
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="3270" height="1610" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-183" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image.png 3270w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-768x378.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1536x756.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-2048x1008.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/image-1568x772.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 3270px) 100vw, 3270px" /></figure>



<p>We&#8217;re excited to announce that we are officially launching our new user experience on the Atomized platform on Thursday, May 27, 2020. Our team has worked diligently over the last three weeks to bring new features and an improved design to our customers; we&#8217;re extremely excited to release this to the public.</p>



<p><strong>If you&#8217;d like to give it a test drive, you can find a demo of it at <a href="https://demo.atomizedhq.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://demo.atomizedhq.com/</a>.</strong></p>



<p>We&#8217;re also preparing to launch <strong>Launchpad </strong>in the coming weeks. Launchpad will revolutionize the way businesses equip their developers to deploy their code. Launchpad enables individuals and businesses to write and maintain CI/CD pipelines to deploy and maintain their infrastructure and code in a way that meets their specific standards but in a way that ensures reusability. <em><strong>We&#8217;ll announce more about this in the coming weeks.</strong></em></p>



<p></p>


Announcing the new Atomized User Experience


<div class="alert alert-primary" role="alert">
<strong>Update: </strong> Shortly after publishing this article we heard back from AWS &#8211; the problem we were having stemmed from a bug in the X-Ray Docker image and other users are experiencing the same problem.<br /><br />
The way we solved the problem isn&#8217;t necessary under normal circumstances, however if you&#8217;re facing the same issue we did, this may solve your problem.
</div>



<p>I know, I know. <strong>Why are you running short-lived containers vs. running a Lambda function?</strong> Answer: disk space and run time limit constraints. </p>



<p>One of the biggest headaches that I&#8217;ve experienced is with instrumenting short-lived containers – whether with New Relic, DataDog, or AWS X-Ray, is that there has been magic baked into the commonly used SDK&#8217;s that use certain periods of time or indicators like garbage collection cycles to transmit their data.</p>



<h2>Where we find ourselves today</h2>



<p>Today our build processes utilize a step functions that orchestrate the different steps of the build processes. The different steps are a mix of Lambda functions and ECS tasks based upon the length of time or potential need for disk space. </p>



<p>During the phase that handles the building of Docker containers, we run Docker-in-Docker in an ECS task. Once we&#8217;re done, we simply shutdown the container and send a signal back to the step function to let it know to proceed with the rest of the build process.</p>



<p>The problem we faced — even after contacting AWS support — while instrumenting our container, was that the AWS X-Ray SDK for Go was failing to ship the trace data to the X-Ray daemon before the container would shutdown (even after closing our segments).</p>



<h2>Try, try again (maybe?)</h2>



<p>We tried a number of different tactics, ranging from sending the data to the X-Ray daemon running in our account manually to adding cool down periods for the container to allowing the X-Ray client to configure itself using the AWS metadata endpoint. </p>



<p>After a number of hours (a number that I&#8217;m ashamed to admit to) I finally thought &#8211; &#8220;What if I marshal the segment data structure and use the Go SDK for the actual AWS X-Ray service?&#8221;</p>



<h2>EUREKA!</h2>



<p>One commit later, instantiating the AWS X-Ray service client, marshaling the segment data, and using the <code>PutTraceSegments</code> method, we had data coming into AWS X-Ray!</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1402" height="488" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-159" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-7.png 1402w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-7-768x267.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1402px) 100vw, 1402px" /><figcaption>(Proof it worked)</figcaption></figure>



<h2>Thoughts on the journey</h2>



<h3>What did we learn?</h3>



<p>I&#8217;m still trying to figure out how to answer this one; but, I think the main thing here is to not forget about the AWS SDK for your respective language if you&#8217;re in a tight spot.</p>



