Accend Networks San Francisco Bay Area Full Service IT Consulting Company

Categories
Blogs

WebEx Application

Introduction to WebEx Application

In real-time or anytime, Webex App is engaging, intelligent and inclusive and helps you create exceptional experiences and makes working together distinctly better.

The Webex App is one easy-to-use and secure app you can use to call, message, meet, and get work done:

  • It brings everyone together to do exceptional work.
  • It makes you smarter; it’s personalized to you.
  • It gives you options to choose how you work.
  • It moves fluidly while you call, message, and meet.

Log in to WebEx App:

It is very simple task to log into WebEx app. Double click on the App to launch it. Post launching below screen is presented to the users:

You can click on the sign in and then enter your business Email address to log in.

1. Messaging
  • Start working together When you start a conversation with someone, it creates a space between you and the people you invite to the conversation. You can invite anyone (including people outside your organization) to join in on a conversation. All you need is their email address. All your work takes place within spaces and teams. Spaces give you a place to collaborate on a specific topic or project. In a space, you can send messages, schedule meetings, and call other people.

If your original intention changes and your project outgrows its original purpose, you can create a team and then  move a space into a team. Teams help you keep everything organized by putting multiple spaces under a common theme. Teams are great for a consistent group of people who are going to be working on something for a long time. That something can involve many activities or can be subprojects happening at the same time. If your organization has public spaces, you can discover, join or create public spaces and connect with people with similar interests, or keep up with the latest news. And you find that you’re in too many spaces and some of them don’t require your input or you don’t need to keep up with that particular conversation, you can leave any space at any time.

  • Send a message:
    When you write your messages, you can send a quick one, or make it stand out with more text formatting and emojis. You can also share files, pictures, videos, and even gifs. Webex App keeps a list of all the content shared in a space, so you’ll never lose track of them. Use @mentions to make sure the right people see your message. Don’t worry if you’ve made a mistake and need to edit it or if you’ve pasted in the wrong space and need to delete the message entirely.


    Your messages are persistent. The next time you message the group, your conversation picks right up where you’ve left it. And after you send a message, you can see who’s read your message.
  • Read and respond to messages:
    When you get a new message, you’re notified right away. If you’re too busy to respond but want to see someone’s message, you can just take a quick peek instead. People won’t know that you’ve seen the message. You can also make it easy for yourself and others to follow a specific train of thought using threading, quotes, and even forwarding a message to someone else.

You can also flag important messages so that you can refer to them easily.

And if you’re looking for a message or a file that was shared but can’t remember what space it was posted in, you can search for it.

2. Meetings
  • Customize your audio and video preferences When you join a meeting from your computer, the app automatically detects the audio and video devices you have connected to your computer, such as a headset. You can change your settings right before you start or join a meeting, like if you want your video on or want to dial into a meeting with audio only.
  • Virtual Background
    Limit distractions and maintain privacy in your current surroundings by using a virtual background. You can blur your background, change your background, or add your own background. Blurring your background makes your surroundings appear out of focus so people can’t see the details of what’s going on behind you. You can also completely replace your surroundings with one of the preset backgrounds, one that your site administrator provides, or add one of your own.To set your virtual background before you join a meeting, click Change background on the preview screen and choose the background that you want to use:
    • To blur your surroundings while remaining in focus, click Blur.
    • To use a default virtual background, click the one you want.
    • To use your own image, animated GIF, or video file for the virtual background, click the + icon.
    • To change your background during a meeting, click the Video options icon and click stop video, choose Change virtual background and select the type of background you want
    • When you’re ready for everyone in the meeting to see your background, click Apply. Webex remembers your selection for your next meeting.
  • See your upcoming meetings

Knowing what meetings, you have can help you plan your work day. You can view details about your upcoming meetings in your meetings list, like what the meeting is about, when it’s happening, who’s invited, and who scheduled the meeting. When it’s time for a meeting to start, you can join it from the meetings list, too. If the meeting is recorded, select the recording indicator  during the meeting to see who started, paused, or stopped the recording. Then, you can contact that person to get the recording. This feature is available when the host or cohost records the meeting on their computer.


