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 application assets.
- 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.”
Why this isn’t just for the certification
It would have been easy to stop at passing Cloud Practitioner and call it done. Instead I’ve been treating AWS as a second deployment target alongside my own OVH server: the same instinct that makes me want to understand why Nginx is configured a certain way, applied to EC2, S3, CloudWatch, and IAM.
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! 🚀