AWS Glue is a server-less data integration service that provides all capabilities needed to categorize, clean, enrich and move the data between data stores. It is a powerful ETL tool that reduces and automates a significant portion of the effort required for data integration. To fully leverage AWS Glue’s capabilities for production workloads, the service must be fine-tuned with proper configurations to reduce job runtime and increase resource availability.
Read MoreMost businesses are migrated or are in the process of migrating, critical workloads to cloud infrastructure. The competitive advantage cloud platforms give businesses makes this move an easy choice for organizations. Employees on the front lines tasked with managing these workloads know making the choice to move to the cloud is easier than performing the actual migration. Fortunately, PMsquare is here to help! I’ve created a high-level checklist to keep in mind when beginning your cloud migration. This list will help frame your thinking when planning to move on-premises applications to a cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
Read MoreIn this article, we are going to walk through the steps of setting up a function through AWS Lambda, connecting that function to a callable API with AWS API Gateway, and calling the API through a custom web application to build a simple web page that displays the various weapons and armors that can be found in Elden Ring.
Read MoreJust the other day, I was wrangling with a DIY challenge and spent hours trying to make a scattering of suboptimal tools I had work when a short run to the hardware store would have solved all my problems in minutes. In much the same way in analytics consulting, I see my clients sometimes struggling to find the right service for their challenges of the near and long term. In this piece, I’ll share an overview of two seemingly similar service options and discern the right time to engage for each.
Read MoreAlarms are very helpful in determining the state of certain processes such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Glue workflows and jobs as part of an ETL pipeline. Ideally, there would be a team assigned to monitor the AWS Glue workflows regularly, but this is not very practical or feasible as many workflows are scheduled to run overnight or during off-hours. Setting up alarms to ensure these workflows successfully finish and don’t error out is key to troubleshooting issues early and maintaining and smooth-running pipeline.
Read MoreSecret managers have become the go-to tool to avoid hard coding credentials in source code. Secret managers provide a centralized place to store sensitive data like database credentials and API keys. In Amazon Web Services (AWS) there are two services for storing secrets: AWS Secrets Manager and the Parameter Store. The key to this workflow is specific PowerShell modules that will allow you to script operations of AWS resources directly from the PowerShell command line.
Read MoreThis article is the continuation of the Amazon QuickSight Complete Guide Series, focusing on the topic of getting your QuickSight environment set up and ready to use. If you haven’t checked out the first installment of the Amazon QuickSight Complete Guide, covering Pricing and Editions, I would recommend you take a couple of minutes to check it out. The series of QuickSight posts will detail everything you need to know about QuickSight as well as some walkthroughs of the main tools.
Read MoreLet’s deep dive into how to improve the performance of a complicated report by utilizing MDX and switching to a multidimensional source to reduce the runtime of each selection to under 1 min.
Read MoreQuickSight is rapidly evolving into a top-notch BI and data visualization tool and even entered the Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI this last year. QuickSight is fundamentally a very good visualization and reporting platform, but with all the options available in the crowded BI market, what are the top reasons to choose Amazon QuickSight?
Read MoreA key concept to understand when migrating to AWS is the physical distribution of cloud resources. AWS organizes its global infrastructure into Regions and Availability Zones (AZ). An AZ consists of one or more discrete data centers within a Region. When you deploy resources in AWS you must define the Region those resources are deployed to and one or more AZs. AWS best practices encourage deployments to be spread across multiple AZs (Multi-AZ) instead of isolating them to a single AZ. Why is this recommended? Read to find out more.
Read MoreAn Application Load Balancer (ALB) may seem unnecessary when thinking about architecting Cognos on AWS. ALBs are most often used in serverless patterns or containerized applications. Those architectures obviously don’t apply to Cognos. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t borrow design patterns from other architectures to benefit a Cognos deployment. Two reasons we recommend leveraging an ALB when deploying Cognos are simplified administration and improving your security posture.
Read MoreAmazon (AWS) QuickSight is a fully managed business intelligence service. This means it is a cloud-based service that is globally available, has built-in redundancy, and enterprise-grade security. This allows your business to deliver easy-to-understand insights to users, regardless of their location. Because QuickSight is a relatively new BI tool, most people may be unfamiliar with its features and benefits. So, let us take a look at what differentiates QuickSight from other BI tools and then get into editions and pricing.
Read MoreDeploying Cognos on AWS immediately raises questions around the Cognos databases. What database type should we use? What service should we use to host them? Let’s dive in and hopefully, I can help you get a much clearer sense of what is best for your organization.
Read MoreAt PMsquare, we see more and more companies moving Cognos workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The reasons for this move vary from company to company. There may be a desire to reduce architecture and administration costs, improve the reliability of the Cognos infrastructure, dissatisfaction with IBM’s SaaS offering, or the move to the cloud is being mandated by a larger company initiative. Whatever the reason, if you need to migrate Cognos to a public cloud you will likely have many questions and this blog series will answer them!
Read MoreEverything is great. Business analysts are happy, operations is happy, management is happy. Everyone loves the data warehouse. Kudos! And then the data warehouse becomes a victim of its own success. Can we have some more? More data, more data sources, more queries, more reports, more dashboards, more-more-more. But with the same hardware, same staff, same budget, same service-level agreements. Pop quiz, hotshot -- what do you do?
Read MoreTransitioning your company from traditional, on-prem architecture to a cloud native architecture can be a technically consuming project. Along with the technical shift in the way you think about your architecture, you also have to reposition your thinking around pricing and provisioning. Leveraging infrastructure as a service (IaaS) means you no longer need to buy a physical box and wait for it to be installed. You are now able to provision a new instance (sever) as easily as renting a movie from Apple TV or signing up for a Spotify subscription.
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