3. Calling

  • Call someone on Webex AppYou can call anyone with a Webex account without any additional plans or services. If you’re connected to each other in the Webex App, you can call them on the Webex App. These are special types of calls that let you add guests to the call, share your whiteboard, and share your screens. You don’t use their phone number; you just need to be connected to them in the app. Just look for the Audio and Video icon.
  • Answer a call
    When you get a call, you get a notification that you can use to accept or decline it. If the person calling you has a Webex account, you can also message the person back if you’re not able to take the call right away.
Categories
Blogs

Hosting Static Website Amazon S3

How to Host a Static Website on Amazon S3 Bucket: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hosting Static Website on Amazon S3

In the current digital landscape, having a simple fast, and cost-effective website is essential for showcasing your content, be it running a personal blog, small business, or portfolio. Amazon S3 provides an excellent platform for hosting static websites with its simple storage services.

In this blog, we will guide you through the essential steps to deploy your static website in Amazon S3.

Deploying a static website in s3 is a straightforward and powerful way to leverage cloud infrastructure for your online presence and this article will equip you with everything you need to launch your website effortlessly in amazon s3.

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is a highly scalable object storage service that offers data availability, security, and performance. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes and can be used for various use cases such as data lakes, websites, mobile apps, backup and restore archives, and big data analytics.

Let’s dive into the hands-on where we will break down this into a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Creating an S3 Bucket

Log in to the management console and type S3 on the Search bar then Select S3 under services.

In the s3 console, Click Create Bucket.

Enter the bucket name and choose the region where you want the bucket to be located.

Scroll down and uncheck the Block all public access checkbox to disable Amazon S3’s default setting to block public access to an S3 bucket. A warning will appear beneath this section; click on the checkbox to acknowledge current settings to enable public access to the bucket.

This configuration allows users to access static website pages stored in the S3 bucket.

Leave the rest of the options at their default settings, and click on the Create bucket button.

Step 2: Enable Static Website Hosting

On the resulting page from the successful creation of the bucket, click on the bucket name. Select the Properties tab, scroll down to the Static website hosting section, and click Edit

Once you choose Enable, more configuration options will be made available on the console to enable you to provide the necessary settings and documents for hosting your website.

Leave the Hosting type as the default (Host a static website), and enter the exact name of the Index document that should serve as the file for your static webpage. Do the same for the Error document if you want to have a custom web page for 4XX class errors. This section is case-sensitive, therefore ensure the names you provide are the exact match.

Navigate to the end of the page and click on Save Changes.

When you scroll down the resulting page, you will notice that a bucket endpoint was successfully created.

Step 3: Add a Bucket Policy that Makes an S3 Bucket Content Publicly Available

Here we will add a policy to grant public read-only access to our S3 bucket.

To edit the permissions of your bucket, follow these steps:

On the current page of the console, navigate to the Permissions tab.

To edit the permissions of your bucket, follow these steps:

On the current page of the console, navigate to the Permissions tab.

Scroll down to the Bucket policy section and click on Edit.

Paste the code into the text editor provided in the console.

In the Resource section of the code, replace the unique bucket name with your own. This will ensure that you have the correct permissions for your bucket.

At the bottom of the page, click on Save Changes.

Step 4: Configure an Index Document

The index document is the root file of our static website. Make sure you have your web files ready.

choose the Object tab, and on the resulting page, drag and drop the file (or folders) you want to upload here, or choose Add files (or Add folder). Scroll down and click the Upload button.

After a successful upload, you can view your static website by visiting the Endpoint of your S3 bucket on your web browser.

To get your bucket endpoint, choose the Properties tab and scroll down to the Static website hosting section at the end of the page. Click on it to open your static website on a new tab.

This brings us to the end of this article, pull everything down.

