Recent Articles on the tecRacer AWS Blog

Hardware TOTP for AWS: Molto-2

Everybody knows you should protect your AWS accounts (and other logins) with MFA against brute-force attacks. Most of the account providers use a standardized algorithm (RFC 6238) to generate the famous six-digit TOTP codes for your login. But where do you store those securely? Today, we will look at the alternatives and a specific device: The Molto-2.

Glue Crawlers: No GetObject, No Problem

This is the story of how we accidentally learned more about the internals of Glue Crawlers than we ever wanted to know. Once upon a time (a few days ago), André and I were debugging a crawler that didn’t do what it was supposed to. Before we dive into that, maybe some background on Crawlers first. Glue Crawlers are used to create tables in the Glue Data Catalog. They crawl, i.

Managing volatile Terraform Deployments with AWS CodeBuild and Step Functions

I was searching for an AWS-native solution that would deploy resources via Terraform, allow them to do some work, and then destroy them properly without leaving any orphaned resources. Also, multiple of those Terraform deployments needed to be live at the same time. The solution I found is a combination of AWS CodeBuild, AWS Step Functions, a Terraform State being managed in S3 and Terraform Workspaces.

Find all Lambda-Runtimes in all Accounts: Multi Account Query with steampipe and TASFKAS (the AWS service formerly known as SSO *)

You have got some mails from AWS: [Action Required] AWS Lambda end of support for Node.js 12 [Action Required] AWS Lambda end of support for Python 3.6 [Solution Required] Search all Lambdas in multiple accounts. [Solution Found] Steampipe with AWS multi-account support. Multi-account management is like managing all the arms of a Kraken. I will show you a fast and straightforward solution for this. (* the new offical name is IAM Identity Center, but I think TASFKAS would also fit 😉)

Prepopulate Lambda Console Testevents without dirty manual work using Terraform

You like Lambda testevents? Great! But with “automate everything”, manual console clicks are considered dirty! Keep your hand clean by automating the creation of Lambda test events. So you can give your team, and yourself prepopulated test events. This example shows you the terraform code - because this is the fastest way. With a little effort, you can translate it to CloudFormation or AWS-CDK!

FSx for ONTAP Backups

In our FSx for NetApp ONTAP series, we continue to one of the most vital topics: Backups. But did you know there are two types of backup with this service? Let’s compare the native backup and AWS Backup in this post.

What is a Quantum Ledger Database?

Update 2024: QLDB will be discontinued in mid 2025, don’t use it for new projects. This blog introduces you to a database that solves an interesting niche problem: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB). We’ll get to the service later, but first, I’m going to set the stage by describing a problem that the service can solve. I’m going to tell you a story - not my own story but one that happened to a colleague.