DEV Community: Naina Verma

🚀 5 Lessons I Learned While Building My First Event-Driven AWS Project

Naina Verma — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:26:50 +0000

Building projects is one thing, but building them on the cloud teaches you an entirely different way of thinking. While working on my first event-driven AWS project, I came across a few lessons that completely changed how I look at application design.
1️⃣ Not every task should happen immediately
Initially, I thought every request should be processed instantly. Learning about Amazon SQS showed me why asynchronous processing makes applications more reliable and scalable.
2️⃣ Security starts with architecture
Keeping the frontend public while placing backend services and databases inside private subnets helped me understand that security isn't just about authentication—it's about designing the system correctly from the beginning.
3️⃣ Infrastructure is code too
Using Terraform made deployments repeatable and eliminated the need to manually configure AWS resources every time.
4️⃣ Serverless doesn't mean "no architecture"
AWS Lambda removes server management, but designing event flow, permissions, and integrations still requires careful planning.
5️⃣ Small projects can teach big concepts
This project wasn't huge, but it introduced me to event-driven architecture, Infrastructure as Code, AWS networking, and cloud-native design patterns.
The biggest takeaway? Don't chase project quantity. Build projects that teach you something new. Every project should leave you with at least one new skill.
What was one project that changed the way you think about software development? I'd love to hear your experience.

AWS #DevOps #CloudComputing #Terraform #Lambda #Serverless #LearningInPublic #ReactJS #NodeJS

🚀 From an Idea to an Event-Driven Monitoring System on AWS

Naina Verma — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:19:23 +0000

One thing I've realized while building projects is that quality matters far more than quantity. Instead of creating another basic CRUD application, I wanted to build something that introduced me to concepts I'd only read about—serverless computing, event-driven architecture, and cloud infrastructure.

That's how I ended up building an Intelligent Polling & Service Monitoring System.

The idea is simple: a user creates a poll by entering a URL along with a polling frequency and duration. From there, the system takes over—scheduling requests, monitoring the service, storing performance metrics, and updating the dashboard automatically.

What made this project interesting wasn't just the functionality, but how it was built.

Instead of handling every request synchronously, I used Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda to process monitoring tasks asynchronously. This made the application more scalable and resilient, especially when multiple monitoring requests are created at the same time.

Security was another area I wanted to explore. The application follows a 3-tier architecture inside an AWS VPC, with the React frontend exposed to users while the backend services and database remain protected inside private subnets.

To make deployments repeatable, I provisioned the infrastructure using Terraform, which reinforced the importance of treating infrastructure just like application code.

Tech Stack

React.js
Node.js
Amazon API Gateway
AWS Lambda
Amazon SQS
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon VPC
Terraform

This project wasn't about building the biggest application—it was about understanding the design decisions behind modern cloud-native systems. Every feature gave me a chance to learn something new, and that's what made this project worthwhile.

I'd love to hear your thoughts or suggestions on how this architecture could be improved!

📌 [Architecture Diagram Image is attached]

AWS #DevOps #Terraform #Serverless #Lambda #ReactJS #NodeJS #CloudComputing #LearningInPublic

🚀 Building an Intelligent Polling & Service Monitoring System on AWS

Naina Verma — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:30:33 +0000

During my summer vacation, I worked on an Intelligent Polling & Service Monitoring System designed to automate URL monitoring using an event-driven, serverless architecture on AWS.

The idea was simple: users can create monitoring polls by providing a target URL, polling frequency, and duration. Once configured, the system automatically schedules monitoring tasks, performs API calls, stores performance metrics, and updates the dashboard with the latest results.

🔹 Architecture Highlights

React.js frontend for user interaction
Node.js backend APIs
Amazon API Gateway for request handling
AWS Lambda for serverless execution
Amazon SQS for asynchronous processing
Amazon DynamoDB for storing monitoring data
Terraform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

One of the key learnings from this project was understanding how Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda can be combined to build scalable event-driven systems. Instead of processing monitoring requests synchronously, tasks are pushed to a queue and processed asynchronously, improving reliability and scalability.

Another interesting aspect was implementing a secure 3-tier architecture inside an AWS VPC, where the frontend is accessible publicly while backend services and data remain protected within private subnets.

This project gave me valuable hands-on experience with cloud-native application design, serverless computing, Infrastructure as Code, and AWS networking concepts.

Always open to feedback and suggestions from the community! 🚀
📌
Architecture diagram attached below.