New version of the CloudFormation template for Pulse vTM

Quick announcement – I’ve published a new version of the CloudFormation template that deploys a HA cluster of Pulse vTM instances into an existing VPC.

Repo: https://github.com/dkalintsev/Pulse-vTM-CloudFormation

Highlights:

• Suitable for using as a module in bigger stacks, e.g., CloudFormation or Terraform that take care of the VPC and other infrastructure. Has been tested with the later.
• Updated with the latest vTM AMIs for 17.2r2, 17.3, 17.4, and 18.1.
• Supports additional Security Groups (e.g., when your target instances use SG with Source based on SG name).
• Can take UserData from Pulse Service Director’s Cloud Registrations for self-registration.

Please see README for full details, especially the Disclaimer at the beginning. 🙂

Supply optional Security Groups to an EC2 instance in CloudFormation

When developing your Infrastructure as Code CloudFormation templates, you sometimes need to associate your resources with a list of Security Groups (SG) which may need to be configurable. For example, your resource may have a primary SG, and a list of optional SGs that can be specified at template deployment time.

I recently went through a somewhat painful exercise figuring out how to implement this, and that’s what I’m here to share with you.

Running a Single Page App and can’t wait for Lambda@Edge? Here’s an alternative*

* Yes, I do understand that Lambda@Edge will provide a completely different level of scale and performance, and is an industrialised managed offering. None the less, what’s described below could serve many use cases just fine. 😉

With that, on to it.

There’s no point arguing that Single Page Apps (SPAs) are in vogue. One of the approaches to SPAs is to move business logic into the client, and leverage a range of API-based services to provide needed server-side functionality. Here’s a very good argument presented on this topic: Joe Emison – 10X Product Development.

A side effect of following this pattern is your SPA code ends up on a server that only knows how to serve your static client content (html / js / css / images). This may present a problem when you try to integrate your SPA with another stand-alone application, for example, blog hosted by WordPress.

Let’s have a look in a bit more detail, followed by what can be done about it.

Deploying Brocade Virtual Traffic Manager cluster in AWS through a CloudFormation template

Last time we’ve talked about the concept of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and introduced two most prominent tools in the space, AWS CloudFormation and Hashicorp Terraform.

In this post, we’ll have a look at an AWS CloudFormation template that you can use to deploy a cluster of 2 x Brocade Virtual Traffic Managers with WAF into a new AWS VPC; what makes up that template; and how it all works.

We will take things quite slowly here. Some basic understanding of automation and/or scripting/programming will help, but not strictly necessary.

If on other hand you’re already well-versed in AWS CloudFormation but still interested in automating deployment of Brocade Virtual Traffic Managers in AWS, feel free to jump straight to the GitHub repo, and optionally read the vADC EC2 Instances section below.

Please note that this is work in progress and the code you’ll find there has no official support at this time, but rest assured, it is coming! 🙂