Sumerian: AWS Helps Developers Build VR and 3-D Apps AWS Launches Cloud-Based Video Processing Service VMware and AWS Announce Updates for Their Hybrid Cloud AWS Launches Machine Learning Competency to Partners AWS Launches a Bare-Metal EC2 hypervisor with a New I3 Instance GuardDuty is AWS Taps Machine Learning to Secure ItsCloud AWS Updates Aurora, DynamoDB,…
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re:Invent 2017 – AWS Partners Now Open for Networking Competency. AWS launched a new networking competency this week for AWS Partner Network (APN), members of which were invited to the re:Invent 2017 Global Partner Summit. AWS announced Tuesday that the new AWS Networking Competency was for APN partners who “provide network solutions that [help] customers develop, adopt, and deploy AWS applications.” “Networking Competency Partners offer a range of specialized solutions that are auto-scaled, aligned to cloud design principles, make it easier for customers to use networking features in [virtual private clouds]. The competency currently has 18 partners. It includes five categories: Technology for network connectivity, Direct Connect Integrated Partners and Direct Connect Infrastructure Partners, Technology for load balancers, Technology for network management, and Technology for Load Balancers. According to the competency datasheet, partners are allowed to apply for more than one category but must submit new applications each time. A partner must be registered as an advanced-tier Technology Partner under the APN to qualify for the AWS Networking Competency. Other requirements include:
A Business level+ Support Plan Refer to customers for projects that were completed in the last year. Depending on the category of partner applying, the number and type of references required will vary. AWS is a networking solution that’s available in at most two regions. According to the datasheet, “Deep working knowledge architecting network solutions…
re:Invent 2017 – Kubernetes Service, No-Fuss Container Delivery Come to AWS Amazon Web Services (AWS), made several container technology advancements this week at its reInvent conference. It announced its Elastic Container Service (EKS) for Kubernetes and unveiled a new container management system called Fargate. Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes AWS CEO Andy Jassy presented a preview of the Amazon EKS offering during Wednesday’s re:Invent keynote. He also stated that general availability is expected sometime in 2018. EKS is a managed service that helps developers run Kubernetes in AWS. It requires very little configuration. Jassy stated that EKS will automatically deploy Kubernetes masters to multiple availability zones to ensure high availability. It applies patches and updates automatically as a managed service. However, users can request more control over scheduling updates. Deepak Singh, general manager at AWS Container Services, wrote that it integrates with many AWS services including “Elastic load Balancing for load distribution and IAM for authentication,” Amazon VPC for isolation, AWS PrivateLink to private network access, AWS CloudTrail to log, and AWS PrivateLink for remote network access. Singh said that compatibility is a key feature of EKS. He added that Amazon EKS runs the upstream Kubernetes version, so you can use all existing plugins and tools from the Kubernetes Community. Applications running on Amazon EKS can be used in any Kubernetes environment. This allows you to easily migrate your Kubernetes app to Amazon EKS without any code changes. You can find more information about EKS, including how you can access the preview, here. AWS Fargate Jassy stated in the keynote that managed container services are great, but it would be great to be able to run containers without needing servers or clusters of them. AWS Fargate is a new container management tool that will free customers from the burden of managing container infrastructure. Fargate is now available in AWS’ Northern Virginia region. It “radically changes the way you can run containers,” Jassy stated. Randall Hunt, AWS Senior Technical Evangelist, shared more information about Fargate in a Wednesday blog post. Hunt explained that Fargate is a technology that allows containers to be used as a fundamental computing primitive without the need to manage the instances. You only need to create your container image, specify your CPU and memory requirements, and define your networking or IAM policies. Then, launch it. Fargate is already working with Amazon Elastic Container Service for Docker. Support for EKS will be added in 2018. Pricing is determined on an as-needed basis. More information can be found here. More information from AWS reInvent 2017:
Sumerian: AWS Helps Developers Build VR and 3-D Apps AWS Launches Cloud-Based Video Processing Service VMware and AWS Announce Updates for Their Hybrid Cloud AWS Launches Machine Learning Competency to Partners AWS Launches a Bare-Metal EC2 hypervisor with a New I3 Instance GuardDuty is AWS Taps Machine Learning to Secure ItsCloud AWS Updates Aurora, DynamoDB,…
re:Invent 2017 – EC2 Gets New EC2 Instances That Cover General and Big Data Workloads Amazon Web Services introduced two new EC2 instance family families at reInvent 2017. The new M5 instances were created for general-purpose workloads with higher performance requirements than the “M” instances. According to Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist, the M5 instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon Platinum 8175M Series processors. They have a 14 percent higher price-to-performance ratio than the M4. There are six sizes available in the M5 range. The smallest model has 8GiB RAM and supports two virtual CPUs (vCPUs), while the largest model has 384GiB RAM and support for 96 of them. The complete lineup can be found in the table below: The new lineup of M5 instances. Source: AWS/Jeff Barr. The M5 instances are currently available in AWS’ Northern Virginia and Oregon regions. More regions will be added as they become available. AWS also released the H1 instance family, which is optimized for Big Data storage and dense storage. The H1 family is available in four sizes as shown in the table. It is optimized for Big Data workloads like “MapReduce clusters [and] host-distributed file systems,” Barr stated in a separate post. The H1 instance family. Source: AWS/Jeff Barr. The H1 instances are powered by Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 processors. They “provide more vCPUs, more memory per terabyte local magnetic storage, alongwith increased network bandwidth” than the D2 dense-storage instances. The H1 instances can be supported in AWS’ Northern Virginia and Oregon, Ohio, and Ireland regions. The M5 and H1 instances were released on the heels the I3 instance’s debut, the first instance to use AWS’ new bare metal hypervisor. This instance was also made available as a preview at reInvent this week. More information from AWS reInvent 2017:
Sumerian: AWS Helps Developers Build VR and 3-D Apps AWS Launches Cloud-Based Video Processing Service VMware and AWS Announce Updates for Their Hybrid Cloud AWS Launches Machine Learning Competency to Partners AWS Launches a Bare-Metal EC2 hypervisor with a New I3 Instance GuardDuty is AWS Taps Machine Learning to Secure ItsCloud AWS Partners Now Have…
Difference between Agile and Scrum
For any organization to reach its goals successfully, project management is vital. This increases the importance of project management professionals. Let’s say you are interested in project management but are not familiar with the field. You will likely hear many new terms in this situation because project managers are responsible for many roles and responsibilities….