<h3>What was the root cause?</h3>



<p>Unsure. AWS support and I parted ways with the support technician also confused about why we weren&#8217;t seeing transaction data. We looked at everything from VPC configurations to IAM permissions to Cloudtrail to sanity check we didn&#8217;t miss anything. Everything we looked at came up empty.</p>



<h3>Why did we use X-Ray over the other solutions for APM?</h3>



<p>X-Ray has some magic sauce baked into X-Ray that lets them easily wrap AWS clients and see the transactions we make with the various AWS services. We found that New Relic failed to provide clear documentation so that was a huge no-go for us. DataDog, on the other hand required additional infrastructure and that seems unnecessary so that was also a no-go.</p>



<p>Besides that cost of X-Ray was a factor. <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/xray/pricing/">X-Ray has a perpetual free tier.</a> So that&#8217;s pretty sweet. And then beyond that (as of the date of writing this) it costs $5 for each million traces sent to X-Ray.</p>



<h3>Final Thought</h3>



<p>I find instrumenting containers extremely frustrating at times. Perhaps it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s a weak spot in my technical abilities. So if you have any insight about how you&#8217;d have fixed our problem, shoot me an email at <a href="mailto:eherbert@atomizedhq.com">eherbert@atomizedhq.com</a>. </p>


Instrumenting short-lived containers with AWS X-Ray


<p>One of the most amazing services in AWS is Route 53. Route 53, named aptly for the port that DNS typically uses (port 53), is the service that AWS uses to host DNS zones and their associated records. They basically took DNS and put it on steroids.</p>



<p>In this post, we&#8217;ll go through the steps to setup a new Route 53 Zone and an associated ACM record (SSL Certificate).</p>



<p><strong>Why are we creating a Route 53 zone and creating the ACM certificate in the same tutorial?</strong> In this tutorial, we&#8217;re using DNS validation for the certificates to make sure our certificates are able to renew automatically and this is honestly the easiest way to do it. 🤷‍♂️</p>



<p><em>As a note:</em> Route 53 is extremely cheap, costing $0.50 per month (for the first 25 zones, $0.10 thereafter). ACM on the other hand is free, so it&#8217;s ideal for sharing your content to the world.</p>



<p><strong><em>FYI </em></strong><em><strong>If you use Route 53 to buy your domain, you can skip this first section.</strong></em></p>



<h2>Creating the Route 53 Zone</h2>



<p>Without going into a ton of detail, think of Route 53 zones as the umbrella that all records fall under.</p>



<p>Take a look at the Route 53 console: </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-82" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure>



<p>Click &#8220;Create hosted zone&#8221;. When you do this, you&#8217;ll be sent to a pretty simple form. You&#8217;ll enter the domain name that bought from the domain registrar of your choice. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-3 is-cropped"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1.png" alt="" data-id="88" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=88" class="wp-image-88" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2.png" alt="" data-id="90" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=90" class="wp-image-90" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4.png" alt="" data-id="94" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=94" class="wp-image-94" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li></ul></figure>



<p>Once you&#8217;ve filled out the form, you&#8217;ll see a confirmation. Awesome! </p>



<p>Notice that there are a few records already in your new zone. Make a note of the first record in the list the &#8220;NS&#8221; record. You&#8217;ll want to save the values in that record for later.</p>



<h3>Delegating the Route 53 Zone</h3>



<p>If you didn&#8217;t use Route 53 as your DNS registrar, you&#8217;ll need to &#8220;delegate the zone.&#8221; <strong>But what does that mean? </strong></p>



<p>So basically, you need to let the registrar you used to buy your domain know that the zone you just created is legit. So login to your registrar and add a NS Record with the values that you saved from the previous step. </p>



<p>It could take several hours (up to 72 hours) for your AWS zone to start being recognized by the rest of the internet.</p>



<p>An easy way to tell if your Route 53 zone is to use a command like dig, for example:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>dig +short NS google.com</code></pre>



<p>If the response is what you took note of when we created the Route 53 zone, you&#8217;re ready for the next step.</p>



