Alumni/Industry Lecture: Payam Moghaddam - Deployment Methodologies with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Date: Thurs., November 26, 2015

Time: 6 pm (Networking starts at 6 pm, lecture starts at 6:30 pm)

Location: Rm C485, UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St.

RSVP: Pre-registration for the event is full but please contact John Andru at john.andru@ubc.ca to be added to the waitlist

Abstract:

You've got a great web-based application, architected perfectly, but how will you deploy it onto AWS? It’s not so clear cut given the myriad of features in AWS, and Googling for solutions is not always effective, since you can’t find a common pattern. Wouldn't it be great to get a landscape understanding of which options exist with AWS before beginning to deploy to your web infrastructure?

In this lecture, we’ll provide an overview of web-application deployment options, along with their pros and cons. In particular: traditional deployment onto pre-allocated servers; the CloudFormation and OpsWork services of AWS; pre-baked AMIs; and blue-green deployment. Next, there’ll be a deep dive into blue-green deployment, to see the benefits of creating an entirely new set of servers for each new version of software. We’ll discuss how it can be done, how it can be coded (using Ruby), and the challenges to expect along the way.

By the end of this lecture, you should have a decent understanding of options available in AWS, their pros and cons, and how you can code your entire infrastructure and deployment methodology.

Bio:

Payam Moghaddam is a UBC CS alumnus, currently serving as the manager of the Infrastructure team at ACL, for their SaaS platform. Previously consulting at Accenture, Payam helped various enterprises in both architecting and developing their web applications with modern web frameworks. This included both the back-end (using frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, and Node.js) as well as front-end tools (such as Sencha, or Backbone.js). He has since shifted focus away from application development to infrastructure development, where he has brought much of his mentality of applying test-driven development, writing elegant object-oriented code, and automating everything.