Learning Cloud, One Step at a Time: My Resume Challenge Story
Hi everyone! I’m Divyanshi, a Master’s student in Management Information Systems at the University at Buffalo. Before grad school, I worked as a Technology Risk Consultant, where my primary focus was auditing IT systems for banks and insurance companies. While my work was always IT-centric, I didn’t get many opportunities to engage in hands-on technical work.
That started to change during a multi-stream IT review project. I had the chance to work alongside senior colleagues who were experts in cloud technology. Listening to their discussions sparked my curiosity, and I began exploring cloud computing. Pretty soon, I realized I’d found something that truly excited me — a field I wanted to dive deeper into.
I began researching entry-level cloud certifications. After careful analysis and advice from friends, I decided to pursue the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification. It took time to wrap my head around cloud concepts and AWS services, but I was determined. Passing the certification exam felt incredibly rewarding and motivated me to continue learning. That’s when I came across the Cloud Resume Challenge by Forrest Brazeal, and I knew it was the perfect next step to put my knowledge into action.
Tackling the Cloud Resume Challenge
This project gave me an excellent hands-on understanding of AWS services and how they work together to form an end-to-end process. Huge thanks to Rishab Kumar’s video series, which helped me navigate the entire setup.
Check out my website at : https://resume.learnwithdiv.com
The most challenging part for me wasn’t just building the project but even starting it. Installing and configuring the required software was tricky. Thankfully, some generous content creators on YouTube provide step-by-step guides for beginners, which helped me push through.
Frontend Design: HTML | CSS | JS
My website is as basic as it gets, built using simple HTML and formatted with some CSS. It’s just my resume and a visitor counter — but hey, that’s step one done! I do plan to improvise it in the future.
Access management : Organizations | IAM Identity Center
As someone with experience in technology risk, I’ve always valued the principles of access management and least privilege. This perspective helped me appreciate AWS Organizations and IAM Identity Center while setting up access permissions for the project. It’s a more extensive process than directly creating an IAM user, but it taught me the fundamentals of managing access securely.
Frontend Infrastructure: S3 | CloudFront | Route 53 | ACM
Once the permissions were set up, I created an S3 bucket to host the static website — a fairly straightforward step. The next challenge was setting up CloudFront to enable HTTPS and point the S3 URL to my custom domain.
Initially, I struggled with this step. Following AWS documentation and watching videos left me stuck after multiple attempts. It was disheartening, but I knew I wasn’t far off. After taking a break and returning with fresh eyes, I carefully retraced my steps with the help of some detailed videos and AWS resources. Finally, it worked!
The satisfaction of seeing everything come together was worth the effort. After configuring CloudFront and linking my custom domain, I explored DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) to understand how it enhances domain authentication and protects against spoofing. Adrian Cantrill helped demystify this concept for me.
Backend Infrastructure :Lambda | Python | DynamoDB
I wrote the Lambda function in Python, and it took a few tries to understand how each piece of the code worked. Once I had the function URL ready, I ran into the infamous "Internal Server Error." After some digging and troubleshooting online, I realized that DynamoDB also needed explicit access to the Lambda function. Once I updated the permissions, it worked! I updated the JavaScript, refreshed my S3 bucket, and just like that—my counter was finally working. (Side note : Towards the end of the project I had updated the contents of my S3 bucket, and that was followed by errors, I tried to delete and create a new Lambda function, but that still did not resolve the issue. Some further digging online, it suggested me to check the console logs of my website. There I noticed and understood CloudFront was using the cached Lambda function. Thus, I needed to enable invalidation in CloudFront.)
Setting up AWS CLI and CI /CD for frontend
This was definitely a curveball for me as the Command Line Interface was a new thing altogether. Initially, the YAML code was not working due to VCS extension but then on changing the extension things started to fall in line and I was able to commit the contents of the bucket.
Lastly, I chose Terraform to try out Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and yes, it did feel fascinating to recreate the same AWS resource with writing code. Even though, I am new to coding, the end result made the process intriguing to me and I look forward to learn more of it.
This project presented me to learn various new things and while troubleshooting was overwhelming, when it all did come together, it felt incredibly rewarding. I am still learning, while the process to learn something new does feel intimidating and difficult at times, I am excited to get my hands dirty and learn more. Cheers!
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