iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

I tried to make ECS Fargate scale like Lambda. Used a real world scenario, did the math, learned some things. Spoiler: it’s close… but not quite. rehanvdm.com/blog/scaling...

rehanvdm.com

Scaling ECS Fargate like Lambda

In this post, we explore how fast ECS Fargate can scale compared to Lambda. We use a real world example of processing messages from an SQS queue.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

🚀 First blog post of 2026: The CDK Starter v2 is out Going from a basic CDK setup to production ready infra shouldn’t take hours of research and glue. I’ve updated my AWS CDK Starter to give you a clean, tested foundation so you can focus on building your app.

rehanvdm.com

AWS CDK Starter - Lightweight Monorepo

The starter provides configuration management, multi environment deployments, monorepo architecture with pnpm & Turborepo and automated GitHub CI/CD workflows.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Did you catch Zeno's (Resend CEO) presentation at Supabase Select? Fun fact, he created Dracula while in the hospital 🐐 www.youtube.com/live/GbBGYNN...

youtube.com

Supabase Select Build Stage

YouTube video by Supabase

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

It's 2025, and I'm creating a "lambda warmer" function, ugh..

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

🚀 It’s here: Visualize your CDK Diffs directly on your PRs! Powered by the new CDK Express Pipeline GitHub Diff Action -> github.com/rehanvdm/cdk... Key features: ⚡ Run diffs in parallel to save time 📑 Collect outputs from multiple stacks and add them neatly to your PR description ...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

What is stopping you from having CDK Diffs on Pull Requests like this?

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Did you know your Lambdas can be throttled even though they are under the account concurrency? This happens if the sum of their requests per second exceeds 10x the account concurrency.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Earlier this week, I had the great opportunity to speak with students at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) about AWS Cloud and the Serverless mindset. We explored real-world use cases, career paths in cloud, and how Serverless is changing the way we build applications.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

The CDK Express Pipeline GitHub README was getting out of hand, so I've created a documentation website to organize it better! Is it perfect? No, but done is better than perfect. rehanvdm.github.io/cdk-express-...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

TIL that when GitHub does a rebase, commits will have different hashes 🤦 Not great when you are promoting assets from lower branches/envs and make use of the commit hash. docs.github.com/en/repositor...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

🚀 Have you seen last week's CDK Express Pipeline changelog? Here's what's new: ✨ Deployment order now visualized with a Mermaid diagram ✨ New option to deploy stages sequentially ✨ Individual stack deployment order now displayed in [brackets] 👉 Check it out: github.com/rehanvdm/cdk... #AWS #CDK

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Have you seen these open source CDK gems (no particular order)? ⭐️ cdk-sops-secrets – CDK construct to sync SOPS-encrypted secrets into AWS Secrets Manager github.com/dbsystel/cdk...

github.com

GitHub - dbsystel/cdk-sops-secrets: CDK Construct that syncs your sops secrets into AWS SecretsManager secrets.

CDK Construct that syncs your sops secrets into AWS SecretsManager secrets. - dbsystel/cdk-sops-secrets

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Two new features for CDK Express Pipeline. 1. Deploy Stages Sequentially within a Wave 2. The order of operation now indicates what stack will be deployed based on your stack selector (the command in the second screenshot targeted was: `cdk deploy 'Wave2_*'`) github.com/rehanvdm/cdk...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

New blog post 🚀 If you're using AWS CDK Pipelines but struggling with its complexity and slow performance, I've written a detailed guide on migrating to CDK Express Pipeline. rehanvdm.com/blog/migrate... #AWS #CDK #DevOps

rehanvdm.com

Migrate from CDK Pipelines to CDK Express Pipeline

A practical guide to migrating from AWS CDK Pipelines to CDK Express Pipeline. Learn the reasons, benefits, and step-by-step process, with benchmarks and code comparisons.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

📘The AWS CDK Express Pipeline library helps you create simple and fast deployment pipelines using the AWS CDK. This new tutorial shows you how to set up and manage deployments with cdk-express-pipeline on GitHub. rehanvdm.com/blog/cdk-exp...

rehanvdm.com

CDK Express Pipeline Tutorial

Learn how to create and manage simple and fast deployment pipelines using the cdk-express-pipeline library, a powerful tool built on top of AWS CDK that enables CDK-native pipeline definitions.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

FEATURE REQUEST - I actually want something AI `@slack what have I been up to last week and what still needs attention`

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Check it out, this time I am in front of the camera not behind it 🙂 talking about CDK Express Pipelines an alternative to CDK Pipelines. Spoiler alert Express is faster, less opinionated and runs anywhere, even locally!

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Have you seen the AWS Data Landing Zone CDK Construct? It creates the groundwork/platform enabling the rest of your teams datalandingzone.com Do you see the value in using a Landing Zone? If so what are you using today?

