AWS Powershell Tools: Get Specific Tags

A quick AWS Powershell tools snippet post here. When you call Get-EC2Instance from the AWS Powershell tools it returns an instance object that has a Tags attribute, which is a Powershell list of EC2 Tag Objects.

I'm usually a fan of how the AWS Powershell Tools object models are setup, but this is one case where I feel there could be some improvement. Instead of using a list and forcing users to iterate the list to find the right tag, the EC2 objects "Tags" property should be a hashtable with the tag Key as the hash key so you can index directly to the object. But, this is was we have to work with for now.

Is My Traffic Being Blocked? (or Using Wireshark to Unanswered SYN Packets)

One of the most frustrating things in network troubleshooting can be finding out if traffic is being blocked. Blocked traffic can keep applications or a services from running correctly. A lot of applications will throw unhelpful or vague error messages.

Until relatively recently the average network was a pretty open and trusting place. Most computers were allowed to receive and send traffic on any port they pleased, any protocol was allowed to use any port with no explanation required.

VPC Flowlogs through Cloudwatch Logs Insights

You know all those times you think to yourself, "I wish there were a faster way to search all these logs I keep putting in Cloudwatch?"

Well apparently Alexa was reading your mind at one of those times because at AWS re:Invent 2018 released CloudWatch Logs Insights. It's advertised as a more interactive, helpful log analytics solution than the log search option we already have.