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Declarative cloud stacks in SQL: an intro to stackql-deploy

· 8 min read
Nirmal Chhodvadiya
Cloud Consultant and AWS Community Builder

Tutorial 2 in this series showed the query-before-mutation pattern by hand. Query live state, apply a policy gate, mutate what's out of policy, verify convergence. Every step was a SQL statement typed into a shell. The pattern held, but the shape was low-level. One resource at a time. One session at a time. No structure for repeating it across environments or holding it right over time.

stackql-deploy takes that pattern and turns it into a framework. Define your resources once as SQL-anchored files, declare them in a manifest, and let the framework run the exists check, the create-or-update, the state check, and the exports as a single build. Same underlying pattern, now something a team can operate at scale.

This tutorial walks through the tool end to end. What it is, how a project is shaped, how a single resource is defined, and how the whole thing runs against a real Google Cloud project.

(Quickly) Identify Old Node Runtimes in AWS Lambda

· 3 min read
Jeffrey Aven
Technologist and Cloud Consultant

Have you been sent one of these?

[Action Required] AWS Lambda end of support for Node.js 18 [AWS Account: 824123456789] [EU-CENTRAL-1]

If you are like me and manage AWS accounts with numerous Lambda functions potentially deployed across multiple regions, you need to identify affected resources, in this case, Lambda node runtimes, which will be discontinued later this year.  

With stackql this task is easy...

  1. Open AWS cloud shell in your AWS account (any region - it doesn't matter)
  2. Download stackql
curl -L https://bit.ly/stackql-zip -O && unzip stackql-zip
  1. Open an authenticated stackql command shell
sh stackql-aws-cloud-shell.sh
  1. Run some analytic queries using stackql; here are some examples...

🔍 List all functions and runtimes across regions​

Run a stackql query to get the details about functions, runtimes, etc, deployed at any given time across one or more AWS regions.  You can include all 25 AWS regions; each query will be performed asynchronously - speeding up the results.

select 
  function_name, 
  region,
  runtime 
FROM aws.lambda.functions 
WHERE region IN ('us-east-1', 'eu-west-1');

📊 Group by runtime and region​

Perform an analytic query like a group by aggregate query such as...

select 
  runtime, 
  region, 
  count(*) as num_functions 
FROM aws.lambda.functions 
WHERE region IN ('us-east-1', 'eu-west-1', 'ap-southeast-2')
GROUP BY runtime, region;
tip

You can easily visualise this data using a notebook; see stackql-codespaces-notebook or stackql-jupyter-demo.

Using StackQL you can:

  • Quickly spot functions running on runtimes like nodejs18.x that are approaching end of support.
  • Plan your upgrades region-by-region with confidence.

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Google Firewall Analysis using StackQL

· 2 min read
Jeffrey Aven
Technologist and Cloud Consultant

Analyzing firewall rules is crucial for maintaining security in your cloud infrastructure. Using StackQL, you can efficiently query and analyze Google Cloud firewall configurations to ensure that your security policies are correctly implemented and that there are no unexpected open ports or protocols that might pose a security risk. Below is a simple query that retrieves important details about the ingress firewall rules for a specific network in a Google Cloud project.

SELECT 
	name, 
	source_range,
	ip_protocol,
	allowed_ports,
	direction
FROM (
	SELECT 
	name,
	source_ranges.value as source_range,  
	JSON_EXTRACT(allowed.value, '$.IPProtocol') as ip_protocol,
	JSON_EXTRACT(allowed.value, '$.ports') as allowed_ports,
	direction
	FROM google.compute.firewalls, json_each(sourceRanges) as source_ranges, json_each(allowed) as allowed
	WHERE project = 'stackql-k8s-the-hard-way-demo' 
	AND network = 'https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/stackql-k8s-the-hard-way-demo/global/networks/kubernetes-the-hard-way-dev-vpc'
) t 
WHERE 
source_range = '0.0.0.0/0' 
and direction = 'INGRESS';

This query provides a comprehensive list of all ingress firewall rules that apply to any IP address (0.0.0.0/0) within the specified Google Cloud project and network. The results include the firewall rule name, the source IP range, the protocol, the allowed ports, and the direction of the traffic, an example is shown below:

|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
|                     name                      | source_range | ip_protocol | allowed_ports | direction |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| default-allow-icmp                            | 0.0.0.0/0    | icmp        | null          | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| default-allow-rdp                             | 0.0.0.0/0    | tcp         | ["3389"]      | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| default-allow-ssh                             | 0.0.0.0/0    | tcp         | ["22"]        | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| kubernetes-the-hard-way-dev-allow-external-fw | 0.0.0.0/0    | tcp         | ["22"]        | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| kubernetes-the-hard-way-dev-allow-external-fw | 0.0.0.0/0    | tcp         | ["6443"]      | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|                                                                                         
| kubernetes-the-hard-way-dev-allow-external-fw | 0.0.0.0/0    | icmp        | null          | INGRESS   |                                                                                         
|-----------------------------------------------|--------------|-------------|---------------|-----------|

You can use this query to help quickly identify potential security vulnerabilities. Regularly auditing these rules ensures that your cloud environment remains secure and that only the necessary ports and protocols are open to the internet.

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