<h2>Creating your ACM Certificate</h2>



<p>Now that your Route 53 zone has been created, you&#8217;re able to create your ACM certificate. </p>



<p>Now, buckle up, because this process is &#8230;. cumbersome to say the least.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1622" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-768x519.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-1536x1038.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-2048x1384.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-1568x1060.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure>



<p>From the getting started page of the Certificate Manager, click &#8220;Get started&#8221; under <strong>Provision certificates</strong>. (Private certificates are pretty expensive, so be sure to not do that one unless you really mean to.)</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-100" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure>



<p>We&#8217;ll be creating a public certificate for this, so make sure the public certificate option is selected and click &#8220;Request a certificate&#8221;.</p>



<p>In the page that comes up next, you&#8217;ll enter the domain you initially registered. As an added bonus, we can create something known as a wildcard certificate: all you have to do is add <code>*.</code> to the front of the domain. (See the screenshot below as an example)</p>



<p><strong>Wildcard certificates allow you encrypt traffic for any domain that is a single level down from the domain you registered. </strong>For instance, if you create a certificate for *.eddie.com it will cover anything like <code>example.eddie.com</code>. <strong>NOTE:</strong> If you try to use that same certificate for a domain like <code>website.example.eddie.com</code> the certificate will show up as invalid. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1676" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-108" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2-768x536.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2-1536x1073.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2-2048x1430.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-2-1568x1095.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure>



<p>Once you add the domains to that form, click &#8220;Next&#8221;. You&#8217;ll then be prompted with how you want to validate your certificate. We&#8217;re going to choose the DNS validation option because that&#8217;s the best way to not have to worry about it later. One the next page you can, optionally, add any tags you want.</p>



<p>As a final gut check, after you add your tags (or skip that step), make sure the details of the certificate you&#8217;re creating is valid. If so, click &#8220;Confirm and request&#8221;.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-3 is-cropped"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3.png" alt="" data-id="110" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=110" class="wp-image-110" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-3-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4.png" alt="" data-id="114" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=114" class="wp-image-114" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-4-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1600" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5.png" alt="" data-id="116" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=116" class="wp-image-116" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5-768x512.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-5-1568x1045.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li></ul></figure>



<p>On the next page, you&#8217;ll see a page that lets you know your certificate has been requested. All the statuses should show as &#8220;Pending Validation&#8221;. </p>



<p>Click on the domain without the <code>*.</code> and you&#8217;ll see a button and some DNS records show up. AWS gives you the option to add the records manually, or you can click the shiny blue button and let AWS do the work. For this, what do you think we&#8217;re going to do? <em><strong>Click the blue button</strong> <strong>because that makes our lives easier.</strong></em> </p>



<p>Once clicked, you&#8217;ll be asked to confirm our choice. &#8220;Duh, AWS. Quick slowing us down!&#8221;</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-2 is-cropped"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="1371" height="1111" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-7-edited.png" alt="" data-id="120" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-7-edited.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/console-aws_-amazon-com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-7-2/" class="wp-image-120" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-7-edited.png 1371w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-7-edited-768x622.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1371px) 100vw, 1371px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="2400" height="1946" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8.png" alt="" data-id="122" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=122" class="wp-image-122" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8.png 2400w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8-768x623.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8-1536x1245.png 1536w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8-2048x1661.png 2048w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/console.aws_.amazon.com_acm_home_regionus-east-1-8-1568x1271.png 1568w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></figure></li></ul></figure>



<p>Once we&#8217;ve confirmed that we were sure we didn&#8217;t want to deal with the extra steps of creating the DNS records, you&#8217;ll see a confirmation message, letting you know that the certificate is being validated and could take up to 30 minutes.</p>



