Contributing Writer · AI Specialist
Celeste Shao
Contributing Writer, ASCENDING Inc
Celeste is an AI specialist focused on what happens after a model ships: tracing and evaluating LLM applications, catching silent quality drift before users do, and the operational discipline that separates a demo from a production system. She covers the observability and evaluation side of the agentic-AI stack.
- LLM observability
- Evaluation
- Production AI
By this contributor
Articles by Celeste Shao
21 articles published on the ASCENDING Blog
-
→Cloud Computing · 8 min readWhat Does an AWS Technical Account Manager Do? And What a Partner-Led TAM Changes
An AWS TAM plans, reviews and escalates but is not hands-on. See who your TAM is under partner-led support, and how partner and AWS TAMs differ in reach.
-
→Cloud Computing · 7 min readIs AWS Enterprise Support Worth It? A Decision Guide by Monthly Spend
Enterprise Support pays off when a TAM and a 15-minute response prevent costly downtime, not by spend alone. Check your AWS bill against four tests.
-
→Cloud Computing · 9 min readAWS Partner-Led Support vs AWS Enterprise Support: What Changes and What Stays the Same
AWS partner support can match Enterprise Support's SLA and TAM while changing who you call and who bills you. See what changes and how to compare offers.
-
→Cloud Computing · 6 min readHow Much Does AWS Enterprise Support Cost? Worked Examples at Three Spend Levels
Enterprise Support is the greater of $5,000 or tiered 10/7/5/3% of gross AWS charges. See the math at $40K, $250K and $1M a month, and why a PPA won't cut it.
-
→Data Analytics · 7 minsUnderstanding QuickSight Scheduled Email Exports
Learn how Amazon QuickSight handles filenames and tab names for Excel, CSV, and PDF exports, and discover workarounds for better control and consistency.
-
→Cloud Computing · 2 minsCloud Storage Solution Deployment Instruction
Deploy the ASCENDING S3 storage solution with one CloudFormation template, then use your native OS file system to browse, sync and share S3 files securely.
-
→Data Analytics · 6 minsSpark on EKS: Broadcast Joins to Cut Shuffle Overhead
Use Spark broadcast joins on Amazon EKS to cut data shuffling and network overhead. When broadcasting helps, when it hurts, and how to size the threshold.
-
→Data Analytics · 9 minsSpark in Amazon EKS Kubernetes - Partition Optimizations
Optimize Spark partitioning on Amazon EKS. Learn when to use repartition vs partitionBy, how to size partitions, and how to speed up data retrieval.
-
→Data Analytics · 5 minsSpark on EKS: Fix the Union Operator Performance Bottleneck
Eliminate the Spark union operator bottleneck on Amazon EKS. How ASCENDING cut execution time by restructuring unions and reducing redundant scans.
-
→Data Analytics · 6 minsInteractive Spark Mode on EKS Cluster - Debugging and Troubleshooting
Set up interactive Spark on an EKS cluster to debug jobs in real time, test data processing logic iteratively, and tune performance without full re-runs.
-
→Cloud Computing · 5 minsEKS Best Practice - Cost Monitoring per Workload
Track Kubernetes cost per workload on EKS. Compare Kubecost, Datadog and CastAI, then build per-Spark-job cost monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana.
-
→Cloud Computing · 4 minsEKS Best Practice - Optimize and Secure Ingress Rule in EKS Cluster
Consolidate Kubernetes Ingress rules onto one ALB with an AWS Load Balancer Controller IngressGroup to cut cost, shrink the attack surface and enforce HTTPS.
-
→Cloud Computing · 3 minsEKS Best Practice - Kubernetes Secrets Management Part II
Encrypt Kubernetes secrets with AWS KMS before committing them to Git, decrypt them in Terraform, and use EKS audit logs to track who reads each secret.
-
→Cloud Computing · 8 minsEKS Best Practice: Storing Kubernetes Secrets Securely
Kubernetes stores Secrets unencrypted in etcd by default. Compare three ways to pass secrets into Amazon EKS: env vars, KMS or Sealed Secrets, and a vault.
- →Data Analytics · 9 mins
Migrating DB Schema to DynamoDB: Design Process and Access Pattern
Move a relational schema to DynamoDB single-table design: map entities, list access patterns, then choose partition and sort keys, with three worked cases.
-
→Cloud Computing · 4 minsEKS Best Practice - Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana
Monitor Amazon EKS nodes, pods and containers with Prometheus and Grafana: track CPU, memory and network metrics, alert on thresholds, and use Pushgateway.
-
→Cloud Computing · 2 minsEKS Best Practice - Authentication & Authorization
Amazon EKS uses IAM to authenticate and Kubernetes RBAC to authorize. Map least-privilege IAM roles to RBAC, move to access entries, and give pods IAM roles.
-
→Cloud Computing · 4 minsEKS Best Practice - Infrastructure As Code Using Terraform
Provision Amazon EKS with Terraform to stop infrastructure drift, review changes before they deploy, and keep remote state, modules and versions reproducible.
-
→Cloud Computing · 3 minsEKS Best Practice - SSO Integration
Integrate SSO with Amazon EKS through Okta or AWS SSO: limit IAM role trust policies to identity provider groups and map each role to least-privilege RBAC.
-
→Cloud Computing · 2 minsEKS Best Practice - Networking
Reserve small /28 cluster subnets for EKS network interfaces and size /19 worker subnets for the VPC CNI, so cluster upgrades never run out of IP addresses.
-
→Cloud Computing · 6 minsSpot Instance 2 minutes termination
Handle the EC2 Spot Instance 2-minute termination notice: detect it from instance metadata or CloudTrail, then drain workloads before the instance goes.
Our contributors
Other authors
-
Ryo Hang
Editor-in-Chief
-
Gloria Qian Zhang
Contributing Editor
-
Michael Clough
Editorial Advisor
-
Elias Saljuki
Contributing Editor
-
Edrees Saljuki
Contributor
-
Soraya Zheng
Contributing Writer
-
Alexander Groman
Contributing Writer
-
Kelvin Yu
Contributing Writer
-
Tommy Tao
Contributing Writer
-
Cynthia Zhang
Contributing Writer
-
Merve Tengiz
Contributing Editor
-
Daoqi Zhang
Contributing Writer
-
Abby Feng
Contributing Writer
-
Arjun Vijay
Contributing Writer
-
Chandler Benson
Contributing Writer
-
Ginny Casuccio
Contributing Editor
-
Laura Bradley McCoy
Contributing Writer

