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Cloud Conversations: Revisiting re:Invent 2014 and other AWS updates

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This is part one of a two-part series about Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2014 and other recent cloud updates, read part two here.

Revisiting re:Invent 2014 and other AWS updates

AWS re:Invent 2014

A few weeks ago I attended Amazon Web Service (AWS) re:Invent 2014 in Las Vegas for a few days. For those of you who have not yet attended this event, I recommend adding it to your agenda. If you have  interest in compute servers, networking, storage, development tools or management of cloud (public, private, hybrid), virtualization and related topic themes, you should check out AWS re:invent.

AWS made several announcements at re:invent including many around development tools, compute and data storage services. One of those to keep an eye on is cloud based Aurora relational database service that complement existing RDS tools. Aurora is positioned as an alternative to traditional SQL based transactional databases commonly found in enterprise environments (e.g. SQL Server among others).

Some recent  AWS announcements  prior to re:Invent include

AWS vCenter Portal

Using the  AWS Management Portal for vCenter adds a plug-in within your VMware vCenter to  manage your AWS infrastructure. The vCenter for AWS plug-in includes support  for AWS EC2 and Virtual Machine (VM) import to migrate your VMware VMs to AWS  EC2, create VPC (Virtual Private Clouds) along with subnet's. There is no cost  for the plug-in, you simply pay for the underlying AWS resources consumed (e.g.  EC2, EBS, S3). Learn more about AWS Management Portal for vCenter  here, and download the OVA  plug-in for vCenter here.
https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

AWS re:invent content

AWS re:invent 2014 day 1 keynote
    AWS Andy Jassy (Image via AWS)

 

November 12, 2014 (Day 1) Keynote (highlight video, full keynote). This is the session where AWS SVP Andy Jassy made several announcements including Aurora relational database that complements existing RDS (Relational Data Services). In addition to Andy, the key-note sessions also included various special guests ranging from AWS customers, partners and internal people in support of the various initiatives and announcements.

 

AWS re:invent 2014 day 2 keynote
    Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels (Image via AWS)

 

November 13, 2014 (Day 2) Keynote (highlight video, full keynote). In this session, Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels appears making announcements about the new Container and Lambda services.

 

AWS re:Invent announcements

 

Announcements and enhancements made by AWS during re:Invent include:

  • Key  Management Service (KMS)
  • Amazon RDS  for Aurora
  • Amazon EC2 Container Service
  • AWS Lambda
  • Amazon EBS Enhancements
  • Application  development, deployed and life-cycle management tools
  • AWS Service  Catalog
  • AWS CodeDeploy
  • AWS CodeCommit
  • AWS CodePipeline

Key  Management Service (KMS)

Hardware  security module (HSM) based key managed service for creating and control of  encryption keys to protect security of digital assets and their keys.  Integration with AWS EBS and others services including S3 and Redshift along  with CloudTrail logs for regulatory, compliance and management. Learn more  about AWS KMS here

AWS Database

For those  who are not familiar, AWS has a suite of database related  services including  SQL and no SQL based, simple to transactional to Petabyte (PB) scale data warehouses  for big data and analytics. AWS offers the Relational Database  Service (RDS) which is a  suite of different database types, instances and services. RDS instance  and types include SimpleDB, MySQL, Postgress, Oracle, SQL Server and the new  AWS Aurora offering (read more below).  Other  little data database and big data repository related offerings include DynamoDB (a non-SQL database), ElasticCache (in memory  cache repository) and Redshift (large-scale  data warehouse and big data repository).

In addition  to database services offered by AWS, you can also combine various AWS resources  including EC2 compute, EBS and other storage offerings to create your own  solution. For example there are various Amazon Machine Images (AMI's) or  pre-built operating systems and database tools available with EC2 as well as  via the AWS Marketplace , such as MongoDB and Couchbase among  others. For those not familiar with MongoDB, Couchbase, Cassandra, Riak along with other non SQL or alternative databases and key value repositories, check out Seven Databases in Seven Weeks in my book review of it here.

Seven Databases book review
Seven Databases in Seven Weeks and NoSQL movement available from Amazon.com

Amazon RDS  for Aurora

Aurora is a new relational database offering part of the AWS  RDS suite of services. Positioned as an alternative to commercial high-end  database, Aurora is a cost-effective database engine compatible with MySQL. AWS  is claiming 5x better performance than standard MySQL with Aurora while being  resilient and durable. Learn more about Aurora which will be available in early  2015 and its current preview here.

Amazon EC2 C4 instances

AWS will be adding a new C4 instance as a next generation of  EC2 compute instance based on Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) processors. The Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 processors run at a clock speed of 2.9 GHz providing the  highest level of EC2 performance. AWS is targeting traditional High Performance  Computing (HPC) along with other compute intensive workloads including analytics,  gaming, and transcoding among others. Learn more AWS EC2 instances here, and  view this Server and StorageIO EC2, EBS and  associated AWS primer here.

Amazon EC2 Container Service

Containers such as those via Docker have become popular to  support developers rapidly build as well as deploy scalable applications. AWS  has added a new feature called EC2 Container Service that supports Docker using  simple API's. In addition to supporting Docker, EC2 Container Service is a high  performance scalable container management service for distributed applications  deployed on a cluster of EC2 instances. Similar to other EC2 services, EC2  Container Service leverages security groups, EBS volumes and Identity Access  Management (IAM) roles along with scheduling placement of containers to meet  your needs. Note that AWS is not alone in adding container and docker support  with Microsoft Azure also having recently made some announcements, learn more about Azure and Docker here. Learn more about EC2 container service here and more about Docker here.

Docker for smarties
  http://storageioblog.com/docker-smarties-nondummies-vmworld-2014/

Continue reading about re:Invent 2014 and other recent AWS enhancements here in part two of this two-part series.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs


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