DynamoDB Streams with more than 24 hour retention

That was kind of a misleading title, but I wanted to get your attention. The truth is that DynamoDB Streams have a maximum retention period of 24 hours and there is no way to extend that. When you do need more than 24 hours the default solution is to use Kinesis Data Streams, which can retain data …

Private AppSync with custom dns

In the last year I’ve been working a lot with AppSync and I have to say it didn’t come without challenges. One of the biggest challenges was to create a private AppSync API with a custom domain. This is something that is not natively supported by AWS, but it is possible to achieve it …

Modifying DynamoDB TTL with CDK

Ever tried to update the TTL attribute of a DynamoDB table using the AWS CDK and got a InvalidRequest in CDK or a ValidationException via the CLI? I did, and it took me a while to figure out why. In this post, I’ll explain what happened and how to avoid the same issue in the future. This is a …

Using AWS VPC Endpoints

After posting about Private API Gateway’s with DNS I received the suggestion by Lee Gilmore to elaborate on VPC Endpoints. In this article, I will show you how to use VPC Endpoints to access AWS services without the need to go through the internet.

Always set AWS CDK Defaults

We are nearing the end of the year, the time to reflect on the past year and definitely share the things that went “wrong” or in this case the things that could have been done better. This is one of those things that I wish I knew earlier, and I hope it helps you too.

Private API Gateway with DNS

UPDATE: Ofcourse, after I finalized this article Amazon released native support for Private DNS on API Gateways. . Announced on the AWS Blog.

At PostNL we are building most of our applications with Serverless in mind, let me rephrase that, we build all our applications within our own landing zone …

AWS CloudShell in your own vpc

Until recently, I was completely unaware of AWS CloudShell, and I’m glad I finally decided to give it a try. CloudShell provides a shell environment right in your browser, and to my surprise, you can start an instance within your own VPC!

Avoiding CloudFormation Stack Outputs

Recently I’ve been working on a new project where we created many resources in a lot of different stacks. A feature of CloudFormation is that you can output values from your stack, which is great for referencing resources in other stacks. However, while there is a use-case for this, I’ve …

Multiple ways to retrieve SSM parameters in AWS CDK

When working with AWS CDK and using SSM Parameters to store information in between stacks there are multiple ways to retrieve the value, with both advantages and disadvantages. In this post, I’ll go over the different ways to retrieve SSM parameters in AWS CDK and when to use them.

AWS Parameter Store vs AWS Secrets

Recently I’ve been using AWS Secrets to retrieve API keys which are needed to access external API’s, however, this turned out to be a more expensive service than we initially thought when starting.