Conclusion

Hosting a static website on Amazon S3 is an efficient and cost-effective solution for delivering web content to a global audience. By leveraging S3’s robust infrastructure, you can ensure high availability, durability, and scalability for your static website.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.

If you have any questions concerning this article or have an AWS project that requires our assistance, please reach out to us by leaving a comment below or email us at sales@accendnetworks.com.


Thank you!

Categories
Blogs

AWS Serverless Application

AWS Serverless Application Repository an Overview

Serverless application repository allows developers to discover, deploy, and share serverless applications quickly. This repository contains a wide range of prebuilt applications and re-usable code packages making it easier to start with serverless architecture.  In this blog post, we’ll explore the AWS Serverless Application Repository in detail uncovering its key features, stay tuned.

What is an AWS Serverless Application Repository?

This is a serverless application repository managed by AWS. The AWS Serverless Application Repository makes it easy for developers and enterprises to quickly find, deploy, and publish serverless applications in the AWS Cloud. AWS is only responsible for the infrastructure security serving AWS services on the AWS Cloud.

AWS SAM accomplishes serverless development through configuration files, pattern models, and command-line tools.

How Does AWS Serverless Application Repository Work?

AWS serverless application Repository accelerates serverless application deployment by providing an easy-to-search repository of serverless applications that can be readily distributed to both application publishers and application consumers.

As an application consumer, you can find and deploy pre-built applications to meet a specific need, allowing you to swiftly put together serverless architecture in newer, more powerful ways.

Similarly, as an application provider or publisher, you would not want your consumers to rebuild your program from scratch. With SAR, this is not an issue.

Serverless Application Repository provides a platform that enables you to connect with consumers and developers all over the world.

Let’s define these key terms

Publishing Applications – Configure and upload applications to make them available to other developers, and publish new versions of applications.

Deploying Applications – Browse for applications and view information about them, including source code and readme files. Also install, configure, and deploy applications of your choosing.

How to access and navigate the AWS Serverless Application Repository?

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and navigate to the Serverless Application Repository:

In the search bar type serverless then select serverless application repository under services.

Steps to find and deploy serverless applications from the repository?

Step 1: Browse the Repository

On the left side of the repository UI, select available applications, which will bring you to a wide range of serverless applications. Here you can browse through very many categories, like security, data processing, machine learning, and more.

Step 2: Configure the application

Lastly, if you are already familiar with the application, you can configure it and launch it immediately.

Click on the application.

It will then take you to a new console where you review, configure, and deploy.

When you are done with your configuration, you can now deploy and that’s it.

How to publish your own serverless applications to the repository?

In the left UI of the serverless application repository, select published applications then select publish application.

This will bring you to the publish application UI. Here, you have to provide some details for your AWS Serverless application repository then you can publish your application.

Components of Serverless Application Repository

Application Policy: For your SAR application to be used, you must grant policies. By setting policies, you may create private apps that only your team can access, as well as public apps that can be shared with particular or all AWS accounts.

AWS Region: Whenever you set an application to public and publish it in the AWS Serverless Application Repository, the service publishes it in all AWS Regions.

SAM Template: This file defines all of the resources that will be generated when you deploy your application. SAM is an extension of CloudFormation that simplifies the process of establishing AWS services including Lambda Functions, API Gateway, Dynamo tables, and more.

Features of AWS Serverless Application Repository

AWS CodePipeline can connect GitHub with the Serverless Application Repository.

AWS provides all apps under the MIT open-source license, whereas publicly available applications by other users fall under the Open-Source Initiative (OSI).

AWS Serverless Application Repository includes applications for Alexa Skills, IoT, and real-time media processing from several publishers worldwide.

Applications can be shared across AWS Organizations. Users cannot exchange applications with other organizations.

Benefits of AWS Serverless Application Repository

Extension of AWS CloudFormation: AWS Serverless Application Repository is a service that works alongside AWS CloudFormation. It can use all of the AWS cloud creation resources.

