CloudWarGames.com - Level Up Your AWS Skills with Real Live Firefighting on AWS


CloudWarGames.com - Level Up Your AWS Skills with Real Live Firefighting on AWS

Interested in testing your skills or leveling up your AWS fire fighting abilities using a real world live AWS environment?

Well then allow me to introduce to you CloudWarGames.com

Our Mission:

Create a fun, safe, effective way to level up real world AWS skills for players of all levels from the very beginner to the advanced.

How It Works:

Scenarios:

For years I have curated a collection of the most painful, sinister, or sometimes just tedious situations that can happen to you while running your infrastructure on AWS.

Now I am breaking those down into replicate Scenarios that we can use to WarGame.

Participation:

InfraMaster:

Just like Dungeons and Dragons has a "Dungeon Master" one person will be the "Infrastructure Master" or "InfraMaster".

Note form Matt: This will likely be me for quite some time but I am game to switch it up if anyone else wants a spin.

Hot Seat Participants:

These are the participants that have their camera and mic on and may be asked to screen share as they do their diagnostics and fix. These are the main group actually playing the game.

Observation Gallery:

These are participants without their cameras and mics on who are following along. They likely will have access to the chat depending on the specific Gameplay Variation.

WarGame Schedule:

Before:

Depending on the Scenario the InfraMaster may send you a Network Diagram and Terraform scripts so that you can study up and be ready when we start getting your hands dirty.

Warm Up(Approx 10 minutes):

Before we dive in depending on the difficulty the InfraMaster will give the Hot Seat participants an overview of the system and answer a few questions.

Scenario Briefing(Approx 5 minutes):

During this time you could be briefed or you may not be briefed depending on the scenario.

A brief could be something as simple as "The customer service rep at your company says users are losing items they added to their cart before they can purchase".

Diagnostics(Approx 30 minutes):

During this time the participants will try to diagnose the root of the issue.

Fix(Approx 10 minutes):

Here is where the participants need to come up with a solution that will restore the system back to normal.

At this time because I am not giving random people on the internet any access but Read Only the participants will have to tell the InfraMaster what to do and the InfraMaster will make the changes while screen sharing.

After Action Report(15 minutes):

Once the fix is in place(or if we run out of time) participants will have time to review their actions and see where they can be improved.

Additionally this is where the InfraMaster can give participants a peek behind the scenes and show them how the scenario was set up from the InfraMasters point of view.

Gameplay Variations:

There are several variations on how the game can be played.

Cooperative and Competitive:

Cooperative:

During this type of game the Hot Seat participants will work together and are encouraged to interact with each other and discuss potential solutions.

Competitive:

Race Mode Vs Round Robin:

Race Mode:

The clock is ticking and every second counts. Participants will race to see who can complete a scenario in the shortest amount of time.

Round Robin:

Think of this like a turn based game like Catan where everyone takes a turn.

Participants will try to solve the scenario in the fewest turns.

Hands On Vs Hands Off:

Hands On:

The Hot Seat participants will actually have real login credentials with access to a live AWS environment.

This gameplay would most likely be suited for more advanced participants.

Hands Off:

The Hot Seat participants will NOT have direct access but instead discuss with the InfraMaster who will interact with AWS and the command line while sharing their screen.

This gameplay would most likely be suited for more beginner participants.

Skill Levels:

We will be designing scenarios and gameplay variations for all skill levels from the very beginner to the extremely advanced and, not for the faint of heart, "Hard Core Mode" (Coming Soon...)

Conclusion:

So that is it. If you are not signed up get signed up and lets have some fun!

PS: Playing is more fun with friends so spread the word.

~Cheers Matt L - Schematical.com

Video Link: https://youtu.be/gcWsg4IJDn4