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

If everything is a priority, then nothing is. - Me after this week 🥲

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I need to get back to blogging this year, I have been having too much fun in builder land. First post, is about two new CDK Constructs I published to help connect Lambdas to the Tailscale network. Blogging about building is still considered blogging right? 😅 rehanvdm.com/blog/cdk-lambda-t…

rehanvdm.com

CDK Constructs for connecting AWS Lambda to Tailscale

With the Tailscale Lambda Extension and Proxy CDK Constructs, you can simplify secure networking without having to rely on Docker and serverfull infrastructure

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Astro had a big 2024! "Astro started life as a static site generator, but in recent years it has actively expanded its server-side functionality, now capable of building sites with dynamic content like e-commerce sites without sacrificing UX."

astro.build

2024 year in review | Astro

Revisit everything that happened in Astro last year: new feature releases, survey results, Astro Together, and more!

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

> If you don’t remove the resources, enrollment into the new OU will fail, somewhat spectacularly. 😂 "somewhat spectacularly" The docs calling out that you really screwed up, pitty you only get to read it after the screw-up

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

🚀 New Features in the Data Landing Zone (DLZ) CDK Construct: 🔐 IAM Management: Manage Users, Groups, Roles, and Policies effortlessly. 📦 Account Suspension: Move accounts to the Suspended OU with ease. 🧹 Resource Cleanup: Account resource cleanup with AWS Nuke.

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Lee Gilmore @serverlessadvocate.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

✅ If I was starting out from day 1 in the industry again, these are some of the core rules I would live by personally (🧵):

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Lee Gilmore @serverlessadvocate.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

🌟 𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞 #16 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐮𝐭! This week our Serverless expert is AWS Hero @rehanvdm.bsky.social, and the spotlight falls on AWS Hero @zachjonesnoel.bsky.social! serverlessadvocate.substack.com/p/16-oss-fra... Please subscribe & share! 🔔 #AWS #ListenToTheHeroes

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Have you seen CloudGlance? It's a free desktop app I built to help consultants manage multiple AWS accounts, streamline logins, simplify Bastion host port forwarding, automate security group IP whitelisting, and view CloudFormation stacks across regions. Check it out here: cloudglance.dev

cloudglance.dev

Cloud Glance

Single pane of glass for all your AWS credentials and bastion hosts

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

🔍 Looking for a Google Analytics alternative? Have you seen Serverless Website Analytics, I built it to be a serverless, cost-efficient, and privacy-focused solution for website analytics. 👉 Try the live demo: demo.serverless-website-analytics.c… ✅ CDK Construct allows easy deploying

demo.serverless-website-analytics.com

SWA

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

This is the most CDK I have written in a very long time!

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

✨ INTRODUCING ✨ AWS Data Landing Zone (DLZ). The DLZ is a CDK construct designed to accelerate AI and data-related projects. It provides an opinionated Landing Zone, laying the foundation for a multi-account AWS strategy, so you can focus on delivering applications. 🧵 datalandingzone.com

datalandingzone.com

Data Landing Zone

The Data Landing Zone (DLZ) is a CDK Construct designed to create a landing zone tailored for supporting and enabling AI, data-driven, data mesh, and cloud projects.

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

"Simplicity requires discipline." - Dr. Werner Vogels. This is now one of my favorite quotes It perfectly captures the mindset needed to tackle complex systems. Here are some other key takeaways: 🧵

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

TIL `curl` has built-in support to generate AWS SigV4 headers so you can do AWS API calls with a single command 😮

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Keeping up with AWS news is a full-time job. I started a GIST here gist.github.com/rehanvdm/91f... to track all the noteworthy re:Invent 2024 launches. Is there anything I missed? Or what has been your favorite so far?

gist.github.com

Noteworthy re:Invent launches 2024

Noteworthy re:Invent launches 2024 . GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

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Franck Pachot @franckpachot.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

One more PostgreSQL-compatible service in AWS: Aurora DSQL Don't panic, here is a list to help you choose your managed database for PostgreSQL applications dev.to/franckpachot...

dev.to

Amazon Aurora DSQL: Which PostgreSQL Service Should I Use on AWS ?

With the Amazon Aurora innovations announced at re:Invent 2024, you may feel overwhelmed when...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Some pretty good improvements here aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/im... but expect to pay almost 3x more for them to move into the "Essentials" plan + don't let the lower free MAU 10k (down from 50k) catch you out in new accounts

aws.amazon.com

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

AWS Cognito is the first service to bring a pricing tier list into the Portal?

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Here are ~40 Pre:Invent launches that made my radar, did I miss anything significant? What has been your favourite so far? gist.github.com/rehanvdm/91f...

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Rehan van der Merwe @rehanvdm.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

aws.amazon.com

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