DEV Community: Ezile Mdodana

Day 14/30: The AWS bill should not be a monthly jump scare

Ezile Mdodana — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:12:04 +0000

AWS provides tools such as Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to help track and understand spending.

Budgets can alert you when costs or usage cross defined thresholds.

Important detail: an alert does not automatically solve the problem. It simply tells you the house may be on fire.

Review costs regularly, remove unused resources and investigate unusual increases.

The best time to understand your AWS bill is before Finance schedules an emergency meeting.

Day 13/30: “The application is down.”

Ezile Mdodana — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:07:44 +0000

“How long?”

“Customers told us this morning.”

This is not a monitoring strategy.

Amazon CloudWatch collects metrics, logs and events from AWS resources and applications.

It helps you understand what is happening before the customer becomes your alerting system.

Monitor what matters: availability, errors, latency, capacity and business-critical processes.

A dashboard is useful. An alert that reaches the right person at the right time is even more useful.

Day 12/30: Your API needs a receptionist

Ezile Mdodana — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:40:47 +0000

You do not want every request walking directly into the backend and opening random doors.

Amazon API Gateway acts as an entry point for APIs.

It can help with routing, authentication, throttling, monitoring and request management.

Think of it as the receptionist who asks:

“Who are you?”
“Who are you here to see?”
“Why have you made 10,000 requests in one minute?”

A controlled entrance makes the application easier to manage and protect.

Day 11/30: Serverless does not mean there are no servers

Ezile Mdodana — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 06:14:11 +0000

The servers still exist.

They have simply become AWS’s problem—which may be the healthiest delegation decision you make this week.

AWS Lambda runs your code when triggered, without requiring you to manage the underlying servers.

It works well for APIs, automation, event processing and scheduled tasks.

But not every workload belongs in Lambda.

Serverless is an architecture choice, not seasoning that must be sprinkled onto every application.

Day 10/30: Your database also needs a babysitter

Ezile Mdodana — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:27:54 +0000

Running your own database means managing the server, backups, patching, availability and recovery.

Amazon RDS handles many of those operational tasks for supported database engines.

You still design the database, manage access and protect the data. AWS simply removes some of the infrastructure headaches.

Managed does not mean “ignore it forever.”

It means your developers can spend less time babysitting servers and more time explaining why that query scans 14 million rows.

Day 9/30: Security Groups are your AWS bouncers

Ezile Mdodana — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 06:11:32 +0000

A security group controls which network traffic may enter or leave a resource.

A good bouncer checks:

Who are you?
Where are you coming from?
Which door are you trying to use?

A bad bouncer sees 0.0.0.0/0 and says, “Everybody is welcome.”

Open only the ports your system requires and restrict access to trusted sources wherever possible.

Your database probably does not need to introduce itself to the entire internet.

Day 8/30: Not everyone needs Administrator Access

Ezile Mdodana — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 06:14:54 +0000

Giving every user full AWS permissions is convenient in the same way that giving every employee the company safe key is convenient.

Until it is not.

AWS Identity and Access Management helps control who can do what.

Follow the principle of least privilege:

Give people and systems only the permissions required to perform their jobs.

Also protect the root account with MFA and avoid using it for daily work.

“Access denied” can be frustrating. “Entire production environment deleted” is usually worse.

Day 7/30: Amazon S3 is not just a very large folder

Ezile Mdodana — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:06:18 +0000

S3 stores files as objects inside buckets.

It is commonly used for documents, images, videos, backups, logs and static website files.

It is highly scalable, but permissions still matter.

Before making a bucket public, ask:

“Should everybody on the internet be able to see this?”

If the answer is no, step away from the public-access settings.

S3 can store almost anything. That does not mean almost everyone should access it.

Day 6/30: The Load Balancer is the traffic officer

Ezile Mdodana — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:56:14 +0000

Imagine 1,000 users arriving at your application at the same time.

Without coordination, one server gets overwhelmed while another sits comfortably doing almost nothing.

An AWS load balancer distributes incoming traffic across healthy targets.

It also checks whether those targets are working.

If one server fails, traffic can be directed elsewhere.

The lesson: do not make one server carry the whole company on its back. Even your best employee eventually needs help.

Day 5/30: Auto Scaling is like calling extra cashiers

Ezile Mdodana — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 06:17:50 +0000

When the queue grows, more cashiers open.

When customers leave, the extra counters close.

AWS Auto Scaling can add computing capacity when demand increases and reduce it when demand falls.

But it is not emergency magic.

Your application must be designed to scale, your health checks must work, and your scaling rules must make sense.

Otherwise, AWS will automatically create more copies of the same problem.

Automation is powerful. Good architecture must come first.

Day 4/30: Bigger EC2 does not always mean better

Ezile Mdodana — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:08:58 +0000

Some teams choose the largest server “just in case.”

That is like hiring a 60-seater bus to take two people to work.

It will work. It will also cost more than necessary.

Start with realistic capacity, monitor CPU, memory and traffic, then resize using evidence.

AWS makes increasing capacity easy. Your Finance department would prefer that you do not start with the most expensive option available.

Right-size first. Scale when the data tells you to.

Day 3/30: “AWS will handle the security.”

Ezile Mdodana — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:00:37 +0000

Yes… but not all of it.

AWS secures the cloud infrastructure. You are responsible for what you configure inside it: users, permissions, data, applications and operating systems.

Think of it like renting an apartment.

The landlord secures the building. You must still lock your own door.

If you leave an S3 bucket public and your password is Admin123, AWS cannot save you from yourself.

Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility.