Using AWS EC2 and Other Cloud Tools
Hey there!
Alongside self-hosting on OVH, I’ve been getting properly comfortable with AWS — enough to pass the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification (via KodeKloud) and start planning cloud infrastructure for real projects instead of just tutorials.
Where I’ve used it
- EC2 — spinning up instances for development and deployment, comparing that experience against managing my own bare-metal VPS.
- S3 — object storage for datasets and telemetry as part of my dissertation work.
- CloudWatch — monitoring and logging, which matters a lot more once you’ve experienced a service failing silently with zero visibility.
- IAM — learning to scope permissions properly instead of defaulting to broad access because it’s “easier.”
How it fits into my dissertation
My MSc project is an AI-assisted cyber defence system for IoT-based smart networks, and part of the plan is cloud integration — EC2 for running the detection pipeline, S3 for storing datasets and generated telemetry, CloudWatch for monitoring, IAM for access control, and potentially AWS IoT Core for device-side integration. Learning these tools isn’t academic for me — it’s the actual deployment target.
EC2 vs. my own VPS
Running my own OVH server taught me what’s happening underneath; EC2 has taught me how to get the same result faster, with better built-in monitoring and access control, at the cost of not touching the hardware layer directly. Having both skill sets — “I can configure Nginx and harden a Linux box by hand” and “I can provision and secure this the AWS way” — feels like the right combination for cloud/DevOps roles.
Happy shipping! 🚀