<p>At this point, it&#8217;s a game of luck; sometimes it&#8217;s almost instantaneous, other times, you have to wait a while. If you click &#8220;Continue&#8221; you&#8217;ll be sent to the ACM dashboard where you can see all your certificates. You&#8217;ll notice that until the DNS validation is completed, the certificate statuses will be listed as &#8220;Pending validation&#8221;.</p>



<p><strong>Disclaimer: </strong>Until the status changes to &#8220;Issued&#8221; your certificate will not be usable with the services in AWS.</p>



<h2>Summary</h2>



<p>At this point that&#8217;s about it. Obviously, I&#8217;d recommend that you automate all of that one way or another. </p>



<p><em><strong>As of the date I&#8217;m writing this article, Atomized is working towards building out our &#8220;Greenfield Account Setup&#8221; which essentially takes all those steps and only asks you for your hostname.</strong> </em>Once you provide us with that information, we&#8217;ll build out the necessary pieces to have your account ready to go with a new Route 53 zone and a new shiny ACM certificate that you don&#8217;t have to mess with (well, because, automation). Greenfield Account Setup will also be able to assist with the creation of the networking within your account.</p>



<p>Interested in learning more about how Atomized can help make deploying to AWS easier? Reach out to us at <a href="mailto:hello@atomizedhq.com">hello@atomizedhq.com</a> or shoot us a chat message from this website. </p>


Adding Hosted Zones to Route 53 and Creating ACM Certificates


<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1294" height="792" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-04-08-at-12.41.28-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-75" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-04-08-at-12.41.28-PM.png 1294w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-04-08-at-12.41.28-PM-768x470.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1294px) 100vw, 1294px" /></figure>



<p>The last couple of months here have been exciting. The team has been working hard on wrapping up features, fixing bugs, and get the platform ready. Today is the day we are excited to announce the Atomized platform&#8217;s general availability &#8211; <strong>our version 1.0</strong>!</p>



<h2>Brief History</h2>



<p>In January of 2020, I took the plunge and went full-time working on my startup &#8211; Frontline. Frontline&#8217;s goal was to help companies become compliant faster by providing hardened, compliance-ready environments in AWS.</p>



<p>I was so convinced of what I was building that I decided to apply to Y Combinator as a solo founder. I somehow got an interview, and I got into the Summer 2020 batch. To a complete outsider of Silicon Valley, this was a fantastic opportunity.</p>



<p>After YC&#8217;s Demo Day &#8211; we raised some capital, but I had doubts about the company and if what we&#8217;re building would matter. Our revenue stagnated, we lost one of our significant customers. I was exhausted.⁣ And yet, something pushed me to go back and try again.</p>



<p>In December, it became clear &#8211; we needed to evolve. I decided to lock our team in a conference room for a week and brainstorm on our evolution. That week was one of the most productive weeks I have had in a long time.</p>



<p>Once we figured out what we needed to build, on January 4th &#8211; we got straight to work. In three weeks, we built our MVP. Each team member worked 10+ hours daily, including the weekends. Our MVP provided valuable feedback, and we continued conversations with several of our users.</p>



<p>Today is the day we are excited to announce the general availability of the Atomized platform! Now on to the product!</p>



<h2>Atomized</h2>



<p>Atomized is a platform-as-a-service that enables developers to launch and maintain their application infrastructure fast.</p>



<p>We love the cloud and believe it is amazing. But it&#8217;s becoming more and more complex every single year. You need to spend a lot of time and effort to set up the workflow and processes required to build, deploy, and maintain your infrastructure. As you scale, it becomes worse when your company has hundreds, if not thousands, of infrastructure pieces to maintain. There has to be a better way. And there is.</p>



<p>With Atomized, we want to enable developers to focus on the application code while we manage the rest.</p>



<h2>How it works</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Atomized Deploy Demo" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PHg7UjEbUPA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div><figcaption>Quick demo on deploying a static site</figcaption></figure>



<p>Our complete focus is on making the experience as easy as possible. Launching your applications with Atomized is as easy as 1, 2, 3.</p>



