Building secure, reliable systems with practical ops experience.

How I built it

This site is hosted securely on AWS using S3 + CloudFront + ACM + Route 53, deployed automatically via GitHub Actions using OIDC (no long-lived AWS keys).

Architecture

Developer (push main)
        |
        v
GitHub Repo  ---> GitHub Actions (OIDC)
                    |
                    v
           IAM Role (least privilege)
                    |
                    v
          S3 Bucket (private origin)
                    |
                    v
       CloudFront (OAC + HTTPS + cache)
                    |
        Route 53 + ACM (TLS cert)
                    |
                    v
              jaredwilson.me
      

Step-by-step

1. Built the static site (HTML/CSS/JS).
2. Created a private S3 bucket to store site files.
3. Created CloudFront with Origin Access Control (OAC) to keep S3 private.
4. Issued an ACM certificate in us-east-1 for HTTPS on CloudFront.
5. Delegated DNS from GoDaddy to Route 53 and pointed the domain to CloudFront.
6. Added security headers via a CloudFront Response Headers Policy.
7. Automated deployments with GitHub Actions (OIDC assume-role → S3 sync → CloudFront invalidation).

Deployment Evidence

Result: every push to main deploys automatically and invalidates CloudFront so updates appear fast.

wilsonc0re + wilsonr0sa Lab Architecture

User Browser (Windows Host)
        │
        │ HTTPS 443
        ▼
wilsonc0re-01
Reverse Proxy Node
• Nginx
• TLS Termination
• Reverse Proxy
192.168.56.101
        │
        │ HTTP Proxy
        ▼
wilsonr0sa-01
Application Server
• Nginx
• Gunicorn
• Flask API
Endpoints:
/api/health
/api/db
192.168.56.102
        │
        │ PostgreSQL 5432
        ▼
wilsondb-01
Database Node
• PostgreSQL
• wilsonapp database
• wilsonappuser
192.168.56.103
        

Overview

This project is a multi-node infrastructure lab designed to simulate a secure web application stack. The environment includes a reverse proxy, application server, and database server running on separate virtual machines to demonstrate network segmentation, service isolation, and reverse proxy routing.

Stack Components

• wilsonc0re-01 – Nginx reverse proxy with TLS termination
• wilsonr0sa-01 – Flask API served via Gunicorn
• wilsondb-01 – PostgreSQL backend database

API Endpoints

• /api/health – Service health check
• /api/db – Database connectivity test

Validation Evidence

Build Steps

1. Created three Linux virtual machines for proxy, application, and database tiers.
2. Configured PostgreSQL on wilsondb-01 with a database and user.
3. Built a Flask API on wilsonr0sa-01 to expose health and database endpoints.
4. Served the Flask app using Gunicorn behind Nginx.
5. Configured wilsonc0re-01 as a reverse proxy with TLS termination.
6. Configured Nginx upstream routing from proxy → application server.
7. Validated connectivity from client → proxy → API → database.

This lab demonstrates multi-tier architecture design, reverse proxy routing, API service deployment, and database integration across segmented infrastructure nodes.