How to Monitor and Auto Adjust AWS Service Quotas?

Running into AWS service quota limits can cause troubles or even downtimes. Therefore, the announcement of Service Quotas Automatic Management in October 2025 caught my attention. My idea was to add service quota observation to our event-driven monitori...

AWS CloudWatch Dashboard Cost Efficiency: Logs vs. Custom Metrics

Setting up a CloudWatch dashboard is a great way to share insights into the state of a system. Recently, I was working on improving the dashboard for HyperEnv, our solution to deploy and manage self-hosted runners for GitHub Actions on AWS. Up until now...

AWS Step Functions: How to Orchestrate Workflows Waiting for 3rd Parties

My go-to service for automating workflows in serverless applications is AWS Step Functions. Recently, I was working on an enhancement for HyperEnv, our solution to deploy self-hosted GitHub runners on AWS with ease. The challenge was to track the status...

Optimizing Amazon Linux 2023 for tiny EC2 instances: t3.nano, t3a.nano, or t4g.nano

I recently observed severe performance degradation when porting our S3 antivirus solution, bucketAV, from Amazon Linux 2 to Amazon Linux 2023 on tiny instance types such as t3.nano, t3a.nano, or t4g.nano. It took minutes to run commands that usually com...

How to reduce your AWS Config bill for volatile workloads

Your AWS bill is mostly based on usage, which is great. The more you use it, the more you pay. When usage increases by 50%, the AWS bill grows by 50% as well. But lately, I realized that something odd was happening. In this blog post, I share my story a...

How to generate SDKs for a REST API powered by Amazon API Gateway

Part of our attachmentAV offering is an API, powered by Amazon API Gateway (REST APIs), allowing developers to integrate virus and malware scanning into their applications. To increase discoverability and simplify integration we decided to build softwar...

Updated How to write unit tests when using the AWS JavaScript SDK v3?

Writing unit tests for code that interacts with the AWS JavaScript SDK v3 comes with two major benefits. Obviously, writing unit tests ensures you catch bugs early and therefore increase the quality of your code. Also, writing unit tests enables you to ...

Updated Worldwide availability of EC2 instance types

The promise sounds tempting; with AWS, you can roll out your infrastructure in 33 regions worldwide. Indeed, it is an eye-opening moment when rolling out the same infrastructure into multiple regions to serve users in different parts of the world. Howev...

Updated Amazon Web Services in Action 3rd Edition: Early Access

About seven years ago, Michael and I started to write a book about Amazon Web Services. We were beginning our consulting business, and writing a book seemed like an excellent way to demonstrate our expertise. Our publisher Manning launched our book Amaz...

[cloudonaut podcast] Vol. 96 - AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereignty or Just Marketing?

[cloudonaut podcast] Vol. 95 - EC2 Instance Types - Reducing costs for AWS Config

[cloudonaut podcast] Vol. 94

[cloudonaut podcast] Vol. 93 - Get ready for ISO 27001

#096 AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereignty or Just Marketing?

In this episode, Andreas introduces his long-time friend Thorsten Höger, with whom he shares a history going back to school and later working together on an AWS-powered online banking platform. Thorsten has spent over 10 years helping SMB customers in r...

#095 AWS costs are like fingernails ...

Michael shares a trick to reduce AWS Config costs for volatile workloads. Andreas talks about EC2 instance families and their availability in the different AWS regions. On top of that, the Wittig brothers share insights into their work and business.