<ol><li>Connect &#8211; We&#8217;ll help you easily connect your Github and AWS accounts to the Atomized platform.</li><li>Select &#8211; You&#8217;ll select which repository you want to deploy and answer a few questions.</li><li>Deploy &#8211; That&#8217;s it! We automatically set up your CI/CD pipeline, will deploy based on your settings, and provide options to revert as needed.</li></ol>



<p>We don&#8217;t introduce unnecessary Kubernetes clusters in your account. We don&#8217;t force you to install another CLI tool to get simple things done. Nothing to install or maintain. <strong>Just connect and start deploying!</strong></p>



<p>The best part is that all the infrastructure runs in your AWS account, and you have full ownership and visibility into it. No more black boxes that you can&#8217;t troubleshoot and manage. If you ever decide to leave our platform, your infrastructure stays with you and will still be running.</p>



<h2>Here&#8217;s what you can deploy today</h2>



<p><strong>Static Sites &#8211;</strong> Static sites are sites that don&#8217;t contain any dynamic server-side functionality. With Atomized, we automatically detect your package manager, set up a CI/CD pipeline for you, build your site, and host it, all under five minutes. It&#8217;s like Netlify but runs in your cloud provider without the complexity.</p>



<p><strong>Containers &#8211;</strong> Containers are packaged applications with all necessary dependencies, allowing applications to run quickly and are infinitely scalable. With Atomized, we build your containers and ship them to a registry where they can be pulled and launched.</p>



<p><strong>Databases &#8211;</strong> Databases allow you to store and retrieve information. With Atomized, we make it easy to spin up the databases you need that are highly available and highly performant.</p>



<h2>Our Offer</h2>



<p>We&#8217;d love for you to take a look! It&#8217;s free to get started with Atomized!</p>



<p>To our early users, if you subscribe to the Developer Pro and Team plans, your price will be locked in for life. This is a limited offer that will run through May 2021.</p>



<h2>Long Term Vision</h2>



<p>We want to empower engineers to build, deploy, secure, and monitor infrastructure faster than ever. Our long-term vision is to be the go-to platform to get started and to be able to manage all things cloud &#8211; no matter which cloud provider you choose.</p>



<p>We believe in the power of simplicity. It helps things get done faster. Atomized will be the best long-term choice for companies.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re looking forward to seeing developers launch faster!</p>



<p>Thank you, </p>



<p>Nik, Eddie, and the team</p>


Introducing Atomized – fastest platform to deploy application infrastructure


<p>So I&#8217;m assuming you&#8217;re here, reading this guide, because you&#8217;ve finished writing your frontend application. If so, awesome! If not, fret not, we have a demo application you can use as a starting point.</p>



<p>AWS is complex, beautiful, yet sometimes sadistic (obviously I say that with love). One of my favorite features in AWS is the seamless integration between Cloudfront and S3. To top it off, using Cloudfront and S3 is the cheapest way to host your static site in AWS. And considering how cheap it is, the way that it propagates your application around the world and guarantees high availability it&#8217;s a steal.</p>



<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<h2 class="has-large-font-size">Where do you even begin?</h2>



<p>If you&#8217;re new to AWS or new to Cloudfront and S3, I&#8217;m going to walk you through the basics. <strong>So let&#8217;s get started!</strong></p>



<h3 id="prereq">Prerequisites</h3>



<p>We&#8217;re going into this walk through assuming you already have a Route53 Zone and an ACM Certificate configured in your account. No? <a href="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/adding-hosted-zones-to-route-53-and-creating-acm-certificates/" data-type="post" data-id="81">Learn how to add a Route53 Zone and an ACM certificate</a></p>



<h3>Preparing your S3 Bucket</h3>



<p>To host your website, you&#8217;re going to need to store your built assets somewhere.</p>



