DEV Community: Rennard Watkins

Infrastructure as Code with Terraform & AWS

Rennard Watkins — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:22:48 +0000

This collection of projects demonstrates my ability to design, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure using Terraform with AWS as the primary provider. Each project highlights real-world patterns from foundational VPC and networking setups to automated EC2 deployments, showcasing how infrastructure can be version-controlled, repeatable, and production-ready.

These projects reflect a hands-on approach to building scalable and maintainable cloud environments. All source code, module structures, and documentation are available on GitHub for review.

rwatkins1 / terraform

terraform

View on GitHub

Ansible Projects

Rennard Watkins — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:17:34 +0000

This portfolio showcases a collection of Ansible projects built around Red Hat Certified Engineer level tasks, designed to demonstrate practical, job-ready automation skills.

These projects highlight experience in configuration management, system provisioning, and scalable infrastructure automation using industry best practices.

Each example reflects real-world scenarios relevant to modern IT environments, with direct links to GitHub repositories for full transparency into the code, structure, and implementation approach.

Ansible Playbooks - https://github.com/rwatkins1/ansible

How I used AWS to make a website more secure

Rennard Watkins — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 17:09:36 +0000

MyProHouseKeeper is a website where users can go to order home cleaning services. This is a relatively new concept for a service such as this and customer need to be able to trust that entering their personal information and payment information online is safe and secure.

On the booking page, the site initially loaded in HTTP. This is a big red flag for customers since there is large font that indicates this site is NOT SECURE. There’s also no lock symbol indicating safety and encryption. See image.

These issues likely has several consequences:

-This impacts conversion rates and profits.
-Protecting customer data
-Slower website speed
-higher rankings for the business within web browsers

From my AWS experience, I knew these issues could be solved using AWS tools.
Here’s how I made MyProHouseKeeper faster and more secure using AWS services.

First I used AWS Certificate Manager to configure a new public SSL/TLS certificate. Public certificates are trusted by browsers and operating systems.

Next I used Cloudfront to redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. Cloudfront is a global distribution network, which will also make the website load faster.

Lastly, I configured AWS Route53 to connect to the Cloudfront distribution ID.

After testing out the the new webpages, all the pages loaded faster and with secure https setup.

I believe the changes made will create higher conversion rates and increased revenue for MyProHouseKeeper.