Database design in CS capstone project - Is AWS RDS overkill over something like Supabase? Or will I learn more useful stuff in AWS?

Hello all! If this is the wrong place, or there's a better place to ask it, please let me know.

So I'm working on a Computer Science capstone project. We're building a chess.com competitor application for iOS and Android using React Native as the frontend.

I'm in charge of Database design and management, and I'm trying to figure out what tool architecture we should use. I'm relatively new to this world so I'm trying to figure it out, but it's hard to find good info and I'd rather ask specifically.

Right now I'm between AWS RDS, and Supabase for managing my Postgres database. Are these both good options for our prototype? Are both relatively simple to implement into React Native, potentially with an API built in Go? It won't be handling too much data, just small for a prototype.

But, the reason I may want to go with RDS is specifically to learn more about cloud-based database management, APIs, firewalls, network security, etc... Will I learn more about all of this working in AWS RDS over Supabase, and is knowing AWS useful for the industry?


Thank you for any help!

https://redd.it/1okfoz3
@r_devops

Understanding Terraform usage (w/Gitlab CI/CD)

So i'll preface by saying I work as an SDET who is learning Terraform the past couple of days. We are also moving our CI/CD pipeline to gitlab and aws for our provider (from azure/azure devops, in this case don't worry about the "why's" because it was a business decision made whether I agree with it or not unfortunately)

So with that being said when it comes to DevOps/Gitlab and AWS I have very little knowledge. I mean I understand devops basics and have created gitlab-ci.yml files for automated testing, but the "Devops" best practices and AWS especially I have very little knowledge.

Terraform has been something we are going to use to manage infrastructure. It took me a little bit to understand "how" it should be used, but I want to make sure my "plan" makes sense at a base level. Also FWIW our team used Pulumi before but we are switching to Terraform (to transfer to what everyone else is using which is Terraform)

So how I have it setup currently (and my understanding on best practices). Also fwiw this is for a .net/blazor app (for now as a demo) but most of our projects we are converting are going to be .NET based ones. Also for now we are hosting it on an Elastic beanstalk.

Anyways here's how I have it setup and what I see as a pipeline (That so far works)

Gitlab CI/CD (build/deploy) handles actually building the app and publishing it (as a deploy-<version>.zip file.
The Deploy job does the actual copying of the .zip to S3 bucket (via aws-cli docker image) AS well as updating the elastic environment.
Terraform plan job runs every time and copys the tfplan to an artifact
Terraform apply actually makes the changes based off the tfplan (But is a manual job)
the terraform.tfstate is stored in s3 (with DynamoDB locking) as the "Source of truth".

So far this is working as a base level. but I still have a few questions in general:

Is there any reason Terraform should handle app deploy (to beanstalk) and deploy.zip copying to S3. I know it "can" but it sounds like it shouldn't be (Sort of a separation of concerns problem)
It seems like once set up terraform tfplan "apply" really shouldn't be running that often right?
Seems for "first time setup" it makes more sense to set it up manually on AWS and then import it (the state file). Others suggested setting up the .tf resource files first (but this seems like it would be a headache with all the configurations
Seems like really terraform should be mainly used to keep "resources" the same without drift.
This is probably irrelevant, but a lot of the team is used to Azure devops pipeline.yml files and thinks it'll be easy to copy-paste but I told them due to how gitlab works a lot is going to need to be re-written. is this accurate?

I know other teams use helm charts, but thats for K8's right?, for ECS. It's been said that ECS is faster/cheaper but beanstalk is "simpler" for apps that don't need a bunch of quick pod increases/etc...

Anyways sorry for the wall of text. I'm also open for hearing any advice too.

https://redd.it/1okfopx
@r_devops

Is “EnvSecOps” a thing?

Been a while folks... long-time lurker — also engineer / architect / DevOps / whatever we’re calling ourselves this week.

I’ve racked physical servers, written plenty of code, automated all the things, and (like everyone else lately) built a few LLM agents on the side — because that’s the modern-day “todo app,” isn’t it? I’ve collected dotfiles, custom zsh prompts, fzf noscripts, shell aliases, and eventually moved most of that mess into devcontainers.

They’ve become one of my favorite building blocks, and honestly they’re wildly undersold in the ops world. (Don’t get me started on Jupyter notebooks... squirrel!) They make a great foundation for standardized stacks and keep all those wriggly little ops noscripts from sprawling into fifteen different versions across a team. Remember when Terraform wasn’t backwards compatible with state? Joy.

