I like to automate things! There’s this great feeling you get when you set things up to run without manual intervention. It just makes you feel “powerful”. I have scripts and code pieces to backup stuff like Microsoft SQL Server Databases (see my post on Backing up SQL Server to Dropbox), MySQL Databases, entire cloud machines, entire websites, and/or selected folder(s) within a directory.
Linux & Servers
What is life without Linux? Browse this category to explore content I have created relating to Linux and Servers. This section is pretty broad. It promises content on Ubuntu, cloud VMs, server automation, bash scripting, PowerShell, system/website administration, AWS, etc. Watch this space for my existing and future content on the aforementioned technologies.
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.
Working With The .htaccess File
If you have done any web development or website maintenance work, then you must have come across the .htaccess file at some point. This is an important file for many reasons and this guide will provide an overview of what the .htaccess file is, what you can do with it, how to create it, and options available to you for editing it on your WordPress website.
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.
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.