How TOTP Systems Like Google Authenticator Work

Over a decade ago, my employer issued me an RSA SecurID token to protect their VPN. This little device had a six-digit LCD display that would roll over to a new random-looking number every minute. I had to add whatever it showed at the moment to my password in order to successfully authenticate. Today, a […]

Using Docker & Kubernetes Together to Design & Maintain Your Infrastructure

If you’re in charge of an IT infrastructure, you’ve most likely done the same jobs over and over. You’ve also probably heard of Docker and Kubernetes. The two have commonly been mistaken for rivals, but the truth is, they work very well together. Why Docker? When deciding where to build your infrastructure — especially if […]

Implementing Google Single Sign-On with an Apache Server

If you’re using Google Chrome or one of Google’s many apps, you’ve probably seen a screen similar to this one. You can achieve this for your internal websites or mobile apps using an Apache server and Google’s OpenID Connect 1.0. This is a simple identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol (Google’s authentication […]

Why & How We’ve Starting Using RailsAdmin Internally

RailsAdmin is an open-source tool for Rails Engine that allows you to manage your data with a user-friendly interface. It’s great for building internal infrastructure because it’s something everyone in the company can use. RailsAdmin is so straightforward, you won’t even have to train users. Here are some of the basic features of RailsAdmin: Display […]

Four Considerations when Managing an AWS VPC

Hosting your cloud infrastructure on AWS in a more protected environment can strengthen the security of your infrastructure. That’s what an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is for. It creates an isolated slice of the cloud within which you have control to manage your own network. But it also means you’re now required to manage […]

LocalStack + Terraform + CircleCI for Lambda without AWS

On my current project, we’re using LocalStack in lieu of AWS for development and test. In this post, I’ll walk through how we’ve set it up and what we can do with it.

Updating AWS Lambda Function Code when Local Files Change

For my project, we have a Node.js server deployed as an AWS Lambda function. The server’s dependencies (Node modules) are deployed in a Lambda layer. We want an easy process to deploy a new Lambda layer version when we update the Node modules and to update the Lambda function code whenever we update the local […]

Docker for Mac: Overcoming Slow Mounted Volumes with Visual Studio Code

A couple of years ago, Will Pleasant-Ryan wrote Docker for Mac: Overcoming Slow Mounted Volumes, describing his desire to use Docker for local development. He talked about some of the filesystem performance problems that can arise when using a shared volume from the host machine on Mac OS X, along with some potential workarounds and […]

Improve Your Cloud Infrastructure with entr, Terraform, and tflint

Working with a cloud of microservices is a fact of life for web and mobile developers. Though some of us are lucky enough to have a team of ops engineers who keep the back end humming, many of us have to do the hard work of envisioning, implementing, and deploying that cloud ourselves. Tools like […]

CircleCI – Running Parallel iOS Test Jobs with Workflows

With the release of CircleCI 2.0, a new feature called Workflows is now included with the platform. Workflows allow you to specify how each of your individual jobs are related and define criteria about which jobs should be executed, and when. Workflows also have the ability to share data between jobs using a shared workspace. […]

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