Building a Production Grade AWS Infrastructure Project (Part 1)

KithupaG — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:07:03 +0000

I'm 16, self-taught, and currently studying for my AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification. Alongside the course, I'm building a production-grade AWS infrastructure from scrach and documenting the entire journey here

Why?

Honestly, because certs alone don't porve you can build anything. I want something real to show for it, So writing infrastruction that reflects how things are done in production and not just dwelling inside tutorial hell. Writing about it publicly keeps me accountable.

What is my stack?

Cloud: AWS
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform (I decided to keep it modular with seperate dev and prod environments)
CI/CD : Github Actions
Containerization: Docker + Trivy (for container scanning)
Application: A minimal PERN stack notes app

Heres what my folder structure looks like

aws-production-infra/ ├── modules/ # reusable Terraform modules │ ├── vpc/ │ │ ├── main.tf │ │ ├── variables.tf │ │ ├── outputs.tf │ │ └── README.md │ ├── ec2-asg/ │ │ ├── main.tf │ │ ├── variables.tf │ │ └── outputs.tf │ ├── alb/ │ ├── rds/ │ ├── s3-cdn/ │ ├── iam/ │ ├── security/ │ └── monitoring/ ├── environments/ │ ├── dev/ │ │ ├── main.tf │ │ ├── variables.tf │ │ ├── terraform.tfvars │ │ └── backend.tf │ └── prod/ ├── app/ │ ├── Dockerfile │ └── src/ ├── .github/ │ └── workflows/ │ ├── terraform-plan.yml │ └── docker-build.yml ├── docs/ │ ├── architecture.svg │ └── cost-estimate.md ├── scripts/ │ └── destroy-expensive.sh ├── .gitignore └── README.md

They key decision I did here is seperating the modules/ folder from environments/. Both environments call the same modules but with different variable values. Dev runs cheaper, single AZ resources purely for developing purposes while Prod runs Multi-AZ, larger instances in a more contained and secure setting.

What I've done so far

The folder structure is set up and the application code is in the repo. I vibe-coded the entire PERN app to save time, and honestly the infrastructure is what its all about.

My build order is

- Write all the terraform infrastructure first.
- Write the Dockerfile and get Trivy scanning running in CI
- Wire everything together with the GitHub actions deployment pipeline

Next post will cover building the VPC modules (building subnets, route tables, NAT gateway, and flow logs)

Repo is here if you want to follow along: https://github.com/KithupaG/aws-production-infra

Building a Simple Server Monitoring Script in My Homelab

KithupaG — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:47:01 +0000

*Why monitoring matters *

Monitoring matters because it provides a shared feedback loop, necessary visibility in the system metrics, performance, security, it also enables rapid issue detection, and continous improvement

See my code in my github here:- https://github.com/KithupaG/Homelab/blob/main/monitoring/server-stats.sh

How I built it

I used functions to house the processes, adhering to the laws of writing code, inside those functions I housed the shell commands such as top, free, df, ps etc to fetch the data and used awk to tabularize the data.

Demo output.

Future plan
Add logging to a file → server_stats.log.
Output as JSON so it integrates with Prometheus/ELK.
Connect to Grafana and make dashboards.

DEV Community: KithupaG

Building a Production Grade AWS Infrastructure Project (Part 1)

Building a Simple Server Monitoring Script in My Homelab