Aws
Multi-Region Resilience: Patterns and Pitfalls
Multi-region architectures are more accessible than ever, but the operational and cost realities still surprise teams. Here are the patterns that work, the pitfalls that show up consistently, and a framework for deciding what level of multi-region you actually need.
Migrating from Heroku to AWS: A 2026 Playbook
An updated playbook for migrating Heroku applications to AWS, drawing on lessons from the Firstech migration and several engagements since. The mechanics have stabilized; the tradeoffs have shifted.
AI Agents in Your DevOps Workflow: What Actually Works
After a year of operating AI agents in DevOps workflows, we have a clearer picture of where they earn their keep and where they create more risk than value. Here's what's actually worked.
State of AWS DevOps, 2026 Edition
A year-ahead look at where AWS DevOps practice is heading: the patterns we expect to be standard by year-end, the ones that won't pan out, and what teams should invest in now.
re:Invent 2025: The DevOps Highlights
Our take on re:Invent 2025 - the announcements that matter for AWS DevOps teams heading into 2026, organized by the impact on day-to-day work.
re:Invent 2025 Preview: What We're Watching
A short preview of the announcement areas we expect to define re:Invent 2025, and the questions we'll be evaluating each one against.
What ECS Actually Costs: Real Numbers from Real Workloads
ECS pricing pages tell you the unit costs. They don't tell you what the bill actually looks like once a workload is running for a year. Here are anonymized numbers from three real client workloads, and the cost levers that mattered most.
Self-Hosting WordPress on AWS: Three Architectures Compared
We've helped clients run WordPress on AWS in three distinct architectures: Lightsail for simplicity, our marketplace pattern for production workloads, and fully custom designs for the largest sites. Here's an honest comparison of where each fits.
re:Inforce 2025: The Boring Security Wins
re:Inforce is where the unglamorous, load-bearing security improvements get announced. Here are the four updates from this year that we think are worth your team's attention.
GitOps with CloudFormation: How We Run It
GitOps usually gets discussed in the context of Kubernetes. We've been running a GitOps approach with CloudFormation for years across our marketplace patterns and client engagements - here's the structure that works.
Bedrock Agents in Production: Lessons from the Field
Six months of running Bedrock Agents in client production environments has taught us where they shine, where they fail, and what operational disciplines you need in place before turning them on.
Aurora DSQL Is GA: What We Found in Our Pilot
Aurora DSQL went GA on May 27, 2025. We've been running it in a pilot for a few months. Here's what held up, what surprised us, and how our recommendation has shifted since the March decision-framework post.
ECS, EKS, or Lambda in 2025: A Decision Framework
The 2020-era heuristics for choosing between ECS, EKS, and Lambda no longer hold. Fargate pricing has changed, ECS has closed feature gaps with EKS, and Lambda's payload limits keep loosening. Here's how we think about the choice today.
When Distributed SQL Is the Right Answer (and When It Isn't)
Aurora DSQL fills a real gap in the AWS database lineup, but distributed SQL isn't the right default. Here's the decision framework we use with clients to figure out where it fits.
Adding Amazon Q Developer to Your CodePipeline
A practical walk-through for putting Amazon Q Developer to work inside CodePipeline - reviewing CloudFormation diffs in pull requests, flagging IAM regressions, and where we draw the line between assistance and automation.
S3 Tables: Should You Migrate Your Data Lake?
S3 Tables is AWS's managed Apache Iceberg service. Whether to migrate depends on how much Iceberg operational work you're already doing, and how much of your stack is locked into Glue.
re:Invent 2024: A DevOps Engineer's Take
Cutting through the noise of re:Invent 2024: the five announcements we think actually matter for the day-to-day work of running production workloads on AWS.
Using Amazon Q Developer to Write CloudFormation
Amazon Q Developer is a useful pair-programmer for CloudFormation, but it has rough edges around recent API changes and IAM scoping. Here's how we've been integrating it into our IaC workflow.
Case Study: Firstech - Amazon Aurora Migration
Firstech is an award-winning maker of automotive electronics. As part of their marketing presence, Firstech hosted a collection of 11 microsites for marketing, customer management and support on Heroku. Ordinary Experts migrated these applications to AWS on Elastic Container Service using AWS Copilot. This solution consolidated the microsite’s infrastructure management and billing with Firstech’s primary product application on AWS, reduced hosting costs, ensured containerization best practices and expedited migration efforts.
New CONSUL DEMOCRACY AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has launched CONSUL DEMOCRACY on AWS Marketplace: a seamless CloudFormation template and custom AMI, enabling easy deployment of production-ready CONSUL DEMOCRACY sites. Join the revolution now, with scalability, security, and cost-optimization on AWS.
New Discourse AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has launched Discourse on AWS Marketplace: a seamless CloudFormation template and custom AMI, enabling easy deployment of production-ready Discourse sites for unparalleled visual storytelling experiences. Join the revolution now, with scalability, security, and cost-optimization on AWS.