<p>The first thing you&#8217;ll need to do is create your S3 bucket. <strong>You&#8217;re strongly encouraged to block public access so your bucket can&#8217;t be hijacked and abused by other people.</strong> Keep in mind when you name it, the name has to be unique across <em>all </em>AWS &#8211; so if you try naming your bucket something like &#8220;test-bucket&#8221; it probably won&#8217;t work.</p>



<p>Likewise, I also recommend encrypting <em>all the things</em> just to add another layer of protection. If you choose to encrypt your resources, ensure you do not encrypt your bucket with SSE-KMS because that will prevent Cloudfront from being able to read the resources.</p>



<p>Once your bucket is created you&#8217;ll need to add a S3 Bucket Policy. But more on that later.</p>



<p>Checkout the screenshots below for an example:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="810" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1024x810-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-33" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1024x810-1.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1024x810-1-300x237.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1024x810-1-768x608.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="445" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1024x445-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-21" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1024x445-1.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1024x445-1-300x130.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-1-1024x445-1-768x334.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<h3>Setting up Cloudfront</h3>



<h4>Configuring the origin</h4>



<p>When you hop over to Cloudfront in the console, create a new Cloudfront distribution. You&#8217;ll specify the origin domain name (which would be the DNS name that the S3 bucket we created was assigned). Cloudfront will provide you with a dropdown typeahead field to select the S3 bucket from. </p>



<p>Origin ID should be generated for you, as this is just the label we&#8217;re giving to name the Cloudfront Origin. You&#8217;ll also want to say yes to Restrict Bucket Access. When you say yes, some new fields will show up. </p>



<p>Origin access identity is essentially the key that Cloudfront uses to access S3 bucket objects and serve your site to the world. So we definitely need that. You can likely leave the generated comment as well. AWS actually makes the next part easy: If you choose the option &#8220;Yes, Update Bucket Policy&#8221;, AWS will configure the Bucket Policy for you and that simplifies things a bit.</p>



<p>If you keep on going through the form, you&#8217;ll get to the default cache behavior section. Basically this is the configuration that lets Cloudfront know how, what, and when to cache your objects but it also has a bunch of other nifty settings in it and we&#8217;ll go through that next.</p>



<h4>Configuring the default cache behavior for Cloudfront</h4>



<p>So, to say that using SSL (using the <code>https</code> a URL) is a normal thing nowadays would almost be as obvious as saying the sky is blue on a clear day. Because we want to keep our users and their information safe, we&#8217;re going to want to make sure that when the users arrive, they get redirected to a secure version of your site. To do this, you&#8217;ll want to set the View Protocol Policy to &#8220;Redirect HTTP to HTTPS&#8221;.  So basically if a user shows up at http://my-awesome-site.example they&#8217;d get redirected to https://my-awesome-site.example. </p>



<p>For most static sites, you can leave the Allow HTTP Method as &#8220;GET, HEAD&#8221;. </p>



<p>Keep scrolling and you&#8217;ll get to a field called &#8220;Compress Objects Automatically&#8221; and there you&#8217;ll want to say &#8220;Yes&#8221; because it will help reduce the load time for your users.</p>



<h4>Last few Cloudfront settings</h4>



<p>You can probably leave the price class as is, as it&#8217;s not really that big of a difference in price. </p>



<p>So if you have the prerequisites mentioned above done, you can define a domain in the Alternate Domain Names field and you can select a SSL Certificate that corresponds with the domain you specified.</p>



<p>There is one setting in this section you&#8217;ll want to change and that&#8217;s the Default Root Object. Put <code>index.html</code> in that field (or whatever the default HTML page is going to be).</p>



