Melbourne AWS User Group #161 - July 2026

🎉 Melbourne AWS User Group – July Meetup 🎉

📅 Wednesday, 29 July
📍 NAB Events Hub – 395 Bourke Street, Melbourne
⏰ Food at 6:00 pm, talks from 6:30 pm (with live stream)

This month we’ll look at how to design scalable Terraform codebases using reusable modules and environment patterns. We’ll also dive into extending AWS DevOps Agent with custom MCP servers to solve real-world troubleshooting challenges in Amazon EMR.

This month’s lineup features:
• Dale Orders presenting on implementing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform best practices, with a focus on real-world modular design patterns.
• Pinaki Mukherjee demonstrating how custom MCP servers can extend AWS DevOps Agent for enterprise troubleshooting workflows using Amazon EMR.

A huge thank you to our sponsors: 🥇 Mantel Group – Gold Sponsor, 🥈 Cevo – Silver Sponsor, 🏛 NAB – Venue Sponsor

The event will be live-streamed on YouTube as always:
👉 https://melb.awsug.org.au/live

***

🗓️ Agenda
6:00 pm – Food & Socialising
6:30 pm – Introductions
6:40 pm – What’s New in AWS
6:55 pm – Implementing IaC using best practice (Level 100); Speaker: Dale Orders
7:25 pm – Extending AWS DevOps Agent with Custom MCP Servers for EMR Troubleshooting (Level 300); Speaker: Pinaki Mukherjee
7:55 pm – Marketplace (Who’s Hiring)
8:00 pm – Networking + Close

***

🎤 Talk Details
Implementing IaC using best practice
Speaker: Dale Orders
Level: 100
This session shows how to design and implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, with a focus on real-world modular design patterns.
Dale will cover how to break infrastructure into reusable modules, structure Terraform codebases for scalability, and manage environments without unnecessary duplication. You’ll also look at best practices around state management, versioning, and dependency handling so infrastructure stays predictable as it grows.

***

Extending AWS DevOps Agent with Custom MCP Servers for EMR Troubleshooting

Speaker: Pinaki Mukherjee
Level: 300
AWS DevOps Agent already provides powerful operational capabilities, but many organisations have specialist knowledge and workflows that go beyond its built-in features.
In this session, Pinaki will demonstrate how custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers can extend AWS DevOps Agent using Amazon EMR troubleshooting as a practical example. Rather than manually piecing together evidence from EMR APIs, Spark logs, CloudWatch, Amazon S3, YARN, and Kubernetes, attendees will see how a custom MCP server can turn scattered runtime signals into a structured investigation workflow.
Using an open-source EMR troubleshooting MCP server, Pinaki will demonstrate how domain-specific tooling can work alongside AWS DevOps Agent, allowing engineers to keep a consistent operational experience while delegating specialist knowledge to purpose-built MCP servers.
Whether you’re exploring AI-assisted operations or looking to build your own MCP integrations, this session will provide practical architectural ideas and real-world implementation guidance.

***

🙌 Want to Speak at a Future Meetup?

We’re always looking for new speakers and believe everyone has an interesting talk waiting to be shared.

If you’d like to present at a future event, reach out at the meetup or via our website:
👉 https://melb.awsug.org.au/speak/