Conquering the Cloud: My Adventure with the Cloud Resume Challenge
Tags: cloudskills, aws
Published: 2023-06-07 19:56:30


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Late last night...<br>
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... At approximately 02:00 hours, while many slept, a colossal breakthrough was made ...<br>
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... After many long nights and countless eons ...<br>
<br>
I finally completed my Cloud Resume Challenge Project !!!!!!!1!!!1!1!
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![GIF](https://i.gifer.com/7RWA.gif) 

You can find my Cloud Resume Project [HERE](https://ghope.cloud/)!! 
[GitHub](https://github.com/GilHope/Cloud-Resume-Challenge-AWS)
[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gil-hope/)

Also, I am actively looking for an opportunity to prove myself and develop my skills with my first job in the cloud! If you could please like and share I would immensely appreciate any and all help!


**Contents**
- [The Challenge](#the-challenge)
- [Certification](#certification)
- [Front End](#front-end)
- [Back End](#back-end)
- [IaC / CICD / Version Control](#iac--cicd--version-control)
- [Testing](#testing)
- [Challenges and Future Improvements](#challenges-and-future-improvements)


## The Challenge

The Cloud Resume Challenge is a 16-step challenge designed for beginners to get hands-on experience with some of the tools and applications that DevOps Engineers and Cloud Architects use in their day-to-day tasks.

The steps outlined in the CRC were intentionally high-level and incredibly vague, providing a fun and sometimes challenging learning opportunity.

## Certification

The first steps of the CRC recommended preparing to take the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam. However, fancying myself an overachiever, I decided to pursue the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Course (SAA-C03) instead.

So, I signed up for [Adrian Cantrill's AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Course](https://cantrill.io/) and [Jon Bonzo’s AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams](https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-amazon-practice-exams-saa-c03/) and I am glad I did. 

In March of '23, I passed the [Cloud Practitioner](https://www.credly.com/badges/e9ba9344-0339-4895-9df8-19dadc4057ce) exam, and finally, the [Solutions Architect Associate](https://www.credly.com/badges/e108acb8-64be-4013-90b2-d055dbc69d5c). 

I was quite nervous leading up to my exam day for SAA-C03, but when it finally came time to sit down for it... I immediately realized how well Cantrill's and Bonzo's services had prepared me.

## <a id="front-end"></a>Front End

Alright, so getting into the real meat ‘n potatoes, this is what I did…

The challenge required writing up my resume in HTML and CSS… Which I had some light experience with, but I did a some speedruns through a few free courses, found an example of a resume I liked, and mixed it all up and got that working locally in VSCode…

Next, I needed to create a domain using Route53 and setup a Cloudfront Distribution with a S3 Bucket as the origin… I found these sections to be pretty simple and straightforward… Again, I believe Adrian Cantrill’s course exceptionally prepared me for this area with the practical knowledge covered between his lectures and tutorials.

## <a id="back-end"></a>Back End

For this section, I needed to create a visitor counter for my site using Lambda, DynamoDB, and API Gateway, and some Javascript…

Figuring out the Javascript was by far the most difficult part of this challenge for me… I especially struggled trying to figure out how to make sure I could fetch my API URL dynamically.

## <a id="iac--cicd--version-control"></a>IaC / CICD / Version Control

When first approaching these chunks I stalled for some time to do as much reading up as I could to understand. I had heard of these terms in passing but they were always quite vague to me as to what exactly they were and how they worked.

Setting up Version Control and my CICD pipelines seemed like a pretty daunting order at first, but after skimming through the GitHub Documentations I found these to be some of the easier steps to complete. 

Getting to the Infrastructure-as-Code, I initially debated between using AWS SAM or Terraform as I would be learning about either completely fresh anyways. Ultimately, I went with SAM for its simplicity of use with serverless. 

As I started to figure it out I had a surprising amount of fun working with SAM… And it was without a doubt my favorite part of the challenge.

This article, [One Artifact, One Pipeline, One Path to Production](https://arcadian.cloud/delivery/2023/05/03/one-artifact-one-pipeline-one-path-to-production/), was particularly beneficial for helping get me started in this section.

## <a id="testing"></a>Testing
This was another especially challenging portion of the challenge for me and it took a significant amount of tie for me to get this hammered out, but boy did it feel good when I got those 'PASSED' outputs.

![GIF](https://media.tenor.com/29eE-n-_4xYAAAAd/atomic-nuke.gif)

## <a id="challenges-and-future-improvements"></a>Challenges and Future Improvements

**1.**
Improve the API functionality of the visitor counter to be more efficient in distinguishing repeat visitors.
**2.**
I would probably like to add a little bit more testing for my Lambda code.
**3.**
I may consider reworking the IaC with Terraform. Initially, I had explored the idea of using Terraform but decided I’d be better off going forward with SAM as it seemed more intuitive for me… Also, Terraform just has a cooler sci-fi sounding name!

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Ok, now...<br>
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Crab rave<br>
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<img src="https://media3.giphy.com/media/2dK0W3oUksQk0Xz8OK/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47gad2s9j2n0xynqte3xogceai0va6q1mcsouwdqdh&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g"/>