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· 4 min read
Ehis Akhile

Using Cloud infrastructure definitely costs money. It is best practice to keep track of your operating cost while running different services on the Cloud regardless of the Cloud Provider. In the article, I will talk about a particular Cloud Provider; AWS. I assume you are familiar with this Cloud Provider or at least have some knowledge about them. I will focus on a particular service they offer called AWS Billing which in plain terms is used to keep track of the cost incurred when you use AWS services. Let’s talk more about it in the next section.

Table of content

AWS Billing​

With the help of the Amazon Billing console, you can manage your consolidated billing if you're a member of an AWS Organization, pay your AWS bills, track and report your AWS costs and consumption, and arrange your AWS usage and costs.

The Billing console works closely with the AWS Cost Management console. Both can be used to manage your spending in a comprehensive way. You can manage your ongoing payments and the payment methods linked to your AWS account using the billing console's tools.

When you register for an AWS account, Amazon Web Services automatically charges the credit card you provided. You can change the credit card AWS will use to make charges by viewing or updating your information at any time.

Next, we will talk about AWS Budgets, and why we need it

AWS Budgets​

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/qbx03g/better_turn_off_aws_before_you_get_a_huge_bill/

Most times, we accidentally run some services like an EC2 instance and forget to turn it back off. It could even run for a month or months before we realize we have incurred a huge cost. This is why Budgets are very important. With AWS Budgets, you can set a threshold for your expenses and when it gets to that limit, AWS will alert you about it. You can then log in to your AWS Console and shut down such services.

How To Set Up AWS Budgets​

  1. Log in to your AWS Console and search for Billing, Click on it and it will open the AWS Billing Page

  2. On the Tab to the left, select Budgets and then click Create Budget

  3. Select your budget type. Select Customize and in the next section, select Cost Budget, scroll down and click Next

  4. In the next step, - Set your Budget name, - The budget period (Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly), - Select the Budget renewal type you prefer (Recurring budget, Fixed budget), - Set your start month, - Set the budgeting method (Fixed, Planned, Auto-Adjusting) - Select your budget amount which will prompt a notification when it is exceeded - Finally, select All AWS Services in Budget scope You should see a page like the screenshot below

  5. Now, we will configure our alert system according to our set budget. We can set our alert based on percentage or actual value. If set as percentage, we can set a certain percentage level has to reached before we receive an alert. For actual value, we can set the actual amount for an alert trigger. In this example, I have set a budget of $5 and 80% threshold before I receive an alert. Next, I will set an email to receive the notification. AWS also offers other means of notification like Amazon SNS Alerts and AWS Chatbot Alerts.

  6. Review your configurations and click Create Budget. If successful, you will see your budget created in the Budget Home

If you see this, congrats! You have successfully set up a budget to notify you when you exceed the threshold of budgeted amount.

Vanus Connect Extra Feature​

Setting up your budget is very important as a developer or business. In this article we have used Email to receive the notifications. What if we want to receive the notification in our Slack Channel? We can easily do that with Vanus Connect. Vanus Connect provides out-of-the-box Connectors that enable you to integrate with popular services or applications without writing codes. With a simple configuration file, Vanus Connectors connect to the external service and move data in and out of that service on behalf of user applications, allowing you to focus on your business logic. I have written an article on how you can receive your AWS Billing Reports on a Slack Channel using Vanus Connect. You can check it out here.

Conclusion​

Setting budgets for your business is very crucial, you need to monitor resource usage and be informed when you exceed your threshold. AWS Budgets helps you do that.

· 6 min read

Table of Contents​

Introduction​

When it comes to low-traffic websites, storing logs on the web server may not cause any issues. However, for high-traffic websites such as e-commerce sites that receive millions of requests per day, storing such a massive amount of logs can pose some challenges. Firstly, it can require more resources to handle the logs, which can increase the cost of maintaining the website. Additionally, if there is a problem with the server, the log files may not be accessible, which can make troubleshooting difficult.

  • What is Amazon S3?​

    Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) provides is an object storage service that provides performance, security, and scalability that are unmatched in the market. For a variety of use cases, including data lakes, websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archives, business applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics, customers of all sizes and sectors may use Amazon S3 to store and preserve any quantity of data. To meet your unique business, organizational, and compliance needs, Amazon S3 offers management options that allow you to optimize, organize, and configure access to your data.

  • What is HTTP Request?​

    A client sends an HTTP request to a named host on a server. Accessing a server resource is the purpose of the request.

    The client uses parts of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which contains the information required to access the resource, to submit the request. URLs are explained by looking at their constituent parts.

    The following components are found in a properly constructed HTTP request: A line for requests. A number of header fields or HTTP headers. A message body, if required.

    In this tutorial, I will show you how you can use Vanus connect to build a highly available and persistent log stream from HTTP requests made to your web server and store them in Amazon S3 bucket.

Pre-requisite​

  • Have a container runtime (i.e., docker).
  • An Amazon S3 bucket.
  • AWS IAM Access Key.
  • AWS permissions for the IAM user:
    • s3:PutObject

Now, l will show you a step-by-step guide on how to build your own persistent log stream.

How to Log HTTP Requests to S3 Bucket​

For this tutorial, we will be using the Vanus Playground; An online Kubernetes environment.