<p>Scroll all the way to the bottom and click &#8220;Create Distribution&#8221;.</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s a few screenshots for reference:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-3 is-cropped"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="622" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1-1024x622.png" alt="" data-id="35" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=35" class="wp-image-35" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1-1024x622.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1-300x182.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1-768x467.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2021-03-26-at-9.50.48-PM-1.png 1422w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="673" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-1024x673.png" alt="" data-id="23" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=23" class="wp-image-23" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-1024x673.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-300x197.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2-768x505.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-2.png 1388w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="517" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-1024x517.png" alt="" data-id="25" data-full-url="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3.png" data-link="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/?attachment_id=25" class="wp-image-25" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-1024x517.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-300x152.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3-768x388.png 768w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-3.png 1370w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li></ul></figure>



<h4>Configuring Error Pages</h4>



<p>Once your distribution is created click the Distribution ID and open up the distribution settings page. Click on the Error Pages tab.</p>



<p>We need to let Cloudfront know where to send traffic if there&#8217;s an issue loading something. So click the &#8220;Create Custom Error Response&#8221; button and let&#8217;s do this:</p>



<p>We need to configure error handling for two specific responses &#8211; 404 and 403. In both cases, we want the traffic to be sent to <code>index.html</code> with a 200 response code.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="563" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1024x563-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-27" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1024x563-1.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1024x563-1-300x165.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-4-1024x563-1-768x422.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<h3>Configure DNS</h3>



<p>Now that your infrastructure is up, we need to point your domain to the Cloudfront distribution.</p>



<p>Go into Route 53 and add a new record. You&#8217;ll need to set the record name to match the alternative domain name you specified in the Cloudfront config. From there, you will click the &#8220;Alias&#8221; toggle. </p>



<p>That will modify the form a bit. Under &#8220;Route traffic to&#8221; you&#8217;ll select &#8220;Alias to Cloudfront Distribution&#8221; in the first drop down then you&#8217;ll select the region you&#8217;re using and created the Cloudfront distribution in. From there, you&#8217;ll search and select the Cloudfront distribution that corresponds to the distribution we created.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="351" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1024x351-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1024x351-1.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1024x351-1-300x103.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-5-1024x351-1-768x263.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<h3>Deploy your assets</h3>



<p>Now that our infrastructure is built we can upload our code to the S3 bucket we created.</p>



<p>Go into the S3 bucket and click &#8220;Upload&#8221;. You can drag and drop all the files from your build folder into the browser. You&#8217;ll just want to ensure that your <code>index.html</code> is in the root of the bucket to match the Cloudfront config that we defined earlier.</p>



<h3>Validate your application is up</h3>



<p>That&#8217;s it. We&#8217;re done. You should be able to go to the domain you specified in the Alternate Domain Name field.</p>



<p>If we did everything right, you should see your application. </p>



<h2>Deploying your site with Atomized</h2>



<p>We took <em>all</em> the steps above and simplified them into one simple form with at most 7 fields to fill out. </p>



<p>You&#8217;ll define your application name, description, the Github organization, and the Github repo where your code lives.</p>



<p><strong>Optional: </strong>If you want to attach your own domain, you can pick the Route 53 zone from a list. Once you select a hosted zone,  you&#8217;ll select the ACM certificate that corresponds to the domain you want to assign the site to. Finally, you&#8217;ll enter in the full domain for the domain — just make sure it is a domain that is included in the ACM certificate.</p>



<p>Click the Deploy button and you&#8217;re done. We&#8217;ll start deploying the application and building out the infrastructure for you.</p>



<p>You&#8217;ll then be able to watch the deployment process live and it will turn out like this: </p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="555" src="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-6-1024x555-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31" srcset="https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-6-1024x555-1.png 1024w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-6-1024x555-1-300x163.png 300w, https://wp.atomizedhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image-6-1024x555-1-768x416.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<p></p>
</div></div>


Blog

Announcing the new Atomized User Experience

Instrumenting short-lived containers with AWS X-Ray

Adding Hosted Zones to Route 53 and Creating ACM Certificates

Introducing Atomized – fastest platform to deploy application infrastructure

Deploying static sites on AWS

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