AWS Podcast Episode #698: re:Invent 2024 - Monday Night Live with Peter DeSantis

Release Date: December 3, 2024

In Episode #698 of the AWS Podcast, hosts Simon Eljibe and Hawn Nguyen-Loughren delve into the latest announcements and innovations unveiled at re:Invent 2024. Recorded shortly after Peter DeSantis' electrifying Sunday Night Live keynote, this episode offers a comprehensive overview of AWS's newest offerings across various domains, including Marketplace enhancements, analytics, AI/ML advancements, compute power, customer engagement tools, databases, management and governance, migration solutions, networking, security, and storage innovations.

1. Introduction

[00:00] Simon Eljibe:

"Great to have you back for the first of our very special re:Invent 2024 episodes. This is being recorded just after Peter DeSantis' Sunday Night Live event where he talked a lot about some really interesting innovations around chips, around networking and a whole bunch of other cluster stuff."

Simon sets the stage by highlighting the exciting disclosures from Peter DeSantis' keynote, promising a deep dive into AWS's latest technological advancements.

2. AWS Marketplace Enhancements

AWS has expanded the AWS Marketplace to include EC2 Image Builder components from independent software vendors (ISVs). This allows users to easily find, subscribe, and integrate these components into their golden images, streamlining image creation processes.

Additionally, there's a new streamlined deployment experience for Databricks on AWS, enabling users to quickly set up and commence their data projects via the Marketplace.

3. Analytics Enhancements

Significant updates in the analytics domain include:

• Amazon OpenSearch Service & ETL Integration with Amazon Security Lake: This integration facilitates the efficient exploration of large data sources, previously cost-prohibitive, enhancing security investigations.

  [05:30] Simon Eljibe:

  "This integration allows you to efficiently explore voluminous data sources that were previously cost prohibitive to analyze, helping you streamline your security investigations."

• Amazon CloudWatch and OpenSearch Integrated Analytics Experience: Features like OpenSearch's Piped Processing Language (PPL) and OpenSearch SQL enable advanced data analysis without duplicating data.

• AWS Clean Rooms Support: Facilitates collaboration across multiple clouds and data sources, such as Snowflake and Amazon Athena, without data movement or sharing.

4. Application Integration Improvements

• Amazon EventBridge and AWS Step Functions Integration with Private APIs: Powered by AWS PrivateLink and Amazon VPC Lattice, this integration allows secure, event-driven architectures, enhancing innovation and security.

  [15:45] Simon Eljibe:

  "Customers can now securely integrate their legacy systems with cloud-native applications using event-driven architectures and workflow orchestration."

5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Advancements

• Latency Optimized Inference for Amazon Bedrock: Now in public preview, this feature offers faster response times for foundation models like Anthropic Claude 3.5 and Meta's Llama 3.1, ensuring reduced latency without compromising accuracy.

  [25:10] Simon Eljibe:

  "With latency optimized inference in Amazon Bedrock, those Llama models also run faster than any major cloud provider."

• Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases Enhancements: Introduces retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) evaluation and rerank APIs to improve the accuracy and relevance of generated responses.

• Amazon Q Business Updates: Adds visual element insights within documents, allowing for more comprehensive data extraction from formats like PDFs and PowerPoint presentations.

6. Compute Updates

• EC2 P5EN Instances General Availability: Powered by Nvidia H200 GPUs, these instances offer unparalleled performance for deep learning and HPC applications.

  [40:25] Simon Eljibe:

  "These instances deliver up to 1.7 times GPU memory size and 1.5 times GPU memory bandwidth compared to the H100 GPUs."

• EC2 Storage Optimized i8G Instances: Featuring AWS Graviton 4 processors, these instances provide up to 60% better compute performance and significant improvements in storage I/O latency.

• Amazon Elastic VMware Service Preview: Enables running VMware Cloud Foundation directly within AWS, simplifying deployments and leveraging existing VMware tools.

7. Customer Engagement Enhancements

• Amazon Connect Updates: Including AI guardrails, Intraday Forecast dashboards, AI assistants for customer segments, and support for WhatsApp business messaging. These tools enhance customer interaction capabilities and streamline support processes.

  [55:50] Simon Eljibe:

  "With Generative AI-powered self-service, Amazon Q in Connect allows you to directly converse with end customers and reason over undefined intents."

• Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect Preview: Integrates native digital and voice capabilities into Salesforce Service Cloud, providing a unified experience for agents.