SysOps vs. DevOps
Cloud computing has been a great technology development. DevOps (or SysOps) are the buzzwords for cloud computing. This is a combination between two words Development Operations (DevOps), and System Operations (SysOps), each. Both cloud computing methods are highly in demand, which creates more job opportunities and high-paying salaries. This blog will explain the differences between…
SDK for Go 2.0 Developer Preview Available on AWS Cloud
A developer preview of the updated SDK for Go is now available on theAmazon Cloud Services Inc. (AWS). Golang is sometimes called Golang. It is an open-source programming language that Google has backed. It is optimized for large-scale applications such as performant Web apps that can run at great scale. It is currently at version…
Visual Studio Bug: Developer Hit with $6.500 AWS Bill Carlo, a South African developer who is familiar with Git, explained that his code was uploaded to a public repository instead of a private one. This was due to a bug in Visual Studio 2015’s GitHub extension. Although the bug has been fixed and AWS will refund the large bill, Carlo shared his experience to highlight security issues when working with cloud computing. Carlo stated that developers need to be aware and follow best practices when pushing source to the cloud. “Things aren’t set in stone yet. We are creating the rules as we go.” This could be a fascinating case study. I hope it raises awareness about the dangers of cloud version control, especially when combined with limitless cloud accounts such as AWS. Carlo explained how he decided to forgo his usual practice of using Git command line and instead used the built-in Visual Studio IDE functionality to commit a local repository to a private repository on GitHub. It ended up in a public repository, which was not what he expected. AWS sent him a message advising him that his account was compromised by the disclosure of an access code. He tried to contain the damage but it was too late. Bitcoin miners had already found the key and put it to good use. Carlo explained that bitcoin miners constantly scan GitHub source code to find Amazon access keys. These keys are used to spawn large numbers EC2 instances that can mine bitcoins. They make a lot of money while the ones who were exploited end up with huge bills. Bitcoin.org describes Bitcoin as “an innovative payment network, and a new type of money.” Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology, which allows it to operate without central banks or central authorities. The network manages transactions and issues bitcoins. Bitcoin users can use exposed access keys to mine other bitcoins by leveraging them. Carlo stated that all they need is one key. A single click through a buggy interface or unintentional click can expose your data to all the world in a matter of seconds. Many companies store their source code and data in the cloud. With multiple developers having access, we will see significant data leaks in future. This is a frightening prospect for us all. Carlo stated that he was contacted to resolve the matter by Microsoft and AWS executives. He received a but fix and AWS bill reimbursement. He also had some advice for AWS developers:
Before you use a new version control GUI in the wild, make sure to test it. You could be exposed to a bug. Secure sensitive information in configuration files Move access keys to a separate file and exclude this from Git deployments with a.gitignore. Amazon could automatically implement daily max budgets. Amazon should not allow…
Oursky Announces Open Source of a Tool for AWS Web site Hosting Development firm Oursky today announced that it has open-sourced a tool to simplify the process for hosting static Web sites on Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS). AWS Site Manager is a simple command-line tool which leverages Amazon CloudFront (the AWS content delivery network — CDN) and Amazon Simple Storage Service. This tool simplifies the process of setting up and managing static Web sites by removing the complexity associated with using these services. “AWS S3 and CloudFront combined are a great static website hosting solution, but it can be difficult to set up,” states Ben Cheng, one in a group of 40 developers at the Hong Kong company. You need to configure the S3 correctly and configure CloudFront. Also, you should be concerned about best practices like site redirection, syncfile and invalidate CloudFront for updating. These are too complicated to host a static website so we open-sourced our tool AWS site-manager. This tool is now available on GitHub. After configuring AWS credentials and setting up configuration settings, developers can use this command-line tool to navigate into a project directory, create and sync a domain, and then set up AWS credentials. This creates an S3 bucket with domain name and Web site URL. It also syncs local files to S3 and redirects URL (example.com) back to the bucket. The GitHub README.md file states that this does so. The tool can also be used by developers to create HTTPS sites. Cheng stated that the tool is still in its initial stages. Further work is planned for:
CloudFront supports gzip instead of S3. Keep config handy so that next time you can run aws site-manager sync on your local folder. Improved control of HTTP header, Custom Page for Error Code. Support Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificate or ACM cert Route-53 can also be automatically configured Cheng invited interested developers to create issues…