How I Spent a Whole Day on AWS VPC 🥲
Introduction
Hello Everyone! Welcome to my blog! Yesterday, I embarked on an exciting yet challenging journey—implementing an AWS VPC three-tier architecture. Along the way, I made plenty of mistakes, learned a lot, and ended the day with a big smile (and a lot of new knowledge). Let me walk you through my day, mistakes included!
The CIDR Block Saga 💨
My first struggle started with CIDR blocking. Honestly, I kind of skipped that part initially (big mistake 😅). When I attempted to create subnets, I ran into the dreaded subnet overlap issue. At that moment, I paused and thought, "Wait, what does subnet overlapping even mean?"
I went back to the basics and spent time learning how to split subnets and calculate IP ranges using binary values. It took me two hours to understand CIDR blocks properly, but hey, it was worth it! 🚀
Back to the Console 🚒
Armed with my newfound CIDR knowledge, I went back to the AWS Console and successfully set up:
VPC
Route tables
Internet Gateway
I even created a jump server to access the web server in my private subnet. At this point, I thought, "Wow, I’m a cloud engineer now!" 😎 But reality hit me hard when my EC2 instance in the private subnet couldn’t access the internet. 🙄
Enter the NAT Gateway 🌐
This problem led me to learn about the NAT Gateway. I went back to my resources, studied how it works, and returned to the console to set it up. Success! My EC2 instance could now access the internet. Feeling confident, I installed Jenkins on the private subnet and thought everything was perfect.
But…
The Load Balancer Revelation 🤦♂️
When I tried to access Jenkins from my browser, nothing worked. "Why?!" I spent three hours troubleshooting, scratching my head, and Googling. Finally, after seeking help from the community (thank you, amazing people! 💖), I learned about the Load Balancer.
I researched Load Balancers, re-architected my design, and added one to my setup. Finally, I was able to access Jenkins, which was running in my private subnet. Victory at last! 🎉
Before
At last
Key Takeaways 🎡
Learn by Doing: This experience taught me that hands-on practice is incredibly powerful. Watching tutorials alone doesn’t work for me; doing things step by step taught me far more.
Embrace Mistakes: Mistakes are opportunities to learn. Every error pushed me to dig deeper into concepts.
Community is Everything: The DevOps community’s support and insights were invaluable.
Final Thoughts
Spending an entire day on AWS VPC might sound intense, but for me, it was worth every second. This marks a significant step in my restarted journey towards DevOps. If you’re on a similar path, don’t be afraid to dive in and make mistakes. The lessons you learn will stick with you forever.
Keep learning and keep building! 🚀