The Steg Blog
Keep up with changes in technology
Let’s setup a free SSL certificate on Amazon Linux using Let’s Encrypt.
(Seriously free SSL certificates this time) So I've written in the past about the push for HTTPS Everywhere and how Amazon was helping to tackle that goal (over here). Last year, Amazon added their Certificate Manager. It's a really great tool and goes a long way...
Installing PHP 7 on Amazon Linux. Quick and easy!
So PHP 7 has been available since late last year. This is the first major release since PHP 5 came out in 2004. Yes, it took eleven years. It's not like it was abandoned, its just that things took a very winding path. Notice that we went from version 5 to version...
HTTPS Everywhere, for free! The new Certificate Manager.
(Well, sorta free) If you're anywhere around the web infrastructure world, then you're likely familiar with the push for HTTPS everywhere. In the name of privacy, consumers and all sorts of privacy groups are demanding that websites communicate using HTTPS. In fact,...
Amazon Web Services: Automate EC2 Backups
Today, we’ll be talking about backups. Backups are boring and no one ever cares about them. Until you need them. It’s at that point that you wish you had setup some sort of automated backup system, because life goes by to quickly to do anything manually that isn’t absolutely required.
Twilio, Lockitron, and Evernote: Build Your Own SMS Control
…from the start of the Kickstarter campaign, SMS control was touted as a great way to give access to your lock without giving anyone a key. Upon investigation, SMS control is available. For $5/mo. That seemed a little pricey to me, so I decided to brew my own.
Simple load balancing in AWS without using an Elastic Load Balancer
The end goal of AWS, or any cloud implementation, is stateless computing. We don’t care where, when, or how (to a degree, of course) our application is running. ELB helps to complete that goal by constantly checking on the instances and assigning them network load depending on a host of characteristics. It can check to see server load, see if the instance is actually healthy and accepting traffic, or any number of other custom things.
However, sometimes you don’t need the complexity (or expense) of an ELB, but still want some simple load balancing. That’s what this post is about. There are some prerequisites to all this. You’ll need:
Controlling Remote Access to VMware Horizon View using only Active Directory
VMware Horizon View is an amazing tool for remote access. The struggle is making sure that the proper users have access to View from anywhere, while only allowing some users to consume their virtual desktop on-site.
VMware Horizon View client: Installing in Ubuntu 14.04 with USB support
A big problem for a client I recently had was that there was no USB pass-through support. The only officially sanctioned way to get USB support in Linux is to buy a thin/zero client from a third party who has created (and supports) their own USB implementation. Of course, there is a way around that, which I’m about to show you.
Amazon Web Services: Adding a userdata script to an instance/AMI
Userdata scripts are a powerful way to customize an AWS AMI or instance. It’s goal is allow the administrator to tweak a generalized AMI into something very specific. On instance creation (only, take note that the userdata script will only run once), a script can be entered into the EC2 web console to be run as root.