Major Updates to WordPress Pattern
Ordinary Experts has launched a major update to its WordPress pattern, removing Bedrock to facilitate a more WordPress friendly developer workflow.
AWS Summit Los Angeles
We attended the AWS Summit Los Angeles and learned about the AI offerings that AWS has developed, like Q and Bedrock. AI seems poised to grow tremenously over the next years, and AWS is leveraging its strong security foundations to enable companies to take advantage of AI in a secure way.
New Zulip AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has launched a new AWS Marketplace product specifically designed for Zulip, an open-source team chat solution.
New PeerTube AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has launched a new AWS Marketplace product specifically designed for PeerTube, featuring decentralized video hosting, with enhanced transcoding through FFMPEG 6 integration and support for AWS Graviton instances.
New Pixelfed AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has launched Pixelfed on AWS Marketplace: a seamless CloudFormation template and custom AMI, enabling easy deployment of production-ready Pixelfed sites for unparalleled visual storytelling experiences. Join the revolution now, with scalability, security, and cost-optimization on AWS.
New release of Mastodon AWS Marketplace Product
Ordinary Experts has released a new AWS Marketplace Product - a production-ready Mastodon setup. Quickly and easily set up your own Mastodon instance on the AWS cloud.
New version 2.0.0 of Drupal AWS Marketplace Product
New version 2.0.0 of the OE Drupal AWS Marketplace Product adds AWS Backup and Lifecycle Management support for EFS, upgrades to Ubuntu 20.04, and upgrades default Drupal install to 9.4.5.
Is fear keeping you away from the Cloud?
If you're worried and still unsure about cloud migration, here's some common fears and why you should move past them.
New version 1.3.0 of WordPress Bedrock AWS Marketplace Product
New version 1.3.0 of the WordPress Bedrock AWS Marketplace Product adds AWS Backup and Lifecycle Management support for EFS, parameterizes RDS retention period, and upgrades default WordPress install to 5.8.
AWS to use 100% renewable energy by 2025
Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019 to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2040, and AWS has recently announced they will be meeting that goal 15 years early in 2025!
New version 2.2.0 of Jitsi Meet AWS Marketplace Product
New version 2.2.0 of Jitsi Meet AWS Marketplace Product upgrades Jitsi Meet to stable release version 2.0.6726, which contains fixes for log4j security flaw.
Ordinary Experts publishes WordPress Bedrock AWS Marketplace Product
New pattern offers production-ready CICD-enabled AWS setup with WordPress Bedrock, a developer-friendly WordPress sub-project.
Ordinary Experts publishes Drupal and Jitsi AWS Marketplace Products
Ordinary Experts publishes Drupal and Jitsi AWS Marketplace Products
Ordinary Experts Advanced Consulting Partner Plaque
Ordinary Experts displays its new AWS Advanced Consulting Partner Plaque.
Ordinary Experts achieves AWS CloudFormation Service Delivery Designation
Ordinary Experts attains AWS CloudFormation Service Delivery Designation - showcasing our proven ability to deliver advanced CloudFormation based AWS solutions.
Evolution of a S3 Bucket in CloudFormation
In this blog, we'll walk through setting up a S3 bucket with CloudFormation. We'll start with a simple resource and work up to a more real-life example with support for versioning, encryption, and preventing any objects from becoming public.
Case Study: Complete Recycling
The Complete Recycling Customer Portal is a business application that allows Complete Recycling’s customers to submit requests for service, then connects those requests to service providers. The Complete Recycling Customer Portal manages the lifecycle of the customer’s service requests, from scheduling to fulfillment and invoicing. The Complete Recycling Customer Portal also integrates with Complete Recycling’s accounting solution to sync invoices and other accounting transactions.
Better CodePipeline S3 Source Metadata
By setting the 'codepipeline-artifact-revision-summary' metadata key when uploading a build artifact to S3, you can get nicer source metadata information from AWS CodePipeline.
Using AWS Vault to authenticate to AWS CodeCommit
If you already use AWS Vault, you can use it to more securely and easily clone AWS CodeCommit repositories.
Ordinary Experts achieves AWS Advanced Consulting Partner
Today we have been recognized as an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, the third of four tiers in the AWS Partner Program!
Case Study: J1SIM Cards
The J1SIM Cards web application is an eCommerce platform that allows users to order phone sim cards, activate, and manage their wireless services. Ordinary Experts worked with J1SIM Cards to create a platform which would allow the reliable deployment and management of their infrastructure and automate the build and release of their application.
AWS re:Invent 2017 Review
Our review of AWS re:Invent 2017 - Fargate, Private Link, and Inter-Region VPC Peering.
Ordinary Experts achieves AWS Standard Consulting Partner
Today we officially became an AWS Standard Consulting Partner, the second of four tiers in the AWS Partner Program!
Case Study: Third Cousin
Third Cousin is a San Diego-based digital agency. Ordinary Experts worked with Third Cousin to reduce the AWS costs of one of their clients through application inventory and environment right-sizing.
AWS re:Invent 2016 Review
Our review of AWS re:Invent 2016 - serverless, big data, and AI.