AWS re:Invent: Top Announcements for 2020
Analytics | Compute | Containers | Customer Engagement | Database | Front-end Web and Mobile | Machine Learning | Storage
Analytics
New – Amazon QuickSight Q Answers Natural-Language Questions About Business Data
Today, we are happy to announce the preview of Amazon QuickSight Q, a Natural Language Query (NLQ) feature powered by machine learning (ML). With Q, business users can now use QuickSight to ask questions about their data using everyday language and receive accurate answers in seconds.
Compute
New – Use Amazon EC2 Mac Instances to Build and Test macOS, iOS, ipadOS, tvOS, and watchOS Apps
Over the last couple of years, AWS users have told us that they want to be able to run macOS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). We’ve asked a lot of questions to learn more about their needs, and today we introduce you to the new Mac instance!
re:Invent 2020 Pre-announcements for Tuesday, December 1
Here’s a sneak peek at some good things to come, including: AWS Outpost Servers, Amazon ECS Anywhere and Amazon EKS Anywhere.
Coming Soon – Amazon EC2 G4ad Instances Featuring AMD GPUs for Graphics Workloads
Customers with high performance graphic workloads, such as those in game streaming, animation, and video rendering, are always looking for higher performance at less cost. Today, we announce that new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances in the G4 instance family will be available soon to improve performance and reduce cost for graphics-intensive workloads.
New EC2 C6gn Instances – 100 Gbps Networking with AWS Graviton2 Processors
Today, we’re expanding our broad Arm-based Graviton2 portfolio with C6gn instances that deliver up to 100 Gbps network bandwidth, up to 38 Gbps Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) bandwidth, up to 40% higher packet processing performance, and up to 40% better price/performance versus comparable current generation x86-based network optimized instances.
EC2 Update – D3 / D3en Dense Storage Instances
We have launched several generations of EC2 instances with dense storage including the HS1 in 2012 and the D2 in 2015. Today we are launching the D3 and D3en instances. Like their predecessors, they give you access to massive amounts of low-cost on-instance HDD storage.
New – Amazon EC2 R5b Instances Provide 3x Higher EBS Performance
R5 instances are designed for memory-intensive applications such as high-performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, in-memory databases, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications. Today, we announce the new R5b instance, which provides the best network-attached storage performance available on EC2.
New for AWS Lambda – 1ms Billing Granularity Adds Cost Savings
Since Lambda was launched in 2014, pricing has been based on the number of times code is triggered (requests) and the number of times code executes, rounded up to the nearest 100ms (duration). Starting today, we are rounding up duration to the nearest millisecond with no minimum execution time.
In the Works – 3 More AWS Local Zones in 2020, and 12 More in 2021
We launched the first AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles last December, and added a second one (also in Los Angeles) in August of 2020. With 3 more available today and 12 planned next year, we are choosing the target cities with the goal of allowing you to provide access with single-digit millisecond latency to the vast majority of users in the Continental United States.
New for AWS Lambda – Container Image Support
With Lambda, you upload your code and run it without thinking about servers. Many customers enjoy the way this works, but if you’ve invested in container tooling for your development workflows, it’s not easy to use the same approach to build applications using Lambda. To help you with that, you can now package and deploy Lambda functions as container images of up to 10 GB in size.
Containers
Amazon EKS Distro: The Kubernetes Distribution Used by Amazon EKS
We have learned a lot while providing Amazon EKS at AWS and have developed a deep understanding of how to deliver Kubernetes with operational security, stability, and reliability. Today we are sharing Amazon EKS Distro, which we built using that knowledge. EKS Distro is a distribution of the same version of Kubernetes deployed by Amazon EKS, which you can use to manually create your own Kubernetes clusters anywhere you choose.
Amazon ECR Public: A New Public Container Registry
You have long been able to host private container images on AWS with Amazon Elastic Container Registry, and now with the release of Amazon Elastic Container Registry Public, you can host public ones too, enabling anyone (with or without an AWS account) to browse and pull your published containers.