Recently I was brushing up for the AWS Security cert (which, honestly, barely scratches real-world security... SASL what? Sigstore who?), and during one of the practice tests something clicked out of nowhere. Something I’ve been trying to scratch for years suddenly felt reachable.

I don’t want zero trust — I want zero drift. From laptop to prod.

Everything we do depends on where it runs. Same tooling, same policies, same runtime assumptions. If your laptop can deploy to prod, that laptop is prod.

So I’m here asking for guidance or abuse... actually both, from the infinite wisdom of the r/devops trenches. I’m calling it “EnvSecOps.” Change my mind.

But in all seriousness, I can’t unsee it now. We scan containers, lock down pipelines, version our infrastructure... but the developer environment itself is still treated like a disposable snowflake. Why? Why can’t the same container that’s used to develop a service also build it, deploy it, run it, and support it in production? Wouldn’t that also make a perfect sandbox for automation or agents — without giving them full reign over your laptop or prod?

Feels like we’ve got all the tooling in the world, just nothing tying it all together. But I think we actually can. A few hashes here, a little provenance there, a sprinkle of attestations… some layered, composable, declarative, and verified tooling. Now I’ve got a verified, maybe even signed environment.

No signature? No soup for you.
(No creds, either.)

Yes, I know it’s not that simple. But all elegant solutions seem simple in hindsight.

Lots of thoughts here. Reign me in. Roast me. Work with me. But I feel naked and exposed now that I’ve seen the light.

And yeah, I ran this past GPT.
It agreed a little too quickly — which makes me even more suspicious. But it fixed all my punctuation and typos, so here we are.

Am I off, or did I just invent the next buzzword we’re all gonna hate?

https://redd.it/1okm1ih
@r_devops

"terraform template" similar to "helm template"

I use helm template to pre-render all my manifests, and it works beautifully for PR reviews.

I wish there were a similar tool for Terraform modules so that I could run like terraform template, and it would output the raw HCL resources instead of the one-line git diff that could potentially trigger hundreds of resources during terraform plan.

I tried building it myself, but my skills aren't enough for the task.

Does anyone else think this would be a great idea?

https://redd.it/1okn28g
@r_devops

DoubleClickjacking: Modern UI Redressing Attacks Explained

https://instatunnel.my/blog/doubleclickjacking-modern-ui-redressing-attacks-explained

https://redd.it/1okleal
@r_devops

What’s that one cloud mistake that still haunts your budget? [Halloween spl]

A while back, I asked the Reddit community to share some of their worst cloud cost horror stories, and you guys did not disappoint.

For Halloween, I thought I’d bring back a few of the most haunting ones:

* There was one where a DDoS attack quietly racked up $450K in egress charges overnight.
* Another where a BigQuery noscript ran on dev Friday night and by Saturday morning, €1M was gone.
* And one where a Lambda retry loop spiraled out of control that turned $0.12/day into $400/day before anyone noticed.

The scary part is obviously that these aren’t at all rare. They happen all the time and are hidden behind dashboards, forgotten tags, or that one “testing” account nobody checks.

Check out the full list here: [https://amnic.com/blogs/cloud-cost-horror-stories](https://amnic.com/blogs/cloud-cost-horror-stories?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

And if you’ve got your own such story, drop it below. I’m so gonna make a part 2 of these stories!!

https://redd.it/1okps2j
@r_devops

GlueKube: Kubernetes integration test with ansible and molecule

https://medium.com/@GlueOps/gluekube-kubernetes-integration-test-with-molecule-f88da7c41a34

https://redd.it/1okp4bi
@r_devops

Do developers actually trust AI to do marketing?

Developers definitely understand the pros and cons of AI better than most people. Do AI companies or developers actually trust AI tools when it comes to marketing?

I’ve noticed that a lot of so-called “AI-powered” marketing products are pretty bad in practice, and it sometimes feels like they’re just trying to ride the hype.

Would love to hear what others think.

https://redd.it/1okr3n5
@r_devops

Tangent: Log processing without DSLs (built on Rust & WebAssembly)

https://github.com/telophasehq/tangent/

Hey y'all – The problem Ive been dealing with is that each company I work at implements many of the same log transformations. Additionally, LLMs are much better at writing python and go than DSLs.

WASM has recently made major performance improvements (with more exciting things to come like async!) and it felt like a good time to experiment to see if we could build a better pipeline on top of it.

Check it out and let me know what you think :)

https://redd.it/1okv8ys
@r_devops

How do you get secrets into VMs without baking them into the image?