Deep integration with development tools: AWS Serverless Application Repository often combines with other AWS services in the construction of serverless applications

Single-Deployment Configuration: AWS SAM runs on a single CloudFormation stack, unifying all required resources and components.

Conclusion

AWS serverless application repository is a valuable resource for developers looking to accelerate their serverless projects. Offering a range of pre-built applications and reusable components, it makes very simple the deployment process and fosters innovation.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.

If you have any questions concerning this article or have an AWS project that requires our assistance, please reach out to us by leaving a comment below or email us at sales@accendnetworks.com.


Thank you!

Categories
Blogs

VPC Security

Enhancing VPC Security: An Overview of AWS Network Firewall

As cloud computing keeps changing, protecting network infrastructure is key. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides strong security tools, including AWS Network Firewall. This article looks at leveraging AWS Network Firewall to protect resources in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

What is Network Firewall?

Network Firewall is a managed network firewall service for VPC. It is a stateful, network firewall and intrusion detection and prevention service for your virtual private cloud (VPC) that you create in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Network Firewall lets you filter traffic at the edge of your VPC. This covers filtering traffic going to and coming from an internet gateway, NAT gateway, or through VPN or AWS Direct Connect.

Understanding AWS Network Firewall

To understand the concept of a Network Firewall, let’s first explore some of the security features available for the VPC.

From the above architecture, we can observe that at the instance level, security groups are used to provide security for your instances and manage all incoming and outgoing traffic. At the subnet level, Network Access Control Lists (NACLs) are utilized to evaluate traffic entering and exiting the subnet.

Any traffic from the internet gateway to your instance will be evaluated by both NACLs and security group rules. Additionally. AWS Shield and AWS WAF are available for protecting web applications running within your VPC.

Single zone architecture with internet gateway and network firewall

AWS network firewall will establish a subnet in your VPC’s availability zone and set up an endpoint within it. All traffic from your subnet heading to the internet will be routed through this network firewall subnet for inspection before proceeding to its destination and vice versa for incoming traffic. This is a valuable feature that enhances the security of your VPC.

Two zone architecture with network firewall and internet gateway

In this setup, you can have firewall subnets in each availability zone, where each network firewall will inspect traffic going to and from the customer subnet in that zone. To make sure all traffic goes through these firewall subnets, you’ll need to update your route tables.

How it Network Firewall Works

To apply traffic-filtering logic provided by Network Firewall, traffic should be routed symmetrically to the Network Firewall endpoint. Network Firewall endpoint is deployed into a dedicated subnet of a VPC (Firewall subnet). Depending on the use case and deployment model, the firewall subnet could be either public or private. For high availability and multi-AZ deployments, allocate a subnet per AZ.

Once NF is deployed, the firewall endpoint will be available in each firewall subnet. The firewall endpoint is similar to the interface endpoint and it shows up as vpce-id in the VPC route table.

Network Firewall makes firewall activity visible in real-time via CloudWatch metrics and offers increased visibility of network traffic by sending logs to S3, CloudWatch, and Kinesis datafirehorse.

NF is integrated with AWS firewall Manager, giving customers who use AWS Organizations a single place to enable and monitor firewall activity across all VPCs and AWS accounts.

Network Firewall Components:

Firewall: A firewall connects the VPC that you want to protect to the protection behaviour that’s defined in a firewall policy.

Firewall policy: Defines the behaviour of the firewall in a collection of stateless and stateful rule groups and other settings. You can associate each firewall with only one firewall policy, but you can use a firewall policy for more than one firewall.

Rule group: A rule group is a collection of stateless or stateful rules that define how to inspect and handle network traffic.

Stateless Rules

Inspects each packet in isolation. Does not take into consideration factors such as the direction of traffic, or whether the packet is part of an existing, approved connection.

Stateful Rules

Stateful firewalls are capable of monitoring and detecting states of all traffic on a network to track and defend based on traffic patterns and flows.

This brings us to the end of this blog.

