LogiCast AWS News

In Season 3 Episode 42 we have something a little different for the season finale. Karl & Jon attended the recent AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas from 2-6th December. On Tuesday 3rd December they attended the AWS Community Builder mixer in the AWS Community Hub in Buddy V's restaurant in The Venetian. While you won't hear from Jon in this episode, he did man the camera while Karl interviewed 16 AWS Community members about their experience at re:Invent, including AWS Community Builder program manager Jason Dunn. Check out the episode to find out what our AWS Community Builder peers got up to at re:Invent.   01:20 - Jason Dunn 01:52 - Stephen Sennett 03:04 - Raphael Manke 04:13 - Ashish Kumar 04:49 - Matt Martz 05:57 - Andres Moreno 06:53 - Robin Ford 08:00 - Ivan Casco 08:47 - Ryan Cormack 09:44 - Martyn Kilbryde 10:33 - Jenn Bergstrom 11:32 - Thomas Taylor 12:18 - Marin Radjenovic 13:46 - Amelia Hough-Ross 14:37 - Christophe Limpalair 15:49 - Ryan Pothecary

In Season 3, Episode 41 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Abhishek Maurya. They discuss AWS Graviton Savings Dashboard, AWS Transfer Family Web Apps, AWS Data Transfer Terminals, AWS D-SQL and database price cuts, stolen AWS credentials from misconfigured S3 bucket and the guys wondered if AWS Community Builders get taller when they become AWS Heroes...   06:19 - Accelerate your AWS Graviton adoption with the AWS Graviton Savings Dashboard  13:29 - AWS Transfer Family Web Apps: Simplified S3 Data Access through the Browser 17:31 - AWS launches Data Transfer Terminals so users can drop off data to the cloud  23:30 - AWS cuts database prices almost 50% and adds distributed scaling capabilities  29:10 - Crooks stole AWS credentials from misconfigured sites then kept them in open S3 bucket    Guest was Abhishek Maurya https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhitnc/

In Season 3, Episode 40 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Chetan Hirapara. They discuss Lambda, CloudFormation Deployments, Anthropic, Amazon Q Developer plugins, Amazon Bedrock Agents and Karl suggests that you should choose a cloud provider based on your favourite colour....   06:53 - AWS Lambda turns 10: A rare look at the doc that started it - Overview of the original PR FAQ document for Lambda - Lambda was the first functions-as-a-service offering - Lambda originally only supported Node.js, now supports many more languages and frameworks - Billing granularity has improved from 250ms increments originally to 1ms now - Cold start times for Java apps reduced by 90% with SnapStart   15:49 - Peek inside your AWS CloudFormation Deployments with timeline view  - It provides a waterfall view of CloudFormation deployments - Helps identify bottlenecks and long-running operations - Can help optimize deployments by splitting stacks, parallelizing, etc.   21:11 - Amazon considering further investment in Anthropic  - Amazon invested $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in March 2022 - Reportedly wants Anthropic to use AWS Inferentia chips instead of Nvidia - Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives - Alphabet has also invested significantly in Anthropic   28:08 - Amazon Q Developer plugins now generally available for the AWS Management Console  - Plugins allow Q Developer to interface with third-party services like Datadog and Whiz - Provides easy access to information without leaving the AWS console - Limited to fairly simple questions currently   33:50 - How Amazon Bedrock Agents work  - Agents are like small orchestration software tools - Have capabilities like memory, prompting users, invoking APIs - Built using LLMs like Titan - Continuously run to provide answers to users   Guest was Chetan Hirapara https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetan-hirapara-90344345/ https://www.youtube.com/@upskillwithchetan

In Season 3, Episode 39 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Muhammad Rashid. They discuss Lambda VS Code IDE, Ephemeral jobs on ECS/Fargate, CloudFront/WAF billing change, Bedrock Prompt Management, AWS earnings results and Karl wonders if he may have coined the phrase 'Remote Working Natives'   07:27 - AWS enhances the Lambda application building experience with VS Code IDE and AWS Toolkit  New features in AWS Lambda - VS Code IDE and AWS Toolkit enhancements for building Lambda applications 12:32 - Ephemeral Jobs Longer than the Lambda Timeout  Running ephemeral jobs longer than the Lambda timeout - Using ECS and Fargate for ad hoc, long running background tasks 17:31 - Amazon CloudFront no longer charges for requests blocked by AWS WAF   CloudFront no longer charges for requests blocked by WAF - Small billing change but reduces costs for customers 23:16 - Amazon Bedrock Prompt Management is now generally available  Amazon Bedrock Prompt Management now generally available - Manages and chains prompts for more advanced AI workflows 28:39 - Amazon’s cloud unit records highest profit margin in at least a decade AWS Q3 earnings results - AWS revenue growth remains strong, posts highest profit margin in over a decade   Guest was Muhammad Rashid https://www.youtube.com/@codewithmuh https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-rashid-daha/