Hey folks,

I’m used to working with AWS, where you can just attach an instance profile and have the instance securely pull secrets from Secrets Manager or SSM Parameter Store without hardcoding anything.

Now I’m working in DigitalOcean, and that model doesn’t translate well. I’m using Infisical for secret management, but I’m trying to figure out the best way to get those secrets into my droplets securely at boot time — without baking them into the AMI or passing them as plain user data.

So I’m curious:

How do you all handle secret injection in environments like DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or other non-AWS clouds?

How do you handle initial authentication when there’s no instance identity mechanism like AWS provides?

https://redd.it/1okxnz4
@r_devops

do you guys still code, or just debug what ai writes?

lately at work i’ve been using ChatGPT, Cosine, and sometimes Claude to speed up feature work. it’s great half my commits are ready in hours instead of days. but sometimes i look at the codebase and realize i barely remember how certain parts even work.
it’s like my role slowly shifted from developer to prompt engineer. i’m mostly reviewing, debugging, and refactoring what the bot spits out.
curious how others feel

https://redd.it/1okz9hc
@r_devops

Non-vscode AI agents

Hi guys, recently my claude sonnet 4 disappeared from vscode. Can anyone help me?
He literally wrote the code for me on the front-end, then I could calmly develop the back-end.
If anyone has another agent alternative that can write, update, edit, delete, etc. in vacode or another ide. Thanks

https://redd.it/1okyltc
@r_devops

Tell me if I'm in the wrong here

Context: I work on a very large contract. The different technical disciplines are broken up into authoritative departments. I'm on Platform Engineering. We're responsible for building application images and deploying them. There is also a Cybersecurity team, which largely sets policy and pushes out requests for patches and such.

Before I explain this process I offer this disclaimer: I know this process is crap. I hate it and I'm working very hard to change it. But as it stands now, this is what they ask me to do:

We are asked by the CSD team about every 3 months to take the newest CPU base image from WebLogic and run pipelines that build images for each of the apps on a specific cluster. You read that right - cluster. Why? Well, because instead of injecting the .ear file at runtime, they build an image with a very long-ass tag name that has the base image, the specific app and the specific app version on it. These pipelines call to a configuration management database which says "Here is the image name and version" and uses that to make an individual tailored image for that.

After that's done, they have a "mass deploy" pipeline which then deploys the snowflake images for dozens of applications into a Kubernetes cluster.

Now, this is where I get pissed.

I played nice and did the mass build pipeline. However, because its a fucking convoluted process I missed a step and had to re-run it. It takes like 3 hours every time it runs because its Jenkins. (Another huge problem.) This delayed my timeline according to CSD and they were already getting hot and bothered by it. However, after the success of building all those images, I decided this was where I take my stand. I said I would not deploy all these apps to our development cluster. Instead, I would rather that we deploy a few apps and scream-test them with some dev teams. Why? Because we have NO FUCKING QA. We just expect its gonna work. I am not gonna do that.

That didn't make CSD happy but they played along until I said I wasn't going to run the mass deploy pipeline on a Friday afternoon on Halloween. They wanted me to run it because "It's just dev" and "It's no big deal". To me, it is a big deal, because if we plan to promote to the test cluster on Monday, I want more time from the devs to give me feedback. I want testing of the pods and dependent services. I want some actual feedback that we have spot checked scenarios before they make their way up to prod. Dev would be the place to catch it before it gets out of hand because if we find something we promoted to test is wrong then we now have twice as many apps to rollback. The devs also have families too. I'm not going to put more stress on them because the CSD wanted to rush something out.

Anyway, CSD is now tussling with my boss because I unplugged my computer and went home. I am going to play video games the rest of the day and then go trick or treating with my kids. They can have some other sucker do their dirty work.

But am I wrong? Didn't I make a mountain out of a molehill? Or am I correct that this is a disaster waiting to happen and I need to draw the line in the sand here and now?



https://redd.it/1ol38s2
@r_devops

API first vs GUI for 3rd party services

Your teams decided to buy a new tool to solve a problem. You have narrowed down the options to

Tool A:
Minimal UI, Mainly API driven, good docs and sdks

Tool B:
Nearly all work is done inside the tool UI either browser based or desktop app. Minimal APIs exposed no sdks

Assume all the features are the same it’s just the way you interact with the tool. What one are you advocating for? What one do you see your team adopting?

https://redd.it/1okyiqz
@r_devops

"Validate problems before rushing into tools, frameworks etc" quote

Weird question and sorry that it's probably inappropriate for the sub, but someone posted an image of this lady in a (platform?) convention with a caption that goes something like the noscript.

