This week at AWS
AWS continues to raise the bar by offering new services and features to its customers. Also this week there are very interesting news, let’s see what they are:
Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) enables dynamic resizing for storage space
The storage space allocated to your Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) cluster will now dynamically decrease when you delete data from the cluster. Amazon DocumentDB is a database service that is purpose-built for JSON data management at scale, fully managed and integrated with AWS, and enterprise-ready with high durability. Previously, when Amazon DocumentDB data was removed, such as by dropping a collection, the overall allocated space remained the same. The free space was reused automatically when data volume increased in the future.
AWS Support announces an improved create case experience
As of today, you can experience the new interface for creating support cases in the AWS Support Center console. When you create a case, Support Center can better anticipate and understand your issue by capturing your case details. Support Center can then provide targeted and specific remediation, such as answers to frequently asked questions and links for related information.
AWS Glue Streaming ETL now supports auto-decompression
AWS Glue streaming ETL (Extract Transform and Load) can now detect compressed data streaming from Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), and self managed Apache Kafka. It can then automatically decompresses this data without customers having to write code, saving them development hours. AWS Glue Streaming ETL jobs continuously consume data from streaming sources, cleans and transforms the data in-flight, and makes it available for analysis in seconds. Customers compress data prior to streaming in-order to improve performance and to avoid throttling limits by Amazon Kinesis and Amazon MSK. Prior to this feature, customers had to write user defined functions to uncompress data from a stream, which is time consuming.
Amazon Polly adds new male Neural TTS voices in 4 languages
Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of 4 male Neural TTS voices: Liam for Canadian French, Arthur for UK English, Daniel for German and Pedro for US Spanish.
Amazon RDS increases concurrent copy limit to 20 snapshots per destination region
Amazon RDS now allows you to have up to 20 concurrent snapshot copy requests per destination region per account, an increase from the former limit of five concurrent copies per destination region per account.
Amazon QuickSight launches Level Aware Calculation (LAC)
Amazon QuickSight launches a suite of functions called Level Aware Calculations (LAC). The new calculation enables customers to specify the level of granularity that they want the window functions (in what window to partition by) or aggregate functions (at what level to group by) to be conducted. This brings flexibility and simplification for users to build some advanced calculations and powerful analyses. Without LAC, user will have to prepare pre-aggregated tables in their original data source, or run queries in the data prep phase to enable those calculations. For further details, visit here.
AWS DataSync can now copy data to and from Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
AWS DataSync now supports copying files to and from Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, a storage service that allows customers to launch and run fully managed ONTAP file systems in the cloud. Using AWS DataSync, you can quickly and securely migrate your data from your on-premises storage, the edge, or other clouds to your FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems running in AWS. You can also use DataSync to move data between your FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system and Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon EFS file systems, or other Amazon FSx file systems.
Amazon GameLift launches new console experience
Amazon GameLift now offers a new console experience that provides a more intuitive way to manage and scale your game servers on AWS. The redesigned console has new left-hand navigation that makes it easy to switch between various GameLift features such as managing and creating builds, scripts, fleets, FlexMatch, and includes helpful resource links like “Prepare to launch”, and service quotas. The new interface will make it quicker and easier to configure and manage your game server instances by providing a view of all your settings in one location.
Amazon EC2 placement groups now support host-level spread on AWS Outposts rack
Starting today, you can use Amazon EC2 placement groups to spread instances across distinct hosts on an AWS Outposts rack. Host-level spread placement groups distribute instances across hosts to reduce the likelihood of correlated failures, benefiting workloads that require High Availability (HA) like mission-critical databases.
Amazon SageMaker built-in algorithms now provides four new Tabular Data Modeling Algorithms
Amazon SageMaker provides a suite of built-in algorithms, pre-trained models, and pre-built solution templates to help data scientists and machine learning practitioners get started on training and deploying machine learning models quickly. These algorithms and models can be used for both supervised and unsupervised learning. They can process various types of input data including tabular, image, and text.
Amazon AppStream 2.0 is now available in the AWS US East (Ohio) Region
Amazon AppStream 2.0 is now available in the AWS US East (Ohio) region. You can now deploy AppStream 2.0 for your active workloads, as well as to meet your disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity needs. With this launch, you can deploy General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Memory Optimized, Graphics Design, Graphics Pro and Graphics G4 instances to meet the needs of your users.