In Season 3, Episode 38 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Anna Astori. They discuss Q Developer, Amazon VPC, AWS WAF, celebrating 10 years of Amazon ECS, Amazon return to office policy and once again Karl tries to extract trade secrets from our guest!   03:05 - AWS launches in-line Q Developer AI coding assistant to take on Microsoft’s Github Copilot The speakers discuss the launch of AWS's Q Developer, an AI coding assistant to compete with GitHub Copilot. Jon is skeptical about the usefulness compared to IntelliSense. Anna agrees there are pros and cons. The new integration with CodeWhisperer model 3.5 could improve it. 13:13 - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud launches new security group sharing features  Jon explains the benefits of the new VPC security group sharing feature for connecting resources across VPCs more securely. 17:30 - How to mitigate bot traffic by implementing Challenge actions in your AWS WAF custom rules  The article explains how to use WAF challenge actions to mitigate bot traffic. Jon provides an overview of how rate limiting and bot control in WAF work. 23:52 - Celebrating 10 Years of Amazon ECS: Powering a Decade of Containerized Innovation  They discuss EC2 Container Service turning 10 years old. Jon explains the pricing and simplicity benefits of ECS compared to Kubernetes. 29:40 - Amazon workers 'appalled' by AWS CEO’s return to office remarks, urge policy reversal  Employees wrote an open letter criticizing the mandated return to 5 days a week in office. Anna and Jon discuss the discrimination concerns and why hybrid doesn't work.   Guest was Anna Astori https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-astori/ https://annaeastori.medium.com/ https://x.com/AmaMidzu  

In Season 3, Episode 37 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Ryan Pothecary. They discuss CloudQuest and AWS Jam, AWS Session Manager, Amazon CloudWatch Evidently and AppConfig, Amazon going nuclear, Amazon's returning to office policy and Karl hopes Amazon can finally realise the Back to the Future Mr Fusion reactor...    06:22 - Enhance your real-world skills with AWS Cloud Quest and AWS Jam  - CloudQuest provides gamified learning for AWS certifications like Cloud Practitioner - Jams are in-person problem solving events, Logicata is hosting a Jam soon - Pricing for CloudQuest seems expensive compared to alternatives like Udemy courses   13:49 - Secure SSH Access to EC2 Instances with AWS Session Manager  - Session Manager provides secure remote access without exposing SSH ports - It logs all activity for auditing and compliance - Allows access through console, CLI, port forwarding   22:29 - Support for Amazon CloudWatch Evidently ending soon  - Evidently allowed testing variations of apps/websites to improve performance - Being replaced by Amazon AppConfig which provides similar functionality - Shows AWS consolidating services and giving notice before deprecation   27:01 - Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors  - To provide power for energy-hungry data centers and AI/ML workloads - Investing in grid power, not owning reactors directly - Small modular reactors easier to build and operate than large ones   33:24 - Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if you don't want to return to office  - Strong statement against remote work from Amazon leadership - Cites need for in-person collaboration and innovation - Unlikely to work as well outside the US due to logistics - Remote teams can still innovate without being co-located - Impact on attracting talent remains to be seen   Guest was Ryan Pothecary https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanpothecary/ https://dev.to/ryanpothecary

In Season 3, Episode 36 Karl & Jon discuss Optimize CPUs, AWS CodePipeline, Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey, AWS Console-to-Code, departure of Matt Wood and the guys go off on a tangent about kids destroying things...   02:31 - Amazon EC2 now supports Optimize CPUs post instance launch  07:58 - AWS CodePipeline introduces new general purpose compute action  12:13 - Announcing Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey  18:05 - Convert AWS console actions to reusable code with AWS Console-to-Code, now generally available 24:20 - Amazon Web Services VP of AI, Matt Wood, is leaving the company 