To be honest I can't even remember if it were posted here or in r/kubernetes, I did try to find it myself but to no avail. Does it ring a bell to anyone? I would really like to watch the presentation myself, or at the very least find the image itself. Thanks!

https://redd.it/1ol5g1z
@r_devops

launching my new side project pipedash today - a desktop app for managing ci/cd pipelines from multiple providers

ideally we'd just use one ci/cd platform for everything and this wouldn't need to exist. but most of us deal with multiple platforms and i kept forgetting which pipeline was where. got tired of it so i built this.

it's new and still rough around the edges, so bugs will happen... if you run into any, just open an issue. drop a star if it helps :D

https://github.com/hcavarsan/pipedash

https://redd.it/1olc3q4
@r_devops

LDAP Injection: The Forgotten Injection Attack on Enterprise Authentication 🏢

https://instatunnel.my/blog/ldap-injection-the-forgotten-injection-attack-on-enterprise-authentication

https://redd.it/1olfb06
@r_devops

I need your advice/feedback on "webhooks as a service" platforms

Hello everyone,

About a year ago, I started a side project to create a "Webhook as a Service" platform. Essentially, it lets you create a proxy between services that send webhooks to your API-like Stripe, GitHub, Shopify, and redirects them to multiple destinations (your API, Slack, …).

All of this with automatic retries, filters, payload transformation with JavaScript, monitoring, and alerts.

Additionally, I built a webhook inspector, a tool to simply debug webhooks and visualise the headers, body, etc.

The problem is that the vast majority of users are only using the webhook inspector.

I know there are already some competitors in this sector, but, as developers or infrastructure engineers, do you see this as something useful? Or should I pivot Hooklistener to something else?

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

https://redd.it/1olk3s4
@r_devops

The plane that crashed because of a light bulb - and what it teaches about DevOps focus

In December 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was on final approach to Miami when a small green light failed to illuminate. That tiny bulb indicated whether the nose landing gear was locked. The crew couldn’t confirm if the landing gear was down, so they climbed to 2,000 feet to troubleshoot.

All three flight crew members became fixated on that light. While they pulled apart the panel to check the bulb, the captain accidentally nudged the control yoke, which disengaged the autopilot’s altitude hold. Slowly, silently, the aircraft began to descend. Nobody noticed. The warning chime sounded, the altimeter unwound-but everyone’s attention was still on the light. Minutes later, the wide-body jet slammed into the Everglades, killing more than 100 people 1.

The landing gear was fine. It was just the bulb. The crash happened because nobody was “flying the plane.”

For DevOps and SRE teams, this is a hauntingly familiar pattern. During incidents, we sometimes fixate on one metric, one alert, one suspicious log line-while the real problem is unfolding elsewhere. Flight 401’s lesson is simple but deep: when pressure mounts, someone must always keep an eye on the system’s overall health. In aviation, they call it “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.” In operations, it’s “Stabilize, Observe, Diagnose.”

Have clear roles. Designate an incident commander whose job is to maintain situational awareness. Don’t let a small mystery consume all attention while the system degrades unnoticed. Above all, remember to fly the plane.

I’ve explored more incidents like this-and what software teams can learn from aviation’s culture of safety-in my book Code from the Cockpit link below. But even if you never read it, I hope Flight 401’s story stays with you next time an alert goes off.

Sources:
1 National Transportation Safety Board, Aircraft Accident Report NTSB/AAR-73-14, “Eastern Air Lines L-1011, N310EA, Miami, Florida, December 29, 1972” (Official Investigation Report)

Book reference: Code from the Cockpit – What Software Engineering Can Learn from Aviation Disasters (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FKTV3NX2)

https://redd.it/1oll8zb
@r_devops

Tooling price rises

Hey,

Who here runs a lab environment to practice coding/DevOps techs?

I have an environment with TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, Prometheus, k3s, etc.

However, has anyone noticed the constant price rises in tooling?

Octopus Deploy went up (there's threads here from a year or two ago).

TeamCity renewal licensing has changed.

And for a lot of system admin tooling, likewise, eg Veeam and VMWare.

It makes running a lab environment difficult.

https://redd.it/1olmixw
@r_devops

API Gateway horror stories?

Recently came over a post mentioning that if API endpoint gets discovered by a mischievous bot - it may drain lots of funds off your account. Could somebody explain please?

And maybe stories from own experience? Thanks all!

https://redd.it/1oljk5m
@r_devops