from one product to another. Unfortunately the implications were that I would now have to pay £34 per month to ensure my blog was running smooth! This is up nearly 33 times what it cost me before! And the warning didn’t actually tell me that there was a base price involved. ...
Do you ever feel like your network infrastructure is a black box? When I first dove into cloud networking, the term Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) sounded mysterious—like a secret compartment in the sky. Over the years, I’ve come to see a VPC as your custom sandbox inside a public cloud: a private playground built on shared real estate. In this post, we’ll unpack what a VPC really is, how it works under the hood, and why it’s an indispensable tool for any software craftsperson aiming for secure, scalable cloud architecture. ...
Background As a relatively senior engineering manager, I have been transforming into a less technical person over time. The reason being, I am in charge of two fantastic teams that both have excellent engineers. I generally rely on the technical leads of the respective teams to own the technical aspects of their domains and try to interfere as little as possible. I do this to empower them to take more ownership and learn to be accountable. After all, it is humanly impossible to be everywhere at the same time. I build my teams based on trust, psychological safety and accountability. However, I do review their technical proposals and other documents or design diagrams etc. and I challenge them by asking questions. I have never had to tell them what is right or wrong so far, and I don’t think that I’ll ever need to do that either because our hiring process is good enough to filter out problem candidates. I give them the feedback they need at the time they need it, covering their blind-spots when necessary. ...