SRJahirTech

DevOps Roadmap -- Part 11: Cloud Platforms for DevOps

By Suraj Ahir 2025-11-24 11 min read

The cloud has fundamentally changed infrastructure. Instead of buying servers and waiting weeks for them to arrive, you provision them in seconds via API. Instead of managing physical networks, you define them in code. DevOps engineers need to understand cloud platforms deeply -- not just how to click through a console, but how to architect, automate, and operate cloud infrastructure at scale.

AWS Core Services for DevOps

# Compute
EC2          - Virtual machines (instances)
ECS          - Container service (Docker at scale)
EKS          - Managed Kubernetes
Lambda       - Serverless functions
Fargate      - Serverless containers (no EC2 management)

# Storage
S3           - Object storage (static files, backups, artifacts)
EBS          - Block storage attached to EC2 instances
EFS          - Shared file system for multiple instances
ECR          - Docker image registry

# Database
RDS          - Managed relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
DynamoDB     - NoSQL key-value store
ElastiCache  - Managed Redis/Memcached

# Networking
VPC          - Virtual private cloud (your isolated network)
ALB/NLB      - Load balancers
Route 53     - DNS management
CloudFront   - CDN

# DevOps Services
CodePipeline - CI/CD
CodeBuild    - Build service
CloudWatch   - Monitoring and logging
IAM          - Identity and access management

IAM Best Practices

# Never use root account for daily work
# Create IAM users with minimum required permissions
# Use IAM roles for EC2 instances and CI/CD (not access keys)

# Example IAM policy for S3 read-only access
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [{
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:ListBucket"],
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket",
            "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*"
        ]
    }]
}

# AWS CLI -- use named profiles
aws configure --profile production
aws s3 ls --profile production

# Check current identity
aws sts get-caller-identity

Cost Optimisation Strategies

# EC2 cost savings
Reserved Instances  -- 1-3 year commitment, 30-60% savings
Spot Instances      -- 70-90% savings, can be interrupted
Auto Scaling        -- Scale down when load is low

# Right-sizing
# Monitor CPU/memory utilisation
# Downsize underutilised instances
aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics     --metric-name CPUUtilization     --namespace AWS/EC2     --statistics Average     --period 3600     --start-time 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z     --end-time 2026-01-07T00:00:00Z     --dimensions Name=InstanceId,Value=i-1234567890

# S3 cost savings
# Set lifecycle rules to move old data to Glacier
# Delete incomplete multipart uploads
# Enable S3 Intelligent Tiering for access pattern uncertainty

Frequently Asked Questions

In Part 12, we build a complete DevOps project bringing together everything from this series: CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and monitoring.

Written by

Suraj Ahir

Cloud & DevOps engineer running four live production services on my own AWS infrastructure. I write everything on this site myself — no ghostwriters, no AI filler.

More about me → GitHub LinkedIn

AWS Cost Optimisation for DevOps Teams

# 1. Use Spot Instances for non-critical workloads
# 70-90% cheaper than On-Demand
# Good for: CI/CD runners, batch processing, dev environments
resource "aws_spot_fleet_request" "ci_runners" {
  allocation_strategy = "diversified"
  spot_price         = "0.05"
  iam_fleet_role     = aws_iam_role.fleet.arn
  target_capacity    = 2
  
  launch_specification {
    instance_type = "t3.medium"
    ami           = data.aws_ami.ubuntu.id
  }
}

# 2. Reserved Instances for stable workloads
# 1-year commitment: 30-40% discount
# 3-year commitment: 50-60% discount
# Use Compute Savings Plans for flexibility

# 3. S3 lifecycle policies for storage cost
resource "aws_s3_bucket_lifecycle_configuration" "logs" {
  bucket = aws_s3_bucket.logs.id
  rule {
    id     = "archive-and-expire"
    status = "Enabled"
    transition {
      days          = 30
      storage_class = "STANDARD_IA"
    }
    transition {
      days          = 90
      storage_class = "GLACIER"
    }
    expiration {
      days = 365
    }
  }
}

Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

# RDS Multi-Region Read Replica (becomes primary on failover)
aws rds create-db-instance-read-replica   --db-instance-identifier mydb-dr   --source-db-instance-identifier mydb   --source-region us-east-1   --region ap-south-1

# S3 Cross-Region Replication
aws s3api put-bucket-replication   --bucket source-bucket   --replication-configuration file://replication.json

# Route 53 health check failover
resource "aws_route53_record" "primary" {
  failover_routing_policy { type = "PRIMARY" }
  health_check_id = aws_route53_health_check.primary.id
  set_identifier  = "primary"
}