8. Database Developments

• Amazon MemoryDB Multi-Region General Availability: A fully managed active-active multi-region database offering up to five nines of availability with microsecond read and single-digit millisecond write latencies.

  [1:05:15] Simon Eljibe:

  "MemoryDB is a fully managed value key and Redis OSS compatible database service providing multi-AZ durability and high throughput."

• Oracle Database at AWS Limited Preview: Allows customers to migrate Oracle workloads to AWS-managed Exadata infrastructures with minimal changes.

9. Management and Governance Enhancements

• Amazon CloudWatch Enhancements: Introducing network performance monitoring and Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights for consolidated logging and metrics.

• AWS Control Tower Managed Controls: Utilizes Declarative Policies to consistently enforce desired service configurations across accounts.

  [1:15:40] Simon Eljibe:

  "Declarative policies help you ensure the controls configured are always enforced regardless of the introduction of new APIs or when new principals or accounts are added."

10. Migration and Transfer Innovations

• AWS Data Transfer Terminal Launch: Physical locations in Los Angeles and New York where customers can upload large data sets directly to AWS via high-throughput connections.

  [1:25:00] Simon Eljibe:

  "By using a data transfer terminal, you can significantly reduce the time it takes to upload that data in just minutes as opposed to weeks or days."

• AWS Transfer Family Web Apps: Provides a secure, branded portal for users to browse, upload, and download data in Amazon S3 through a web interface.

• AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) Schema Conversion with Generative AI: Facilitates up to 90% schema conversion for migrating databases like Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora with minimal manual intervention.

11. Networking and Content Delivery Updates

• VPC Lattice TCP Support: Extends VPC Lattice capabilities to include TCP, allowing access to application dependencies across different VPCs and on-premises environments.

  [1:35:20] Simon Eljibe:

  "You're able to connect to your application dependencies hosted in different VPCs, accounts, and on-premises using additional protocols including TLS, HTTP, HTTPS, and now TCP."

• Access to VPC Resources over AWS PrivateLink: Simplifies secure access to resources like databases without the need for load balancing, facilitating easier sharing across teams and partners.

12. Security, Identity, and Compliance Updates

• AWS Security Incident Response General Availability: A comprehensive service offering automated monitoring, investigation, and collaboration tools to manage and respond to security events effectively.

  [1:45:50] Simon Eljibe:

  "Security Incident Response integrates with existing detection services like GuardDuty and third-party tools through the AWS Security Hub to rapidly review your alerts."

• GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection: Enhances threat detection by identifying sophisticated multi-stage attacks, providing detailed incident reports and remediation recommendations.

• AWS Verified Access Preview: Supports secure access over non-HTTPS protocols like TCP, SSH, and RDP, enabling VPN-less access to corporate applications using Zero Trust principles.

13. Storage Enhancements

• Amazon S3 Data Integrity Protections: New default protections include automatic CRC-based checksum calculations and independent verification to ensure data integrity during transmission and storage.

  [1:55:30] Simon Eljibe:

  "S3 independently verifies these checksums and accepts objects after confirming the data integrity that was maintained in transit over the public Internet."

• Storage Browser for Amazon S3 General Availability: An open-source component that allows web applications to provide users with a simple interface to browse, upload, and download data stored in S3.

• Amazon FSx Intelligent Tiering: A new storage class for Amazon FSx for OpenZFS offering cost savings of up to 85% compared to FSx SSD storage, with full elasticity and intelligent tiering.

14. Conclusion

Simon wraps up the episode by emphasizing the breadth of AWS's innovations showcased at re:Invent 2024, encouraging listeners to stay tuned for daily updates and to provide feedback through the AWS Podcast platform.

[2:05:50] Simon Eljibe:

"We're just getting started. Tune in each and every day where post the keynotes. I'll be giving you all the updates and all the goodies and hopefully there'll be something interesting there for you. I'm sure there is."

Final Thoughts

Episode #698 serves as an extensive recap of AWS's latest technological advancements and service enhancements revealed at re:Invent 2024. From boosting compute power with new EC2 instances to enhancing security incident responses and expanding AI/ML capabilities, AWS continues to empower developers and IT professionals with cutting-edge tools and services. Whether you're focused on building scalable cloud solutions, migrating complex databases, or enhancing customer engagements, this episode provides valuable insights to keep you informed and ahead in the cloud landscape.

For more detailed information and ongoing updates, listeners are encouraged to explore the AWS Podcast further and engage with AWS resources directly.