Step 1: Deploy Vanus on the Playground​

img.png

  • Wait for preparing the K8s environment (usually less than 1 min). The terminal is ready when you see something like:

img_1.png

  • Install Vanus by typing following command:
kubectl apply -f https://dl.vanus.ai/all-in-one/v0.6.0.yml
  • Verify if Vanus is deployed successfully:
 $ watch -n2 kubectl get po -n vanus
vanus-controller-0               1/1     Running   0          96s
vanus-controller-1               1/1     Running   0          72s
vanus-controller-2               1/1     Running   0          69s
vanus-gateway-8677fc868f-rmjt9   1/1     Running   0          97s
vanus-store-0                    1/1     Running   0          96s
vanus-store-1                    1/1     Running   0          68s
vanus-store-2                    1/1     Running   0          68s
vanus-timer-5cd59c5bf-hmprp      1/1     Running   0          97s
vanus-timer-5cd59c5bf-pqkd5      1/1     Running   0          97s
vanus-trigger-7685d6cc69-8jgsl   1/1     Running   0          97s
  • Install vsctl (the command line tool).
curl -O https://dl.vanus.ai/vsctl/latest/linux-amd64/vsctl
chmod ug+x vsctl
mv vsctl /usr/local/bin
  • Set the endpoint for vsctl.
export VANUS_GATEWAY=192.168.49.2:30001
  • Create an Eventbus to store your events.
vsctl eventbus create --name http-s3
+----------------+------------------+
|     RESULT     |      EVENTBUS    |
+----------------+------------------+
| Create Success | http-s3          |
+----------------+------------------+

Step 2: Make directory for HTTP Source Connector and S3 Sink Connector and Create Config file​

  • Make HTTP Source Directory
mkdir http-source
  • Create Config file
cat << EOF > config.yml
target: http://192.168.49.2:30002/gateway/http-to-s3
port: 31081
EOF
  • Use docker run to run the HTTP Source config.yml file
docker run -it --rm --network=host \
  -v ${PWD}:/vanus-connect/config \
  --name source-http public.ecr.aws/vanus/connector/source-http &

Note: I ran this in the Background of my terminal, if you wish to see the outputs, remove the ampersand (&) at the end

  • Make S3 Sink Directory
mkdir s3-sink
  • Create Config file
cat << EOF > config.yml
port: 8080
aws:
  access_key_id: your_access_key
  secret_access_key: your_secret_key
region: "your_region"
bucket: "your_bucket_name"
scheduled_interval: 10
EOF
  • Usedocker run to run the S3 sink config.yml file
docker run -it --rm \
  -p 8082:8080 \
  -v ${PWD}:/vanus-connect/config \
  --name sink-aws-s3 public.ecr.aws/vanus/connector/sink-aws-s3 &

Note: I ran this in the Background of my terminal, if you wish to see the outputs, remove the ampersand (&) at the end

Step 3: Create Subscription and Make a request using CURL​

  • The Subscription is a relationship established between a Sink and an Eventbus. The Subscription reflects the Sink's interest in receiving events and describes the method for how to deliver those events. To create a subcription, use
vsctl subscription create --name http \
  --eventbus http-to-s3 \
  --sink 'http://ip10-1-39-4-cecpi79ajm80o97dfdug-8082.direct.play.linkall.com'

The sink URL (http://ip10-1-39-4-cecpi79ajm80o97dfdug-8082.direct.play.linkall.com) is different for different users. To obtain your unique URL, you have to follow these steps:

  1. Go to Vanus Playground, and click “Continue with GitHub”

    img.png

  2. Click on the GitHub-Twitter Scenario Tab

    img_4.png

  3. Scroll down and look for Payload URL

    img_5.png

  4. Copy the Payload URL and paste it into the Sink URL

  5. Make a request using CURL

curl --location --request POST 'localhost:31081' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/cloudevents+json' \
--data-raw '{
     "id": "53d1c340-551a-11ed-96c7-8b504d95037c",
    "source": "quickstart",
    "specversion": "1.0",
    "type": "quickstart",
    "datacontenttype": "application/json",
    "time": "2022-10-26T10:38:29.345Z",
    "data": {
        "myData": "Hello S3 Bucket!"
    }
}'

Check out the result​

Check your S3 bucket, you will see a folder containing files have been uploaded

img_2.png

We can now see that our S3 bucket was able to pull the request when we used CURL. The S3 sink supports partitioning; files can be pulled on an hourly or daily basis.

We can inspect our file and see the data received by our S3 bucket. img_3.png

Conclusion​

In this tutorial, I have shown how you how you can use Vanus connect to build a highly available and persistent log stream from HTTP requests made to your website and store them in Amazon S3 bucket.

· 6 min read
Ehis Akhile

As a developer or company, have you ever felt the need to have just another simpler way of monitoring your AWS Billings aside from Email notifications? Well, in this article, I will show you how it is easy to use Vanus and two connectors (AWS Billing Source & Slack Sink) to receive your AWS Billing reports on a Slack channel. This is made possible using Vanus Connect.

Vanus Connect is a set of producers and consumers to provide interoperability across services, systems, and platforms.

img/img_1.png