AWS has recently launched AWS Transfer for SFTP enabling you to easily move your file transfer workloads that use the Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to AWS without needing to modify your applications or manage any SFTP servers. Traditionally an EC2 with decent storage would have to be configured, regularly updated and maintained or an EC2 Storage gateway implemented to accommodate SFTP transfers. This guide shows you how to create an SFTP server and map your domain to the server endpoint, select authentication for your SFTP clients using service-managed identities (or alternatively you can integrate your own identity provider) and select your Amazon S3 buckets to store the transferred data.

For on-demand EC2's that are not required during certain hours that are essentially wasting money running when not in use it is worth setting up a Lambda function that can stop and start the EC2's as per your requirements. This guide configures an IAM policy/role then uses a Lambda function to start/stop the EC2 during the business hours of 9am to 5pm.

For EC2's that are started up infrequently it can be time consuming to go through the AWS Management login with MFA just to start them up, this powershell script uses the AWSPowerShell module along with API keys to startup the specified EC2 instance.

Connecting to the Amazon S3 protocol is now natively supported as of WinSCP version 5.13, WinSCP uses the REST interface to interact with S3.

This guide creates an S3 bucket, an IAM user, an IAM access policy with least priviledge, then generating access and secret keys for API access to allow WinSCP to seamlessy migrate files over.

When working with certain domains there may not be a requirement to have a full blown email system running but there may be a requirement to forward emails to another system and therefore it is important to have a reliable, functional, serverless and ideally free or very minimal cost email system available. I use this for my own purpose to verify infra.engineer via email for proof of ownership for the SSL Certificate and renewal emails without having to have a full blown dedicated mailbox attached to the domain.

This guide utilises AWS SES and Lambda, building a mail system that integrates seamlessly with your Gmail account, at the same time allowing you to send and receive mail from multiple mailboxes within your own domain, although this guide focuses on Gmail other email systems can be used such as Office365 and iCloud Mail.

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cloud-based email sending service designed to help digital marketers and application developers send marketing, notification, and transactional emails. It is a reliable, cost-effective service for businesses of all sizes that use email to keep in contact with their customers

Reliable email delivery is key in web based application, you don't want your customers to miss that order confirmation email or a very important notification.

The following guide utilises Amazon SES to send emails from with Joomla;

Amazon Lightsail is a virtual server that's cost-effective, fast, & reliable with an easy-to-use interface ideal for developers, businesses, students, or users who need a simple Virtual Private Server (VPS) solution for a lab or production site.

Lightsail gives you access to the power of AWS, with the simplicity of a VPS. You choose a configuration from a menu and launch a virtual machine (an instance) pre-configured with SSD-based storage, DNS management and a static IP address utilising either Linux or Windows.

This guide is for implementing Joomla on Linux, a free tier is available for month (Up to 750 hours).