AWS Application Migration Service is now in scope for AWS SOC reports and supports temporary IAM credentials
You can now use AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) for use cases that are subject to System and Organization Controls (SOC) reporting. You can also now install the AWS Application Migration Service agent on your source servers using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) temporary security credentials with limited permissions. AWS Application Migration Service allows you to quickly migrate and modernize applications on AWS.
Amazon S3 on Outposts now supports presigned URLs
Amazon S3 on Outposts now supports presigned URLs for granting time-limited access to objects stored locally on an Outpost. S3 on Outposts bucket owners can now more easily share objects with individuals in their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
NICE DCV releases version 2022.1 with performance improvements and support for additional Linux distributions
NICE DCV version 2022.1 introduces performance improvements and multiple new features, such as support for Rocky Linux 8.5 and Ubuntu 22.04 servers. NICE DCV is a high-performance remote display protocol that helps customers securely access remote desktop or application sessions, including 3D graphics applications hosted on servers with high-performance GPUs.
AWS Single Sign-On is now available in the Middle East (Bahrain) and Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) Regions
AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO) is now available in the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) and Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) Regions. For a full list of the regions where AWS SSO is available, see the AWS Regional Services List.
AWS Snowcone SSD is now available in the AWS Europe (Paris)
The AWS Snowcone solid state drive (SSD) device is now available in the AWS Europe (Paris) Region, adding to our growing list of Regions already offering Snowcone SSD, including AWS US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California) Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Canada (Central), and South America (São Paulo).
AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio adds Amazon CloudWatch Logs Integration
Developers can now access Amazon CloudWatch Logs within Visual Studio using the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio. Directly from the IDE, it is now possible to search and filter log groups, log streams, and events. Additionally, log groups can be accessed from their associated resources, and log events can be downloaded to a file.
Amazon AppStream 2.0 enables UDP streaming for Windows native
Starting today, Amazon AppStream 2.0 introduces support for streaming over UDP, when using the Windows native client. Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed service that provides non-persistent desktops, and application streaming products to end-users. Previously, you were able to stream over TCP via Windows native client. With your end users now working from home or in different countries compared to your corporate offices, they may operate in sub-optimal network conditions you are unable to control. These network conditions can impact your end users experience and productivity. With UDP streaming your end users will experience a more responsive streaming quality in sub-optimal network conditions, with higher round trip latency.
AWS Direct Connect announces new location in Ireland
Today, AWS announced the opening of a new AWS Direct Connect location in Dublin, Ireland. AWS customers in Ireland and across Europe can now establish network connections from their premises to AWS in the Servecentric, Blanchardstown Corporate Park data center to gain high-performance, secure access to all public AWS Regions (except Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD). This is the third Direct Connect location in the Dublin metropolitan area.
Amazon QuickSight launches rolling date functionality
Amazon QuickSight now enables authors to setup rolling date to dynamically generate dashboard for end users. The rolling date functionality is now available for both date & time range filters and datetime parameters. Users will be able to set up rolling rules to fetch a date, such as today, yesterday, or different combinations of (start/end) of (this/previous/next) (year/quarter/month/week/day) and dynamically update the dashboard content based on when the dashboard is loaded. This feature brings flexibility and simplicity for users to build time-related dashboards. Without rolling date, users have to set up a static date and manually change it as needed. For further details, visit here.
Now bring your own development environment in a custom image to RStudio on Amazon SageMaker
Starting today, you can now bring your own development environment in a custom image to RStudio on Amazon SageMaker. RStudio on SageMaker is the industry’s first fully managed RStudio Workbench in cloud. You can quickly launch the familiar RStudio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), dial up and down the underlying compute resources without interrupting your work, and even switch to programming using Python on Amazon SageMaker Studio Notebooks. All your work, including code, datasets, repositories, and other artifacts are synchronized between the two environments. You can bring your current RStudio license to Amazon SageMaker at no additional charge to quickly get started.
Amazon MemoryDB for Redis is now PCI DSS Compliant
Amazon MemoryDB for Redis is now a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant service. MemoryDB is a fully managed, Redis-compatible, in-memory database that provides low latency, high throughput, and durability at any scale.
