Review of acloudguru course AWS Certified Solutions Architect –Associate

In this post we are writing a review of acloudguru course  AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate on Udemy .
When I decided to go for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam I was confused about how to start with preparation. Syllabus of the exam is vast and covers a lot of topics. I needed someone to guide me for this exam.
After going through many forums I came to the conclusion that I’ve two options.

1. To attend the course at one of the training institutes. The official training cost range from $800 to $1500. Even the institutes offering non-official training quoted $400 to $900. This was huge money considering that my last company was not sponsoring this course and I have to pay for it myself.
2. Second option was to look for online courses. These course are cheap ranging from $10 to $100 but I was not sure about the quality of content and how much I can learn with just online training.

After going through multiple forums and blogs I ended up listing online courses from two vendors  Linux Academy and acloudguru.
Linux Academy has good material and people have written some good feedback for them. But the problem with them is that you have to buy their monthly subscription with plans starting from $29. I knew that with a full-time job I won’t be able to complete the course properly in 1 month.
So I checked on acloudguru course.  Many people have given good feedback for this course too. The course was listed on acloud.guru website for $29. But I found the same course on Udemy for $10 in a special offer at that time. Udemy also provides you free lifetime access to the course. I found this was most suitable for me so purchased it. Also once you buy the course from Udemy you can get free access to the same course on acloud.guru website also.
Now coming to the acloudguru  AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate course itself.
As of Apr-2018  course has around 22 hours of on-demand video.
The course is very comprehensive and it gives you a good understanding of topics. Instructor(Ryan) is very energetic and he tries to teach you the topic in a very simple way. So even if you don’t have background in AWS then also you will understand the topics with not much effort.
It covers a lot of practical labs which you can follow by creating your own AWS free tier account.  It covers almost all topics of the exam. So you don’t have to worry about the syllabus.
It also has quizzes in between the course for knowledge check and also full length mock exams to test your understanding.
One of the recommendation for the exam preparation is to go through the white papers. Each of the white paper is a big pdf of 50 to 200 pages. And for the associate level you are supposed to read around 6 to 7 of them. This can be overwhelming but Ryan cover the gist of these whitepapers in his course.
The course is very useful to get you started on the AWS journey.  But the course alone is not enough to clear the exam.  You need to have good practical knowledge of AWS for clearing the exam and this course give you the correct direction.
You can get good sample exam questions for practice from another course of acloudguru on Udemy  Exam Questions – AWS Solution Architect Associate or from Jon AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams for which most students have written great feedback.

Solved: How to plumb IP in a Solaris zone without reboot

In this post we will discuss how to add an IP to a  running Solaris zone.

If you want to add a new IP address to a running local zone(zcldvds01) you can do it by plumbing the IP manually from the global zone.

root@cldvds-global()# ifconfig aggr1:2 plumb
root@cldvds-global()# ifconfig aggr1:2 inet 10.248.3.167 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.248.3.255 zone zcldvds01 up

This change is not persistent across reboot. To make it permanent you will have to make an entry through zonecfg:-

root@cldvds-global()# zonecfg -z zcldvds01
zonecfg:zcldvds01> add net
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> set physical=aggr1
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> set address=10.248.3.167
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> end
zonecfg:zcldvds01> verify
zonecfg:zcldvds01> commit
zonecfg:zcldvds01> exit

Now if you run "ifconfig -a" in the zone. You should see the new IP plumbed.

Change IP in zone

If you want to change the IP address of a zone you can simply do it by using "remove". If we take above example and we want to change IP from 10.248.3.167 to 10.248.3.175 we will do as below:-

root@cldvds-global()# zonecfg -z zcldvds01
zonecfg:zcldvds01> remove net address=10.248.3.167
zonecfg:zcldvds01> add net
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> set physical=aggr1
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> set address=10.248.3.175
zonecfg:zcldvds01:net> end
zonecfg:zcldvds01> verify
zonecfg:zcldvds01> commit
zonecfg:zcldvds01> exit

Solved: How to grow or extend ZFS filesystem in Solaris 10

Below are the steps to grow a zfs filesystem

• Identify the zpool of the zfs filesystem.

df -h | grep -i sagufs
df -Z | grep -i sagufs

Above command will give you the complete path of the filesystem and zpool name even if it's in zone.

• Check that  the pool doesn't have any errors.

root# zpool status sagu-zpool
 pool: sagu-zpool
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
 sagu-zpool ONLINE 0 0 0
 c0t911602657A702A0004D339BDCF15E111d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
 c0t911602657A702A00BE158E94CF15E111d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
 c0t911602657A702A004CD071A9CF15E111d0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

• Check the current size of the pool

root# zpool list sagu-zpool
NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
sagu-zpool 249G 178G 71.1G 71% ONLINE -

• Label the new LUN.

root# format c0t9007538111C02A004E73B39A155BE211d0

• Add the LUN to appropriate zpool. Be careful about pool name.

root# zpool add sagu-zpool c0t9007538111C02A004E73B39A155BE211d0

• Now let's say we want to increase the filesystem from 100GB to 155GB. To increase FS first increase its quota.

root# zfs set quota=155G sagu-zpool/sagufs

• Finally increase the FS reservation

root# zfs set reservation=155G sagu-zpool/sagufs

• Now you should be able to see the increased space.

How to create an IAM user in AWS

In this post we will see how to create an IAM user which can be used to access S3 using CLI.

• Login to  AWS IAM console.
• In the left pane click on “Users”
• Click on “Add user”

a) User name: S3User
b) Access Type: Check Programmatic Access.

• Click Next

a) Select Attach existing policies directly.
b) Search for AmazonS3FullAccess and select it.

• Click Next.
• Review everything and click “Create user”

It will show you “Access key ID”  and “Secret access key”. Save them as you won’t be able to see the “Secret access key” once you close this page.
In this tutorial we have selected the existing S3 policy but you can also attach your own customized policy to make the access more secure.
Congrats you have created an IAM user successfully. You can use this to access S3 using CLI. Check this post for details.

Solved: How to copy paste in Docker Quickstart Terminal

If you want to copy/paste the contents on Docker Quickstart Terminal using mouse follow these steps.

• Open the Docker Quickstart Terminal as an Administrator.
• At the top of terminal right Click on the Blue Whale icon and select “Defaults”.
• In the “Options” tab of new window check the QuickEdit Mode and click OK.

• Now with mouse left click you can select the content and paste with right click.