AWS Identity & Access Management

Identity & Access Management (IAM), enables to manage the access to AWS services & resources, securely. One can say, its the main window to AWS. 

The account that we create in AWS is the root account. It has unrestricted privileges access. It is written in stone, that root account, shouldn't be used to carry out day-to-day activities. But you can use the root account to create Admin user account, which could then create further accounts, as per the use case. 

Here are some of the key points in relation to AWS IAM, or best practices:

+ AWS root account - unrestricted access to AWS services and resources. Secure AWS root account

+ Define (Ex: admin, developer, sales, etc.) and Create Groups. The users in the group can inherit the permissions assigned to the group

+ Manage IAM permissions (Policy): IAM policies grants least privilege permissions to perform a task. Let say you create a policy for a services (Ex: EC2). Now you may choose what actions you want to add 

and choose the resources, as applicable. 

Basically, IAM Policy have multiple use cases. Policy(ies) can be applied to user, group or roles, as per the use case. 

+ Create IAM Roles. Roles can be created per service like compute (EC2). Then you can define the policies, which actually grant access (i.e. permissions) to the role. This role can then be assigned to the group and user could be added to the group. 

As can be defined in the above, there are two policies, i.e.

a) Admin policy

Admin policy has been assigned to Admin role and can be assigned directly to the user

b) Compute policy

Compute policy is assigned to the group, which contains the users

By this, I want to show that IAM policies is flexible and could be a great weapon to manage your kingdom efficiently, & securely.

+ Add users to the groups, further user to group could have one to many relationship. There are two types of user account i.e.

a) Programmatic access: used for AWS CLI, API, SDK and other development activties 

b) AWS Management Console access: use to manage AWS console

Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the major cloud carrier, who has taken Cloud Computing by storm. But what is AWS and what its doing in cloud? What is Cloud Computing? How it has transformed computing?

These are some of questions, among many. So lets take a deep dive. 

Traditionally, organisations would need to contact data centres and bind themselves into a contract for the use of computing resources. 

Computing resources, at high level are system resources, physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. These resources are interconnected with high speed bandwidth that provides communication. 

Now with the advent of cloud, one may request the computing resources on-demand. This on-demand allows the organisation or small-business, for the matter of fact, save thousands ($$$) and thus be able to scale their resources, as required. This facet of computing is what is called Cloud Computing.

Though with Cloud Computing, one gets additional benefits like:

+ Scalability: up / down computing resources, as required

+ Business continuity: don't have to close shop, if the demand goes down. Just wait and watch, restructure, add new services, innovate and grow as the demand grows

+ Collaborate efficiency: Collaborate with teams, share with greater audience, utilise different methods of communication, allow people to be connected, innovate, record activity, securely

+ Security: Security is basically two-way sword. The vendor provides the security of the infrastructure but the services that you utilise, one needs to secure them. 

If I compare this to traditional computing, one needs to secure the internal data centre, make sure the electricity is available 24*7, make sure its temperature is maintained, etc. etc. etc....

From all this, the business have to focus on innovation. This has taken industry to next level where small investment, high returns could be achieved. 

So we have talked about cloud computing and how its has transformed the way computing is carried, today. 

So what AWS is doing over here? AWS is the platform which enables cloud computing. This means, AWS is one of the first to adopt the cloud computing and with the advent of various innovative cloud services has helped million of business, across the globe. 

Though AWS isn't alone to maximise the benefits of cloud computing, there are others like Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure (Mircrosoft), etc. 

These organisations have utilise the computing resources to their benefit and open up the services like compute, network, and storage at a high level, so that organisation / small-medium business could utilise and explore the benefits at reduce cost, securely. 

A Beautiful Glimpse of Bangalore....

Jusssss have a look

Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium
Disciplined Traffic on Bangalore Roads
Bangalore Roads With Full Of Trees
Trinity Circle
Twin Towers, Hebbal, Bangalore
Stylish Apartments in Infantry Road, Bangalore
Infosys Bangalore
Isckon Temple
Kingfisher City, Bangalore
MG Road , Bangalore
Diwali in Bangalore
Forum Mall, Hot Shopping Mall In Bangalore

Bangalore Palace also called Guttahalli palace belonging to Wodeyars of Mysore
Hebbal Flyover - Engineering Wonder - One of India's largest flyovers - 8.5km
Art of Living Aashram Bangalore
Bangalore Assembly - Karnataka has the most beautiful Assembly Building complex in Asia
High Court
Brigade Road in Bangalore - Cynosure of Energetic Bangalore Crowd
Commercial Street - Shopping Paradise

So, how did you find this place... !!! Man, its one of the rocking city I have ever known..........

A Beautiful Trip to Blue Mountains - Sydney

Blue Mountains as the name suggest ‘something weird’!!! How can the mountains be Blue? This idea motivated me to explore the place called ‘Blue Mountains’. Blue Mountains is a 2 hrs beautiful journey from Sydney. It’s ideally a day trip, which can be covered by Car, Train or by Coach Service.

I travelled trip to Blue Mountains by Train. We left Strathfield station around 9 on Saturday morning and reached Katoomba station around 11 am. From Katoomba station, we took Sydney Explorer Bus Service to explore place called Blue Mountains. Actually the place is Katoomba, where Blue Mountains reside. There is no town or place called Blue Mountains, but they are just mountains which are blue in colourJ. Sydney Explorer Bus, which is a double-decker (two floors) bus. Ofcourse, it is good to sit on the second level of the bus to view beautiful market, places, and mountains while the driver narrates the history and the place worth watching at this place.