AWS Backup Audit Manager adds new control to audit recovery point objective (RPO)
AWS Backup Audit Manager adds a new control that you can use to audit and report on the recovery point objective (RPO) of your backups. With this launch, you can now specify your organizational recovery point objectives for your resources and evaluate whether your recovery points are in compliance.
AWS SAM Accelerate is now generally available — quickly test code changes against the cloud
The AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) announces general availability of AWS SAM Accelerate. The AWS SAM Command Line Interface (CLI) is a developer tool that makes it easier to build, locally test, package, and deploy serverless applications. AWS SAM Accelerate is a new capability of AWS SAM CLI that makes it easier for developers to test code changes against a cloud-based environment, reducing the time from local iteration to production-readiness.
Announcing general availability of Amplify UI for React
Amplify UI is an open-source UI library that brings the simplicity and extensibility of AWS Amplify to UI development. It consists of connected components that simplify complex workflows like authentication and dynamic data, primitive components that form the building blocks to create consistency across applications, and themes to make Amplify UI to fit any brand.
AWS Systems Manager now supports patching Windows Server 2022 and other Linux operating systems
Patch Manager, a capability of AWS Systems Manager, now helps you automate patches deployments for instances running Windows Server 2022, Rocky Linux versions 8.4 and 8.5, CentOS Stream 8, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 8.4 and 8.5, giving you more patching options for your nodes. Patch Manager helps you automate the process of patching nodes with security related and other types of updates. Patch Manager also helps you automate patches deployments for Linux instances running Windows Server, RHEL, Ubuntu Server, Amazon Linux, Amazon Linux 2, CentOS, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).
Amazon Interactive Video Service launches edge location in Colombia
Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) announces its first point of presence (PoP) in Colombia. The new edge location will enable streamers and viewers based in Colombia to enjoy lower latency, better video quality, and increased capacity.
Announcing bare metal support for Amazon EKS Anywhere
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Anywhere on bare metal which gives customers broader choice of infrastructure for running Kubernetes on-premises. As customers modernize their applications, they want to use Kubernetes consistently between their existing on-premises bare metal infrastructure and the cloud. Running Kubernetes on bare metal infrastructure is complex, and customers spend time, effort and money on infrastructure operations instead of focusing on business innovation.
AWS Database Migration Service now supports VPC source and target endpoints
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) now supports virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoints as sources and targets. AWS DMS can now connect to any AWS service with VPC endpoints so long as explicitly defined routes to the services are defined in their AWS DMS VPC.
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles now provides confidence scores to help companies merge duplicate customer records
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles now allows you to automatically merge duplicate customer records on confidence scores. Each time the identity resolution feature finds duplicate records, it provides a confidence score on a scale of zero to one to represent the accuracy of a match, where a score of one represents most accurate match and zero represents least accurate match. You can select a threshold anywhere between zero to one to automatically merge duplicate records into a unified customer profile.
Amazon FinSpace releases APIs to assign granular user permissions
With the release of new granular permission APIs, Amazon FinSpace customers can now fully manage user access within their FinSpace environment using the AWS SDK and CLI. This allows customers to integrate configuration of FinSpace access controls into their identity orchestration workflows to keep FinSpace in sync with their organization’s access policies.
Amazon Connect now supports personalization of the customer experience using Lex sentiment analysis in flows
Amazon Connect now allows you to further personalize the automated, self-service customer experience by leveraging Amazon Lex customer sentiment analysis as a branch within your flows. Amazon Lex allows customers to create intelligent chatbots that turn their Amazon Connect flows into natural conversations. With this launch, you can now build flows based on whether the customer expresses positive or negative utterances to your Lex bot. For example, you may want customers who express positive sentiment to be presented with additional upsell opportunities or you may want customers who express negative sentiment to be put directly in queue to speak with an agent. The new functionality can be setup using the “Get Customer Input” or the “Check contact attributes” flow blocks. In addition, all Lex related attributes (e.g., Intent, Slots, Sentiment) within flow blocks are now consolidated under one “type” within attribute selection to help simplify building your Lex experience within flows.