Conclusion

Protecting resources inside a VPC plays a key role in today’s cloud setups. AWS Network Firewall gives you a full set of tools to guard your network against different kinds of threats. setting AWS Network Firewall manager, will give your VPC resources strong protection.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.

If you have any questions concerning this article or have an AWS project that requires our assistance, please reach out to us by leaving a comment below or email us at sales@accendnetworks.com.


Thank you!

Categories
Blogs

Deep Dive into CloudFront

Deep Dive into CloudFront: Understanding Internal Caching Mechanisms and Implementing Websites on S3 with Region Failover Part One

Amazon CloudFront, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) provided by AWS, is key in ensuring that content is delivered swiftly to users across the globe. When paired with S3, it’s perfect for hosting fast, secure, and reliable static websites. In this article, we will explore CloudFront’s internal caching mechanisms and discuss how to implement an S3-hosted website with region failover capabilities.

What is CloudFront

CloudFront is a CDN service (Content delivery network). CloudFront caches content such as HTML, CSS, and dynamic content to a worldwide data center called Edge Location or Regional Edge location. it is used to boost your website performance by availing content closer to users all over the world.

How it works?

CloudFront caches the contents in all the edge locations around the world. Caching refers to storing frequently accessed data in high-speed hardware, allowing for faster retrieval. This hardware is known as a cache. However, caches have limited memory capacity, and it is not possible to store everything in them due to their relatively expensive hardware. We use caching strategically to maximize performance.

Cache Hierarchy in CloudFront

Regional Edge Caches: Before content reaches the edge locations, it may pass through regional edge caches. These are a middle layer that provides additional caching, helping to reduce the load on the origin server and improve cache hit ratios.

Cache Hit: This refers to a situation where the requested data is already present in the cache. It improves performance by avoiding the need to fetch the data from the source such as a disk or server. Cache hits are desirable because they accelerate the retrieval process and contribute to overall system efficiency.

Cache Miss: This occurs when the requested data is not found in the cache. When a cache miss happens, the system needs to fetch the data from the source, which can involve a longer retrieval time and higher latency compared to a cache hit. The data is then stored in the cache for future access, improving subsequent performance if the same data is requested again. Cache misses are inevitable and can happen due to various reasons, such as accessing new data or when the data in the cache has expired.

How CloudFront utilizes caching to reduce the latency and increase the performance

When a user requests a website, the DNS service resolves to the DNS of the CloudFront distribution, which then redirects the user to the nearest edge location. The user receives the response from that particular edge location. However, there are instances when the requested data is not present in the edge location, resulting in a cache miss. In such cases, the request is sent from the regional edge location, and the user receives the data from there if it is available, indicating a cache hit. However, this process can take some time.

In situations where the data is not present in the regional edge location either, retrieving the data becomes a lengthier process. In such cases, the data needs to be fetched from the origin server, which, in our case, is the S3 bucket. This additional step of fetching the data from the origin server can introduce latency and increase the overall response time for the user.

CloudFront origin failover

For high-availability applications where downtime is not an option, CloudFront origin failover ensures that your content remains accessible even if the primary origin server becomes unavailable. By setting up multiple origins (like two S3 buckets in different regions) and configuring CloudFront to switch to a backup origin when the primary one fails, we can maintain uninterrupted service for users, enhancing our website’s reliability and resilience.

For CloudFront origin to be achieved, we create an origin group with two origins: a primary and a secondary. If the primary origin is unavailable or returns specific HTTP response status codes that indicate a failure, CloudFront automatically switches to the secondary origin.

To set up origin failover, you must have a distribution with at least two origins. Next, you create an origin group for your distribution that includes two origins, setting one as the primary. Finally, you create or update a cache behavior to use the origin group. We will demonstrate this with a hands-on in the second part of this blog.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.

If you have any questions concerning this article or have an AWS project that requires our assistance, please reach out to us by leaving a comment below or email us at sales@accendnetworks.com.


Thank you!