In Season 3, Episode 35 Karl & Jon discuss Storage Browser for S3, Graviton 4-powered Amazon EC2 instances, Chatbops, Amazon GuardDuty, Elasticsearch and the guys go off on a tangent about bananas...   02:10 - Amazon Introduces Storage Browser for S3  The hosts discuss the launch of a new Storage Browser for Amazon S3 and how it provides an easier way for non-technical users to upload and download objects from S3 without needing access to the AWS console. 06:54 - Now available: Graviton4-powered memory-optimized Amazon EC2 X8g instances  The hosts talk about the announcement of new Graviton 4-powered Amazon EC2 instances. 13:35 - Ten features for efficiently managing your AWS applications from Microsoft Teams and Slack using AWS Chatbot  The hosts talk about using the AWS Chatbot to manage AWS services through Microsoft Teams and Slack. They talk about the benefits of chatops and doing tasks through chat rather than a browser or console. 24:28 - Get to know Amazon GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring for Amazon EC2  The hosts talk about some newer capabilities in Amazon GuardDuty like runtime monitoring for EC2 instances. They talk about the security benefits of having integrated tools. 28:54 - AWS Open-Source Brouhaha About Elasticsearch Takes Another Turn  The hosts discuss the ongoing dispute between AWS and Elastic over Elasticsearch being open source. 

In Season 3, Episode 34 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Abhishek Gupta. They discuss Graviton Spot compute, CLI v2 Linux support, AWS Backup visibility, CodeCommit/Cloud9 deprecation, UK AWS investment and they welcome their first guest from outer space.   05:09 - Amazon ECS now supports AWS Graviton-based Spot compute with AWS Fargate  14:05 - Linux Support Updates for AWS CLI v2  19:08 - Gain visibility of AWS backup activities using Amazon Managed Grafana  25:50 - Dear AWS, how do I build & develop purely on AWS right now?  36:04 - Chancellor announces £8 billion Amazon Web Services investment, as she vows to make every part of Britain better off   Guest was Abhishek Gupta https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhi8968/ https://medium.com/@abhi133182

In Season 3, Episode 33 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Christophe Limpalair. They discuss prompt engineering, CloudWatch Logs, Patch Manager, Magic Quadrant for AI Code Assistants, number of servers used to power EC2 and Karl assumes everything is about AI when it isn't...   04:24 - Implementing advanced prompt engineering with Amazon Bedrock  13:42 - Using Generative AI to Gain Insights into CloudWatch Logs  21:16 - Visualize AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager information using Amazon QuickSight  27:46 - AWS named as a Leader in the first Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI Code Assistants  34:29 - Amazon uses nearly half a million servers to power EC2, researcher estimates    Guest was Christophe Limpalair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophelimpalair/ https://cybr.com

In Season 3, Episode 32 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Rishab Kumar. They discuss Validation API for Step Functions, Lambda Layers, Quick Setup programmatic deployment, new certifications and courses, Challenger for Observability and the Logicata guys get serious neon sign envy...   Articles: 04:53- Announcing Validation API for AWS Step Functions  The new validation API for AWS Step Functions allows validating state machines before deployment to catch errors early. It was noted this could be useful to integrate into CI/CD pipelines. 09:19 - Why You Should Use AWS Lambda Layers  Using Lambda layers allows packaging dependencies separately from function code. This enables faster deployments when only code changes, limits package size so the console editor can still be used, and allows sharing dependencies between functions 16:51 - Deploy AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup programmatically across your AWS Organization AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup can now be deployed programmatically via CloudFormation, CDK, CLI etc. This makes it easier to enable SSM access across an organization or onboard new accounts. 23:35 - New courses and certification updates from AWS Training and Certification in August 2024 New AWS certifications and courses were announced, including AI/ML related ones like Certified Machine Learning Engineer Associate. This reflects the growing demand for cloud skills in these areas. 30:37 - AWS named as a Challenger in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms  AWS was named a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability, reflecting their improved capabilities and execution in this space even if not yet a leader.   Guest was Rishab Kumar: https://linkedin.com/in/rishabkumar7 https://rishabkumar.com/ https://x.com/rishabincloud https://youtube.com/@rishabincloud

In Season 3, Episode 31 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Luis Valdivia. They discuss MacOS CI/CD, Upgrading Lambda Functions, Lambda Loop Detection, Chatbot for Security Events, ALB Misconfiguration Exposure and Jon describes how he's training his kids in the art of medieval combat...   Articles: 05:04 - Add macOS to your continuous integration pipelines with AWS CodeBuild  They discuss a new AWS CodeBuild feature that allows adding MacOS to continuous integration pipelines for building iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and MacOS applications and talk about challenges with using MacOS for builds.   15:48 - Leverage Amazon Q to upgrade Lambda runtime functions  They discuss using Amazon Q to help upgrade Lambda runtimes like moving from Python 3.7 to 3.12 and debate whether AI like Q is ready to fully take over coding.   22:35 - AWS Lambda introduces recursive loop detection APIs  They discuss a new recursive loop detection API in AWS Lambda and whether it is necessary and helpful for developers.   29:01 - Manage security events in Slack, Teams, or Amazon Chime using AWS Chatbot and Amazon Q They discuss using AWS Chatbot with Amazon Q to manage security events in Slack/Chime.    33:28 -Thousands of Apps Using AWS ALB Exposed to Attacks Due to Configuration Issue  They discuss a report about potential misconfigurations exposing thousands of AWS environments due to issues with Application Load Balancers.    Guest was Luis Valdivia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-valdivia-humareda/

In Season 3, Episode 30 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Warren Parad. They discuss AWS Step Functions Encryption, AWS Parameter Store Sharing, AWS Touts Multi-Cloud Capabilities, AWS Quietly Freezes Services, AWS Q2 2022 Earnings and Jon has a proper rant about the deprecation of CodeCommit...      Articles: 04:03 - Strengthening data security in AWS Step Functions with a customer-managed AWS KMS key  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about encrypting AWS Step Functions state machines using AWS KMS keys. They debate the usefulness and security implications of this new feature.   11:57 - Introducing Parameter Store cross-account sharing  They discuss a new capability from AWS to share Parameter Store parameters across accounts. They debate whether this simplifies operations or creates potential security issues.   17:39 - AWS and Multicloud: Existing capabilities & continued enhancements  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about their multi-cloud capabilities and tools. They consider whether the major cloud providers are becoming commoditized.   25:16 - AWS quietly freezes CodeCommit, Cloud9, SimpleDB and more, customers complain about lack of notice  They discuss AWS deprecating several services like CodeCommit and Cloud9 without notice. They express frustration at the lack of communication.   34:12 - Amazon’s cloud unit reports 19% revenue growth, topping estimates  Thy discuss Amazon's latest quarterly earnings report, which exceeded expectations largely driven by AWS growth.   Guest was Warren Parad:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-parad/ https://warrenparad.net https://dev.to/wparad

In Season 3, Episode 29 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Girish Mukim. They discuss new Lambda snap start support for Java ARM functions, new question types being added to some AWS certification exams, using DynamoDB with Amazon OpenSearch Service for near real-time analytics without ETL, dedicated log volumes for RDS to improve database performance, benchmark results showing Graviton CPUs outperforming AMD and Intel and finally there is an update on Jon's leaking tap...   Articles Discussed:   03:43 - Lambda snap start for Java ARM   07:52 - New AWS exam question types  14:17 - DynamoDB and OpenSearch for near real-time analytics  19:55 - RDS dedicated log volumes  25:00 - Graviton CPU benchmarks    Guest was Girish Mukim:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/girish-mukim/ https://www.youtube.com/@AWSLearn https://dev.to/girishmukim

In Season 3, Episode 28 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Joshua Walker. They discuss AWS IAM OpenID Connect, Amazon Redshift serverless, AWS WAF challenge and capture actions, Media content localization with AWS AI services, Top 10 AWS news stories of 2024 and Jon challenges AWS' definition of Serverless, again...   Articles Discussed: 04:40 - AWS Identity and Access Management simplifies management of OpenID Connect identity providers  The article discusses how AWS IAM is simplifying the management of OpenID Connect identity providers by automating certificate management. This will make it easier to securely connect external identity providers.     10:26 - Amazon Redshift Serverless with lower base capacity available in the Europe (London) Region The article announces that Amazon Redshift serverless now has a lower base capacity available in the London region. This allows users to run analytics more cost-effectively.     15:11 - Protect against bots with AWS WAF Challenge and CAPTCHA actions  The article explains how to use AWS WAF challenge and capture capabilities to protect against bots by requiring suspicious traffic to solve a challenge. This is less disruptive than blocking all traffic.    21:16 - Media content localization with AWS AI services and Amazon Bedrock The article demonstrates using AWS AI services like Transcribe and Translate to automatically localize text content from English to Korean. This makes it easier to reach broader audiences.    26:40 - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwtechdev/

In Season 3, Episode 27 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Jenn Bergstrom. They discuss Amazon ECS, AWS Secrets Manager, Amazon CodeWhisperer, Security Hub and Jon was worried that the new Amazon Bedrock AI agent would replace him as Karl's Lead Cloud Engineer...   Articles Discussed: 03:54 - Amazon ECS now enforces software version consistency for containerized applications  - Prevents issues when deploying containers using mutable tags like 'latest' - Happens automatically, users don't need to make any changes   10:02 - Amazon ECS provides enhanced stop task error messages for easier troubleshooting   - Helps debug issues when deploying containers to ECS - Available automatically in all regions, no user changes needed   12:40 - Open source release of Secrets Manager agent for AWS Secrets Manager  - Allows retrieving secrets without writing custom integration code - Exciting for serverless/container workloads like Lambda   18:35 - Using AI agents in Amazon CodeWhisperer to generate IaC from architecture diagrams  - Upload a diagram, chat with the AI, get Terraform or CloudFormation code - Useful but not a complete replacement for experienced engineers yet   29:30 - Top 4 ways to improve your Security Hub score  - Mostly common sense security tips - Highlights the need for better security practices   Guest was Jenn Bergstrom https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenn-bergstrom/

In Season 3, Episode 26 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Igor Soroka. They discuss Amazon GuardDuty, New Lambda Logging Controls, Refactoring to Serverless, Aurora Global Database, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, and the guys get sidetracked by Catalan taps...   Articles Discussed: 5:33 Amazon GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring Now Supports Ubuntu and Debian Operating Systems  Key points: - Previously only supported Amazon Linux - Helps monitor and respond to potential threats like suspicious network activity, crypto mining, etc. - Uses existing security agent, 30 day free trial - Pricing is $1.50 per vCPU for first 500 vCPUs per month, drops for larger volumes   12:45 - New Lambda Logging Controls   Key points: - Can now choose JSON or plaintext formatting - Can set log levels like debug, error, etc. - Supported in Python, Java, and Node.js - Makes logging easier without needing additional libraries - Can aggregate logs from different functions   18:21 - Refactoring to Serverless from Application to Automation  Key points: - Discusses "service factoring", replacing app code with automation - Serverless allows abstracting away infrastructure details - Entire architectures can be built using serverless components - Improves apps through increased automation   24:11 - Using Aurora Global Database for Multi-Region Applications  Key points: - Provides hot-hot disaster recovery to secondary region - Local endpoints provide fast response times - Engineering to replicate globally is complex - Useful but expensive to run dual full infrastructure   29:16 - Initial Services for AWS Europe Sovereign Cloud  Key points: - New sovereign cloud being built in Germany - Announces initial services like EC2, EKS, Lambda, etc. - Functionally similar to AWS US GovCloud - Provides data residency for EU regulations - Impressive initial service list, no major omissions   Guest was Igor Soroko https://www.linkedin.com/in/igor-soroka/ https://www.soroka.tech/blog/graphql-serverless-appsync  

In Season 3, Episode 25 Karl & Jon are joined by Amazon Alumni & returning guest, Steve Woodard. They discuss AWS CloudShell, AWS Compute Optimizer, SQS, carbon footprint and optimising workloads, AWS engineering infrastructure to power generative AI and the guys go off on tangents about travelling t-shirts, cat bed hats and hair care products...   The articles discussed in this week episode are: 05:43 - AWS CloudShell now supports Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)  12:35 - New – Rightsizing Recommendations for Amazon RDS MySQL and RDS PostgreSQL in AWS Compute Optimizer  18:42 - Optimizing Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for speed and scale  26:14 - AWS can help reduce the carbon footprint of AI workloads by up to 99%. Here’s how.  33:28 - 4 ways AWS is engineering infrastructure to power generative AI    Guest was Steve Woodard https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevewoodardpi/ https://techtravels.buzzsprout.com/

In Season 3, Episode 24 Karl & Jon discuss MFA, AWS Glue, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, automating cost optimisation, public and private cloud and Karl is thrown by Jon's glue humour...   The articles discussed in this week episode are:   03:48 - AWS is pushing ahead with MFA for privileged accounts. What that means for you...  10:10 - AWS Glue adds additional 13 new transforms including flag duplicates  15:27 - Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model now available in Amazon Bedrock  20:34 - Optimize Amazon RDS costs for predictable workloads with automated IOPS and throughput scaling  24:33 - AWS and Azure maintain dominance as top used public cloud platforms in 2024 – Flexera report   

In Season 3, Episode 23 Karl & Jon discuss root users and root emails, Query generator, Amazon GuardDuty, cost optimisation,  AWS Generative AI Accelerator program and Karl, being superstitious, wondered whether Jon's itchy nose meant he was heading for an argument...   The articles discussed in this week episode are: 02:25 - Centrally manage member account root email addresses across your AWS Organization  10:54 - Amazon CloudWatch announces AI-Powered natural language query generation  16:55 - Detect malware in new object uploads to Amazon S3 with Amazon GuardDuty  20:51 - Best practices to optimize costs after mergers and acquisitions with AWS Organizations  28:37 - Amazon adds $230 million in cloud credits to AI startups