AWS Podcast Episode #690: AWS News Updates, October 21, 2024
Released on October 21, 2024
Hosts: Simon Elisha & Gillian Ford
Welcome to Episode #690 of the AWS Podcast, where hosts Simon Elisha and Gillian Ford delve into the latest updates, trends, and innovations from Amazon Web Services. This episode is packed with insightful discussions on a variety of AWS services, ranging from analytics and artificial intelligence to developer tools and security. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing all the key points, notable quotes, and essential information shared during the episode.
Marketplace Enhancements
Atomis Marketplace's Procurement Insights Dashboard
Simon kicked off the episode by highlighting the general availability of the new Procurement Insights Dashboard in the Atomis Marketplace. This tool offers organizations enhanced visibility into their renewals and marketplace spending, allowing for optimized database marketplace expenditures. Simon emphasized the ease of access to innovative software solutions through the marketplace:
"It is amazing the stuff you can find in the marketplace. It's a really easy way to get access to cool software."
— Simon [00:31]
Additionally, AWS Partner Central now supports the association of AWS Marketplace private offers to launched opportunities, streamlining partnership activities.
Analytics Advancements
Amazon Redshift Enhancements
Simon discussed several updates to Amazon Redshift:
- Data Sharing with Data Lake Tables: General availability for sharing live data lake tables across different warehouses, ensuring up-to-date and consistent information.
- Query Identifiers: Introduction of query hashes to uniquely identify SQL queries, facilitating improved performance monitoring.
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless Updates
Gillian highlighted the new features in Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, which include:
- Flat object data types for more efficient storage and searching of nested data.
- Enhanced geospatial features.
- Expanded field types, boosting indexing speed, search performance, and analytics capabilities.
AWS Glue Interactive Sessions & Redshift Instances
- Auto Scaling in AWS Glue Interactive Sessions: Now generally available, allowing dynamic scaling based on workload demands.
- RA3 Large Instances for Redshift: Introduced a smaller node size (2 CPU cores, 16 GB memory) for greater flexibility.
- MTLS Support for Amazon MSK: Enhanced security between Amazon Redshift and Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka clusters.
Artificial Intelligence Innovations
Amazon Polly's New Synthetic Voices
Simon unveiled four new synthetic generative voices for Amazon Polly, enhancing the naturalness of text-to-speech outputs:
- Australian English: Olivia
- US English: Joanna, Danielle, and Stephen
"These are similar to our neural voices with the same names, but they have more natural pronunciation and porosity."
— Simon [03:28]
Amazon Bedrock Model Evaluation
Gillian explained the new capabilities in Amazon Bedrock, which now allow for:
- Automatic evaluation using predefined algorithms for metrics like accuracy and robustness.
- Human evaluation workflows for subjective metrics such as friendliness and brand alignment.
Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases & Amazon Q Business
- Stop Ingestion API: Provides greater control over data ingestion workflows.
- Integration with Smartsheet: Enables synchronization of data from Smartsheet to Amazon Q indices.
- Sample-Based Partitioning for AWS Health Omics Variant Stores: Automates partitioning for new variant stores.
Compute Enhancements
Lambda Recursive Loop Detection
Gillian introduced Lambda's new feature that automatically detects and stops recursive loops between Lambda functions and S3, preventing unintended usage and billing from runaway workloads.
"Now Lambda will automatically detect and stop such recursive loops, which certainly is going to save us a lot of headache."
— Gillian [06:07]
Amazon EC2 & Compute Optimizer Updates
- Optimized CPUs Post-Launch: EC2 now supports optimized CPUs after instance launch.
- Compute Optimizer: Expanded support to 80 new EC2 instance types, enhancing cost optimization strategies.
Amazon Inspector & Amazon Connect Updates
- Amazon Inspector: Enhanced scanning engine for more comprehensive vulnerability assessments in Lambda functions.
- Amazon Connect Contact Lens Dashboards: Introduced color-coded metrics, customizable service level thresholds, and more interactive features to monitor contact center performance.
Artificial Intelligence in Developer Tools
Console to Code
Gillian announced the general availability of Console to Code, a tool powered by Amazon Q that transforms console actions into reusable code snippets. This facilitates a seamless transition from prototyping to production deployments.
"Customers can generate code for their console actions in their preferred format with a single click."
— Gillian [16:43]
AWS Code Pipeline Enhancements
Simon and Gillian discussed several improvements to AWS Code Pipeline, including:
- Simplified Getting Started Experience: Making it easier to create new pipelines.
- Commands Action: Allows running shell commands as part of pipeline executions with a secure compute environment.
- Pipeline Variable Checks: New rules to gate pipeline executions based on stage-level conditions.
End of Life Extensions for Amazon Corretto
- Amazon Corretto 8: Extended to December 2030.
- Amazon Corretto 11: Extended to January 2032.
"Don't wait till the last minute to upgrade your stuff."
