It took 6 months but I finally got time to continue the series on Decoding Your AWS bill.  In the last post, we used PowerShell to download and query the monthly bill.  In this post we use tags to create a cost allocation report.  In the next, and final post in this series, I will show you how to load the hourly detail report into SQL Server. Let's assume that we have multiple project teams at our company and they all have servers running in the same AWS account.

I have been testing a a preview of a new PowerShell command, Import-EC2Instance, that will be added to the AWS PowerShell API next week. The new command allows you to import a VM from VMware or Hyper-V. I covered this in my book, but at the time the functionality was not available in PowerShell and I had to use the Java API. While the new command will upload and convert your VM, you can also do the upload and convert independently.

I have been building a bunch of Windows AMIs for EC2 recently. If the instance fails to build it can be a real bear to diagnose issues. You don't have access to the console to watch what's happening. It would be great if I could log to the EC2 Console (also called the System Log on the web site) so I knew what was happening. So I hacked the EC2Config Service to see how it was writing to the console.

When you create an Windows AMI (Amazon Machine Image) it is configured to generate a random server name. Often this name does not meet your needs. Maybe your company has a specific naming convention (e.g US-NYC-1234) or you just want to use a descriptive name (e.g. WEB01). Whatever the reason, let's look at how to set the name when you launch the machine. In this post we will use PowerShell to read the name from a Tag on the instance.

As you begin to adopt AWS you will likely be asked to report on both usage and cost. One way to do this is using the Monthly Billing report. In this post I will show you how to download your bill and analyze it using PowerShell. AWS offers a feature called Programmatic Billing Access. When programmatic billing access is enabled, AWS periodically saves a copy of your bill to an S3 bucket.

CloudTrail is new service that logs all AWS API calls to an S3 bucket. While the obvious use case is creating an audit trail for security compliance, there are many other purposes. For example, we might use the CloudTrail logs to keep a Change Management Database (CMDB) up date by looking for all API calls that create, modify or delete an instance. In this exercise I’ll use CloudTrail, Simple Storage Service (S3), Simple Notifications Services (SNS), Simple Queue Service (SQS) and PowerShell to parse CloudTrail logs looking for new events.

If you have ever user Fiddler to debug a web application, you know what a invaluable tool it can be. If you have also tried to debug that application from an iPhone or iPad, you also know how difficult it can be to figure our what's going wrong from the web server logs. Below I will explain how to configure Fiddler to proxy the iPhone/iPad. HTTP Traffic First, you need to enable connections from remote devices.

There is a lot of confusion about how IIS handles SSL. With all the confusion out there, I thought I should put together a quick post. This post will also explain the error message: At least one other site is using the same HTTPS binding and the binding is configured with a different certificate. My discussions this week were specific to SharePoint, but the confusion is with host headers in IIS.

If you’re using the multi-tenant features of SharePoint, you will want tenants to use the sandbox. But, you will quickly find limitations. For example, developers cannot call a web service, read data from a external database, or write to the event log. One solution is for the farm administrator to deploy a full trust proxy that developers can use. Microsoft has a good description here, but there are no good examples.

I recently presented an overview of multi-tenancy in one of my MBA classes.  I discussed how multi-tenant applications allow cloud vendors to achieve economies of scale.  As an example, I showed the effect on total cost of ownership for the infrastructure if a cloud vendor moved from physical to virtual and then to a multi-tenant architecture.  The multi-tenant architecture cuts cost by 80%. Current State Imagine that you work at a midsize company that develops and hosts a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on scripting administrative functions in SharePoint. I assume you have already created a farm. In this post we will add a new anonymous web application. If you are interested in configuring anonymous access using central administration check out: http://www.topsharepoint.com/enable-anonymous-access-in-sharepoint-2010. An anonymous web application will allow users to access your SharePoint site without logging in. Let’s start by creating a new web application.

This is the third in a series of posts on scripting administrative functions in SharePoint. I assume you have already created a farm and web application. In this post we will add three site collections to our web application. First, let’s create a collaboration site for the HR group. This script is almost identical to the script we used to create the root site collection in the prior post. Once again, you will need to provide a name for the site, the email address and username of the site owner, and a URL.

This is the second in a series of posts on scripting administrative functions in SharePoint. I assume you have already created the farm as describer here. Let’s start by creating a simple web application for our corporate intranet. First, we will need to set up a few variables. First, pick a URL, for example http://intranet.brianbeach.com. Of course you will need a DNS entry created for this or you will need to add an entry to your hosts file for testing.

I'm excited about PowerShell scripting in SharePoint 2010. We employ strict separation of duties, and the ability to script tasks for the administrator is high on my list of anticipated features. This is the first in a series of posts on scripting administrative functions in SharePoint. Let’s start by creating a new Farm. I assume you are running these scripts on a single server with all SharePoint 2010 components installed.

I noticed what I think is a bug (or maybe a limitation) in SharePoint 2010. When I use PowerShell to create a Host Header Site Collection, SharePoint does not create a binding in IIS. If I add the binding manually, everything works great, but I would expect SharePoint to do this for. Am I missing something? The following PowerShell script will create a new web application. Note that I have the option to add a host header.