Adrian’s top AWS updates — Nov. 13th 2018
Curated list of my favorite AWS updates.
I am often asked how I keep up with all of the AWS updates; well, I regularly check the AWS What’s New pages and take notes — a sort of TODO list of things I need to deep-dive into; things related to architecture, resiliency, DevOps or anything else that catches my eye. No discrimination, I just can’t learn and like everything :)
I was asked to share that list, so here it is.
#1 AWS CodePipeline Now Supports Cross-Region Actions
AWS CodePipeline now makes it easier to perform actions such as deployments, builds, or tests in multiple regions from a single pipeline. Previously, you needed to set-up a pipeline in a region in order for CodePipeline to perform actions in that region. Now, you can add cross-region actions such as additional region deployments to help improve your application’s latency and availability.
This means I will have to make an update to my multi-region serverless backend series to support multi-region deployment. Stay tuned!
#2 Redis 5.0 now available on Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
Your real-time applications can now benefit from Amazon ElastiCache for Redis support of Redis 5.0. Now you can take advantage of new Redis 5.0 features such as Redis Streams, enhanced sorted sets with pop operations, improved HyperLogLog algorithm, and better memory management.
You should know by now that I am a Redis fan-boy. Nothing else to say :)
#3 Amazon RDS for SQL Server Now Supports Always On Availability Groups
Amazon RDS for SQL Server now offers Always On Availability Groups for the Multi-AZ configuration in all AWS Regions. The Multi-AZ deployment option provides enhanced availability and data durability by automatically replicating databases between two AWS Availability Zones. These Availability Zones offer you an easier and more effective way to design and operate applications and databases, making them more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than traditional single datacenter infrastructures or multi-datacenter infrastructures.
Remember folks, things fail all the time!
#4 Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility Supports IAM Authentication
Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility now supports AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage database access. Database administrators can associate database users with IAM users and roles. This way, you can manage user access to all AWS resources from a single location, avoiding issues caused by permissions being out of sync on different AWS resources. After configuring the database for IAM authentication, client applications authenticate to the database engine by providing temporary security credentials generated by the IAM Security Token Service. These credentials are used instead of providing a password to the database engine.
That’s awesome if you ask me — all-in-one place!
#5 Amazon Route 53 Releases Interactive Map for Traffic Flow Geoproximity Routing
If you’re using geoproximity routing in the Amazon Route 53 Traffic Flow console, you can see how your end users will be routed to each of your application’s endpoints on an interactive map.
Geoproximity routing lets you route traffic based on the physical distance between your users and your resources. You can also route more or less traffic to each resource by specifying a positive or negative bias. In the Traffic Flow console, the interactive map automatically adjusts to show how adding or removing endpoints, or changing the bias affects which endpoint that users in a given geographic location will be routed to.
I need to update my Route 53 routing policies slides & blog posts — thanks AWS! :)
#6 Amazon RDS Now Sends Events to Amazon CloudWatch Events
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) now sends all service events to Amazon CloudWatch Events, allowing you to track and respond to changes in your Amazon RDS resources. Supported resource types include database instances, database clusters, parameter groups, and database snapshots. You can build Amazon CloudWatch Event rules to trigger a variety of actions including running AWS Lambda functions and Amazon ECS tasks. You can even use cross-account event delivery to monitor Amazon RDS service events across your organization.
Because who doesn’t like to know what happens with the databases?!
-Adrian