— Gillian [17:22]
End User Computing Updates
Amazon DCV & Amazon Workspaces
- Amazon DCV 2024.0: Renamed to Amazon DCV, now supporting Ubuntu 24.04 with enhanced features.
- Amazon Workspaces: Now supports file transfer between workspace sessions and local devices, enhancing productivity.
Amazon AppStream 2.0 Enhancements
- Multi-Session Fleets: Added support for printer redirection and user-selected regional settings.
- Automatic Time Zone Redirection: Improves user experience by adapting to client device time zones.
- Increased Application Setting Storage: Raised from 1 GB to 5 GB.
AWS IoT Core Updates
Gillian highlighted the removal of the TLS ALPN requirement and the addition of custom authorizer capabilities, simplifying device authentication workflows.
Management and Governance
AWS VMware SPI & AWS Chatbot Enhancements
- VMware SPI for Managed Services: Part of the Migration Acceleration Program in AWS Partner Central.
- AWS Chatbot: Now supports centrally managed access to AWS accounts from Slack and Microsoft Teams with AWS Organizations.
AWS Resource Explorer & AWS Risk Explorer
- AWS Resource Explorer: Enhanced to list all AWS resources across services, regions, and accounts using familiar search operators.
- AWS Risk Explorer: Introduced the List Resources API for streamlined resource listing and pagination.
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus
Now offers IPv6 address support for new and existing workspaces, catering to modern networking requirements.
AWS Repost & End User Messaging
- Repost Agent: A generative AI-powered assistant to enhance customer interactions with intelligent, real-time responses.
- End User Messaging on WhatsApp: Enables developers to create rich, interactive messaging experiences on WhatsApp, complementing SMS and push notifications.
Media Services and Networking
AWS Deadline Cloud
Simon introduced AWS Deadline Cloud's new feature supporting job resubmissions, simplifying the management of render jobs for computer-generated graphics and visual effects.
Network Load Balancer (NLB) Updates
- Zonal Shift & Zonal Auto Shift: Enhances traffic management by allowing quick traffic shifts away from impaired availability zones, ensuring high availability and resilience.
Amazon CloudFront Enhancements
- JA4 Fingerprinting: Supports JA4 fingerprinting of incoming requests, enabling the blocking of malicious clients and enhancing security through fingerprint-based access control.
Amazon Route 53 & VPC Updates
- DNS over HTTPS (DoH): Route 53 resolver endpoints now support DoH with SNI validation, improving privacy and compliance.
- VPC Innovations: Supports BYO IP and BYO ASN in all AWS Local Zones, and allows launching Amazon CloudWatch Internet Monitor directly from the Network Load Balancer Console.
Security, Identity, and Compliance
AWS Security Hub Enhancements
Gillian announced the launch of seven new security controls in AWS Security Hub, along with Service Reference Information to streamline policy management workflows.
Storage Innovations
Amazon S3CSI Driver
- New Access Controls: Introduced for individual Kubernetes pods, enhancing security in multi-tenant environments by allowing per-pod IAM role configurations.
Amazon S3 Quota Support & Amazon Data Firehose
- Service Quota for S3 Buckets: Users can now view and manage their total number of buckets against their quota, with options to request increases.
- Amazon Data Firehose: Now delivers data streams into Apache Iceberg format tables in Amazon S3, allowing routing of records to different tables based on content.
Favorite Highlights from the Hosts
Simon’s Favorite: Console to Code
"It's like do something. When something comes into S3, something comes into S3. Write to S3. Something came into S3."
Reflecting on Lambda’s recursive loop detection, Simon humorously relates it to common recursive issues developers face.
Simon expressed particular enthusiasm for Console to Code, appreciating its role in bridging the gap between visual interactions and infrastructure as code:
"I'm actually going to go with the console to Code one because I think that, you know, we often talk about the need for infrastructure as code and it is important. But often folks are visually oriented and at least in their starting point, they want to just click on some stuff and be guided. And this to me feels like a nice bridge."
— Simon [28:10]
Gillian’s Favorite: Repost
Gillian chose Repost as her favorite update, emphasizing its value and the active AWS community support it offers:
"I feel like it's one of those resources that is so valuable, but a lot of people just underutilize it or some people just don't really know that it's there for them."
— Gillian [28:29]
Closing Remarks
The hosts concluded the episode by encouraging listeners to engage with AWS resources and leverage the latest updates to enhance their cloud solutions. They also highlighted the integration of generative AI across various AWS services, underscoring AWS's commitment to innovative and user-centric advancements.
"Until next time, keep on building."
— Simon [29:20]
Stay Updated
For more detailed insights and the latest AWS news, subscribe to the Official AWS Podcast and follow the hosts on social media:
- Gillian Ford: X (formerly Twitter) - @GillianFord
- Email: awspodcast@amazon.com
Note: This summary is based on the transcript provided and aims to encapsulate the key discussions and updates from Episode #690 of the AWS Podcast.