Amazon Connect now supports branching of flows based on Lex confidence scores
Amazon Connect now allows you to further personalize, the automated self-service customer experience using Amazon Lex intent confidence scores as a branch within your flows. Amazon Lex allows customers to create intelligent chatbots that turn their Amazon Connect flows into natural conversations. By branching flows on Lex confidence scores, you can present the right solutions to your customers to help solve their issues faster. For example, when a confidence score is high you may want to present customers a with a self-service option immediately rather than requesting additional information or transferring them to an agent. This new functionality can be set up using the “Check contact attributes” flow block.
Integration of AWS Well-Architected Tool with AWS Organizations
AWS Well-Architected Tool now integrates with AWS Organizations enabling cloud architects to share their workloads and custom lenses more broadly across their organization. AWS Organizations is an account management service that allows customers to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into a single, centrally managed organization. This update will increase efficiency and make it easier to share lenses and workloads with multiple accounts.
Amazon QuickSight launches Level Aware Calculations (LAC)
Amazon QuickSight launches a suite of functions called Level Aware Calculations (LAC). The new calculation capability enables customers to specify the level of granularity that they want the window functions (in what window to partition by) or aggregate functions (at what level to group by) to be conducted. This brings flexibility and simplification for users to build some advanced calculations and powerful analyses. Without LAC, user will have to prepare pre-aggregated tables in their original data source, or run queries in the data prep phase to enable those calculations. For further details, visit here.
AWS CloudShell is available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions
AWS CloudShell is a browser-based shell that makes it easier to securely manage, explore, and interact with your AWS resources. CloudShell is pre-authenticated with your console credentials. Common development tools are pre-installed so no local installation or configuration is required. With CloudShell you can run scripts with the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), define infrastructure with the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK), experiment with AWS service APIs using the AWS SDKs, or use a range of other tools to increase your productivity.
Amazon Pinpoint launches journey schedule for more precise communication delivery
Journeys in Amazon Pinpoint now allows customers to define a schedule for channel communications based on day of the week, and day of the year. In addition, Amazon Pinpoint has added two new journey sending limits to help customers control the volume of communications sent to a user. Amazon Pinpoint journeys are multi-step campaigns that send users on communication paths based on their actions or attributes. Journeys can use multiple channels including: SMS, email, push, and voice. Journeys are intended for customers who have user engagement use cases, and want to send targeted communications that drive high-value user actions.
Amazon EventBridge cross-Region routing is now available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions
Amazon EventBridge cross-Region routing allows customers to consolidate events from numerous regions into one central Region. This makes it easier for customers to centralize their events in the destination Region and write code that reacts to them or replicate events from source to destinations Regions to help synchronize data across Regions. Today, we are excited to announce availability of cross-Region routing in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) customer-managed prefix lists is now available in five additional regions
Starting today, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) customers can create their own prefix lists in five additional AWS Regions: AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta), AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD and both AWS GovCloud (US) regions.
Amazon QuickSight Authors can now learn and experience Q before signing up
QuickSight Authors can now try, learn and experience Q before signing up. Authors can choose from six different sample topics to explore relevant dashboard visualizations and ask questions about data in the context of exploration to fully explore Q’s capability before signing up. This feature makes it easy for authors to understand and learn about Q before signing up.
AWS CloudFormation Guard 2.1 is now generally available
AWS CloudFormation announces the general availability (GA) of AWS CloudFormation Guard 2.1 (cfn-guard), which enhances Guard 2.0 with new features. CloudFormation Guard is an open-source domain-specific language (DSL) and command line interface (CLI) that helps enterprises keep their AWS infrastructure and application resources in compliance with their company policy guidelines. CloudFormation Guard provides compliance administrators with a simple, policy-as-code language to define rules that can check for both required and prohibited resource configurations. It enables developers to validate their templates (CloudFormation Templates, K8s configurations, and Terraform JSON configurations) against those rules.
AWS IoT Greengrass now supports MQTT v5
AWS IoT Greengrass is an Internet of Things (IoT) edge runtime and cloud service that helps customers build, deploy, and manage device software. We are excited to announce our version 2.6 release, which adds edge support for MQTT version 5, an updated device-to-device communication specification that includes many additional feature improvements over the MQTT version 3.1.1 protocol.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2022/06/aws-iot-greengrass-supports-mqtt-v5/