Preview of AWS Proton – Automated Management for Container and Serverless Deployments
Maintaining hundreds – or sometimes thousands – of microservices with constantly changing infrastructure resources and configurations is a challenging task for even the most capable teams. AWS Proton enables infrastructure teams to define standard templates centrally and make them available for developers in their organization. This allows infrastructure teams to manage and update infrastructure without impacting developer productivity.
Customer Engagement
Amazon Connect – Now Smarter and More Integrated With Third-Party Tools
We launched Amazon Connect in 2017 and, since then, thousands of customers have created their own contact centers in the cloud. Amazon Connect makes it easy for non-technical customers to design interaction flows, manage agents, and track performance metrics. Today, we announce a new set of capabilities to make Amazon Connect smarter and more integrated with third-party tools.
Database
Now in Preview – Larger and Faster io2 Block Express EBS Volumes with Higher Throughput
Earlier this year we launched io2 volumes with 100x higher durability and 10x more IOPS/GiB than the earlier io1 volumes. Today we are opening up a preview of io2 Block Express volumes that are designed to deliver even higher performance!
When using general purpose SSD gp2 volumes with EBS, performance is associated with storage capacity. Today we announce the new gp3 volume that lets customers increase IOPS and throughput without having to provision additional block storage capacity, paying only for the resources they need.
Front-End Web and Mobile
New AWS Amplify Admin UI Helps You Develop App Backends, No Cloud Experience Required
With Amplify Admin UI, developers can build complex and feature-rich apps by focusing on their domain-sphttps://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-amplify-admin-ui-helps-you-develop-app-backends-no-cloud-experience-required/ecific data model instead of spending hours deploying and stitching together cloud infrastructure. AWS Amplify gives front-end developers the fastest and easiest way to develop mobile and web apps, and all accessible to developers that are not familiar with the cloud and without the need to give AWS access to everybody in the team.
Machine Learning
New- Amazon DevOps Guru Helps Identify Application Errors and Fixes
Today, we are announcing Amazon DevOps Guru, a fully managed operations service that makes it easy for developers and operators to improve application availability by automatically detecting operational issues and recommending fixes.
Amazon Lookout for Equipment Analyzes Historical Sensor Data to Help Detect Equipment Failure
Companies that operate industrial equipment are constantly working to improve operational efficiency and avoid unplanned downtime due to component failure. Amazon Lookout for Equipment is an API-based machine learning (ML) service that detects abnormal equipment behavior and helps companies monitor the health of their assets.
Amazon Lookout for Vision Simplifies Defect Detection for Manufacturing
Lookout for Vision is a new machine learning service that helps increase industrial product quality and reduce operational costs by automating visual inspection of product defects across production processes. Using Lookout for Vision, you can detect damages to manufactured parts, identify missing components or parts, and uncover underlying process-related issues in your manufacturing lines.
AWS Panorama Appliance – Bringing Computer Vision Applications to the Edge
Today we preview the AWS Panorama Appliance and its associated console. You can now develop a computer vision model using Amazon SageMaker and then deploy it to a Panorama Appliance that can then run the model on video feeds from multiple network and IP cameras.
Amazon Monitron is a Simple and Cost-Effective Service Enabling Predictive Maintenance
Monitron is an easy and cost-effective condition monitoring service that allows you to monitor the condition of equipment in your facilities, enabling the implementation of a predictive maintenance program.
Storage
New – Amazon S3 Replication Adds Support for Multiple Destination Buckets
S3 Replication (multi-destination) removes the need for you to develop your own solutions to replicate the data across multiple destinations. You can use the flexibility of S3 Replication (multi-destination) to store multiple copies of your data in different storage classes, with different encryption types, or across different accounts depending on its intended use.
Amazon S3 Update – Strong Read-After-Write Consistency
With this S3 update, all S3 GET, PUT, and LIST operations, as well as operations that change object tags, ACLs, or metadata, are now strongly consistent. What you write is what you will read, and the results of a LIST will be an accurate reflection of what’s in the bucket.
Source: AWS News