It has beautiful deep valleys, flora, fauna, waterfalls, historic shops (one I saw was there since early 1900s), beautiful multi-coloured parrots, and much more.

While the driver was narrating and taking this huge bus J via small streets, we thought to just listen and enjoy the first trip in the bus. We passed Katoomba Fine Art gallery, Skyway station, Scenic World, Katoomba waterfalls, Echo Point – home of Three Sisters and Blue Mountains), Leura Mall (where one can see ancient café shops, silks shops, green tea is famous, shopping cafes and much more) to name a few.

In the second trip, we dropped at Skyway station to catch Skyway trolley to Scenic World. The Skyway trolley was cool. We crossed deep valleys, saw waterfalls and mountains. The place is really beautiful. I just can’t describe it, but could show you some of the photos.

It was lunch time by now, and I was starving. We had nice coffee at the café and good food too.

Then, we continued our trip via Cable Car to reach valley floor. The trip on Cable way (strictly not to be missed), takes you down to the steepest deep valley floor, where you can enjoy this pristine World Heritage along Australia’s longest elevated timber boardwalk. It is the best way to experience the Blue Mountain’s unique environment and beautiful flora and fauna.

The Cable Car takes you through 300 metre journey above ancient ravines (deep steep valley) and dazzling waterfalls towards Three Sisters rock. Its worth to go through this small stroll about 15 minutes to enjoy the real nature of bush and how it’s been conserved to keep it free from any pollution whatsoever. The Cable Car is constructed by a Swiss company. No doubt, it’s a real piece of Engineering!!!!

We continued our journey, after coming back up to Scenic World through Cable Car to board the bus to Echo Point – home of the Three Sisters. And also the place where one can see a.k.a Blue Mountains. So what is the secret of Three Sisters?

Three Sisters is name of 3 tall mountains of height 922, 918 and 906 meters respectively. That is around 3000 feet above sea level!!!

It is discovered that Aboriginals first inhabited in Blue Mountains as far back as twenty – six thousand years and some estimates date back to forty thousand years back.

So in those time, it’s said, that there were three sisters, named 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo' lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.

These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry.
The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle.
As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come.
Really cool story. Is it true!!! Well, I don’t know, but believe so J
Then, it was around late afternoon, and time to say good bye to this beautiful town Katoomba.
Hey, but what is the secret of Blue Mountains? Ok, I know, I will tell you.
Its bit technical, so please wear to technical cap J
The blue colour on the mountains is caused because of Eucalyptus trees emitting oil vapour into the atmosphere which along with fine dust particles and droplets of water vapour, scatter the blue light (blue light is short wave-length, dig your physics books) more than any other colour in the spectrum.

So all in all it was a worth a trip and very exciting too…

Some of the links might come useful, if planning a trip to Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains - Australia
Blue Mountains - Visitor Information

Cloud Based Offerings – A new dimension to Business!

Changes bring gamut of offerings, both risks and benefits. Cloud Based Offerings is no different. It has brought numerous advantages where demand to upscale infrastructure is hitting the backbone of Businesses.

Some of the benefits of Cloud that I can count on my fingers are:

 - Cost i.e. days are numbered where organizations invest huge in maintaining data centres. The focus is shifting to pay – as – go business model. Use the service and increase the business value without the total ownership of the costs and risks.

- Scalability i.e. infrastructure offered is scalable as per the cloud offering by the service provider. No longer has the higher management needed to purchase hardware components, negotiate bandwidth usage and other complexities.

- Provisioning  [DE-provisioing] i.e. which lets the service provider to manage the Cloud assets based on consumer demands. The resources could be added, deleted or enhanced as per the load. Ex: IBM CloudBurst 2.0 which is used to manage IBM WebSphere deployments with click of a button!

- Automation i.e. software licensing and periodic updates are the things of the past. The regular security patches to firmware, and software alike, the service provider takes care of this.

- Information mobility i.e. get the information as and when you require, wherever you require and on which medium you require. Cloud offerings are Internet based so you can avail and manage your business on fly.

Yes, benefits looks quite intriguing but it comes at a RISK. According to Ernst and Young, risks to Cloud are:

- Data Leakage

- Lose Data Control

- Security

These could be potential concerns for any management but there is always a light of hope which is marked by sound analysis and secure implementation of the Cloud offerings. The business is the custodian of the data through Secure Access and Categorization of Data which needs to be understood.

Below is IBM Perspective on Cloud [by Doug Clark] and how it’s been leveraged:

Fig: Cloud Adoption – IBM

Well there are many un-answered questions like cloud offering compatibility, data portability, network latency, security of data, how access is controlled etc. etc.

At last, I can say ‘With Power comes the Responsibility’. Cloud is offering us a Power, a power to make substantial growth and with sound understanding, if we select the right offering, the success is inevitable.

Google+ - Another kid on the block

Guys this is what I have been waiting for. Now the WAR begins. I guess FACEBOOK came at right time but so was ORKUT, MYFACES or other social networking sites.

No matter how things turn up but it is very easy to get engrossed with this so called social media. People [including myself] get fantasized with new things around so everyone left old social media and hung on to Facebook.

Let me ask you this:
- Will you go and create account on Google+ when it will come on full swing

I guess the answer of some would be 'I don't know' but if by and large we see Google brings more innovative offerings, we may switch to Google+.

I am die hard fan of Google products [especially Google search] so I do forsee some cool things to come.

Cheers,