Author: David Ensikat

For a long time, relational databases have been the answer to every data persistence need (whether they really suited the solution or not). But in the previous decade, there has been an explosion of different types of database engines. In this post I'm going to...

24 February, 2021 /

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This is the story of an investigation that I was recently involved in at a client. It took over a week to resolve, involved networking acronyms that seemed to increase in length each day (MTU...ICMP...PMTUD?!), and wound up with us learning all about the rather scary-sounding phenomenon of black-hole connections.
21 October, 2019 /

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"Move fast and break things" - an oft-cited Mark Zuckerberg quote - is seen as the catchcry of modern software deployment practises. To be competitive in fast-moving industries where software is central to a companies success, developers and software engineers have had to find ways to push their software faster, while at the same time de-risking the process of doing so.
04 October, 2019 /

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I had the luck (and I say this considering the number of talented engineers within Shine) of attending AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas recently. For those who don't know, re:Invent is an annual conference held by AWS. It's a chance for customers, vendors and AWS staff...

10 December, 2018 /

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I was lucky enough to have the opportunity via Shine recently to attend the inaugural OWASP AppSec Day 2018 (Melbourne) at RMIT. Security professionals from around the globe gave some insightful talks into the state of secure application development in 2018. In this post I'll share you some of the key insights I gained from these talks.
29 October, 2018 /

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Anyone who has delved into CloudFormation knows its power for describing and managing your cloud infrastructure within AWS. Likewise, if you've spent any time writing CloudFormation templates of any significance you'll know that you'll spend a lot of time duplicating sections of templates. We always aim to reduce repetition in code so this can be a bit grating. In this post, I hope to explore a few technologies that can help with this, primarily a tool called Sceptre from Cloudreach.
29 August, 2018 /

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A couple of weeks ago was a significant milestone in my 14-year IT career: I actually sat a certification exam. In this case, it was the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate Exam. Despite some trepidation during my preparation for the exam, on the day I found it quite straightforward and came out with a pass mark. In this post I'm going to share some of my thoughts and notes in the hope that it will help others preparing to sit this exam.
21 March, 2018 /

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