Cloud Resume Challenge:
First Attempt & Learning Experience

Live site: jericho-crc-site.xyz
GitHub repository: https://github.com/jericholeal/jl-cloud-resume-challenge

This was the first time I ever touched AWS cloud services and resources. I dove in with minimal prior knowledge, as the Cloud Resume Challenge originally intended. It's how I learn best -- jump in, get confused, adapt, and figure it out.

What I did and learned in attempt 1:

• Primarily used the AWS Console and learned how things worked
• Re-discovered HTML, introduced to CSS and JavaScript
• Hosted zones, DNSSEC
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Serverless (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB)
• CDNs, OAC, and CDN caching
• APIs and HTTP methods
• JSON
• How front and backends work together
• How cloud resources connect, communicate, and fit together as a whole
• GitHub Actions, CI/CD
• First time using Git and GitHub for version control
• Terraform (Infrastructure as Code), as a challenge step was to convert manually-created resources into .tf configurations

Other notes:

• The resume on my first Cloud Resume Challenge site is obviously very true, accurate, and realistic. (It was a placeholder while doing all the backend work and I decided to leave it like that when I started my second attempt.)
• I actually didn't try to deploy the site using Terraform as a later step prescribed. It was at this point that I decided to redo the entire thing (this site), but starting with Terraform from the get-go.

What changed between my first and second attempts?

• Primarily used AWS CLI rather than the console using SSO login
• Used Terraform from the start rather than at the end
• Took a modular approach
• Rehashed and improved on a lot of the configurations I made during Take 1
• Bootstrapped some key resources (e.g. Route53 hosted zone) and imported them before applying the Terraform configuration
• Redesigned the frontend and added pages
• Used OIDC roles for GitHub Actions workflows instead of stored credentials as repository secrets

What did I learn the second time around?

• Terraform modular architecture (separate modules, variables & outputs, locals, tfvars, main.tf)
• Got more comfortable with HCL and writing Terraform configurations
• Importing existing resources with Terraform
• I tried terraform apply without importing my existing Route53 zone that I manually provisioned and it caused issues (ACM certificate validation; Route53 creating new hosted zones and trying to validate with the wrong zone and NSs)
• Resource dependencies
• Ran into a lot of circular dependency problems (specifically with Route53, CloudFront, and S3)
• OIDC roles
• More about least-privilege access
• That anyone can learn anything; I can do what I set my mind to

Back to Cloud Resume Challenge page