I remember having to terminate an entire Amazon EC2 instance because I somehow lost access to it via SSH. Well, looking back, termination really wasn’t necessary. Using the simple process described here, you can easily regain access to the AWS EC2 instance that you locked yourself out of.
Linux & Servers
Adding A Swap File To An “EBS Only” Amazon EC2 Instance
My previous article on the subject of adding a swap file to an Amazon EC2 instance focused on adding the swap file to the instance storage (also known as ephemeral storage) that comes with certain Amazon EC2 instances. This article discusses how you can still leverage the concept of swap files even on “EBS only” Amazon EC2 instances.
How To Shrink Amazon EBS Volumes (Root Or Non-Root)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) makes it very easy to expand EBS volumes. You just right-click on the volume, select modify, and enter the new, larger volume size. Done. To shrink Amazon EBS volumes, however, is a whole different matter – there is no way to do this directly using the AWS console. In this article, I describe a roundabout technique that I have often used to save some bucks in scenarios where I mistakenly over-allocated Amazon EBS when setting up EC2.
Connect To Amazon RDS (Or Any Database) Using HeidiSQL Via SSH Tunneling
Connecting to databases via SSH Tunneling is something developers and IT professionals often need to do. And HeidiSQL is one of the more popular open-source database tools. While HeidiSQL fully supports SSH tunneling, there doesn’t seem to be any documentation about how to accomplish this. So, after struggling with this for a few hours and figuring it out, I put these instructions together to help others.
Credential encryption and security in MOF files
PowerShell desired state configuration scripts often request user credentials which then need to be stored in some form in the output MOF files. Since you never want to save passwords as clear text, this article explains how you can keep passwords secure and encrypted inside your MOF files.
PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC): An Introduction
I have been playing a lot with PowerShell desired state configuration (DSC) recently and so, I decided to write an introductory post on it. In this article, I explain at a high level what PowerShell DSC is all about. And then, I provide a simple example that demonstrates at a basic level how PowerShell desired state configuration works.
