Thursday, October 29, 2015

Amazon RDS Update – Cross-Account Snapshot Sharing

Today I would like to tell you about a new cross-account snapshot sharing feature for Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). You can share the snapshots with specific AWS accounts or you can make them public.

Cross-Account Snapshot Sharing
I often create snapshot backups as part of my RDS demos:

The snapshots are easy to create and can be restored to a fresh RDS database instance with a couple of clicks.

Today’s big news is that you can now share unencrypted MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL snapshots with other AWS accounts. If you, like many sophisticated AWS customers, use separate AWS accounts for development, testing, and production, you can now share snapshots between AWS accounts in a controlled fashion. If a late-breaking bug is discovered in a production system, you can create a database snapshot and then share it with select developers so that they can diagnose the problem without having to have access to the production account or system.

Each snapshot can be shared with up to 20 other accounts (we can raise this limit for your account if necessary; just ask). You can also mark snapshots as public so that any RDS user can restore a database containing your data. This is a great way to share data sets and research results!

Here is how you share a snapshot with another AWS account using the RDS Console (you can also do this from the command line or the RDS API):

Here’s how a snapshot appears in the accounts that it is shared with (again, this functionality is also accessible from the command line and the RDS API):

Here is how you create a public snapshot:

Snapshot sharing works across regions, but does not apply to the China (Beijing) region or to AWS GovCloud (US).

— Jeff;

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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

EC2 VPC VPN Update – NAT Traversal, Additional Encryption Options, and More

You can use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud to create a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud. Within the VPC, you can define your desired IP address range, create subnets, configure route tables, and so forth. You can also use a network gateway to connect the VPC to your existing on-premises network using a hardware Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. The VPN running in the AWS Cloud (also known as a VPN gateway or VGW) communicates with a customer gateway (CGW) on your network or in your data center (read about Your Customer Gateway to learn more).

Today we are adding several new features to the VPN. Here’s a summary:

  • NAT Traversal
  • Additional Encryption Options
  • Reusable IP addresses for the CGW

In order to take advantage of any of these new features, you will need to create a new VGW and then create new VPN tunnels with the desired attributes.

NAT Traversal
Network Address Translation (NAT) maps one range of IP addresses to another. Let’s say that you have created a VPC and assigned it to a desired IP address range, and then split that range into a couple of subnets. Then you launch some EC2 instances within the VPC, each bound to one of those subnets. You can now use Network Address Translation to map the VPC’s IP address range to a different range when seen from your existing network. This mapping process takes places across the VPN connection and is known at NAT-T, or NAT Traversal. NAT-T allows you to create IP connections that originate on-premises and connect to an EC2 instance (or vice versa) using addresses that have been translated.

You can set this up when you create a new VPN connection in the AWS Management Console. You will need to open up UDP port 4500 in your firewall in order to make use of NAT-T.

Additional Encryption Options
You can now make use of several new encryption options.

When the VPC’s hardware VPN is in the process of establishing a connection with your on-premises VPN, it proposes several different encryption options, each with a different strength. You can now configure the VPN on the VPC to propose AES256 as an alternative to the older and weaker AES128. If you decide to make use of this new option, you should configure your device so that it no longer accepts a proposal to use AES128 encryption.

The two endpoints participate in a Diffie-Hellman key exchange in order to establish a shared secret. The Diffie-Hellman groups used in the exchange will determine the strength of the hash on the keys. You can now configure the use of a wider range of groups:

  • Phase 1 can now use DH groups 2, 14-18, 22, 23, and 24.
  • Phase 2 can now use DH groups 1, 2, 5, 14-18, 22, 23, and 24.

Packets that flow across the VPN connection are verified using a hash algorithm. A matching hash gives a very high-quality indicator that the packet has not been maliciously modified along the way. You can now configure the VPN on the VPC to use the SHA-2 hashing algorithm with a 256 bit digest (also known as SHA-256). Again, you should configure your device to disallow the use of the weaker hash algorithms.

Reusable CGW IP Addresses
You no longer need to specify a unique IP address for each customer gateway connection that you create. Instead, you can now reuse an existing IP address. Many VPC users have been asking for this feature and I expect it to be well-used.

To learn more, read our FAQ and the VPC Network Adminstrator Guide.

— Jeff;

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Tuesday, October 27, 2015

New AWS Public Data Set – Real-Time and Archived NEXRAD Weather Data

My colleague Ariel Gold wrote the guest post below to introduce the newest AWS Public Data Set.

— Jeff;

You can now access real-time and archival NEXRAD weather radar data as an AWS Public Data Set.

The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) is a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that detects precipitation and atmospheric movement and disseminates data in approximately 5 minute intervals from each site. NEXRAD enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors. As part of our research agreement with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we are making NEXRAD data freely available on Amazon S3.

The real-time feed and full historical archive of NEXRAD Level II data, from June 1991 to present, is now available for anyone to use. Level II is original resolution, base data from the NEXRAD system.

This is the first time the full NEXRAD Level II archive has been accessible to the public on demand. A wide range of customers have expressed interest in this data, including insurance providers, climate researchers, logistics companies, and weather companies. We’re excited to see what you do with it!

You can learn more about the data and how to access it on our NEXRAD on AWS page.

How We’re Sharing the Data
We’ve been testing out new ways to make NEXRAD data easy to use in the cloud. Before I get into some of the details of our approach, here are a couple of radar data terms for the uninitiated. First, “volume scan” refers to the data collected by the Doppler radar site as it scans the atmosphere. The NEXRAD site breaks these volume scans into “chunks” – small packages of data that are quickly transmitted as a real-time feed. The NEXRAD network generates about 1,200 chunks per hour.

We are storing the real-time chunks and archive (volume scan files) Level II data in two public Amazon S3 buckets. Data flows into the chunks bucket via Unidata’s Local Data Manager (LDM) system with minimal latency from the NEXRAD sites. The chunks are then assembled into volume scan files and added to the archive bucket within seconds or minutes of production. This creates a continuously updated, near-real-time archive of volume scan files.

You can find information on the data structure on our NEXRAD on AWS page. You’ll see that the real-time data is hosted in the “unidata-nexrad-level2-chunks” Amazon S3 bucket. Unidata provides data services, tools, and cyberinfrastructure leadership for the earth science community and they have been fantastic collaborators on this project. You can read more about their experience setting up the NEXRAD real-time feed on AWS on their blog.

Getting Started with NEXRAD on AWS
Unidata, The Climate Corporation, and CartoDB have contributed tutorials to help you get started using NEXRAD on AWS. For example, this tutorial from The Climate Corporation shows you how to read and display the NEXRAD Level II archive data from your Python programs.

Unidata has also made the NEXRAD Level II archive data available via their THREDDS Data Server. You can also browse the archive contents via the AWS JavaScript S3 Explorer:

Learn more about ways to use the data on our NEXRAD on AWS page.

Thank You
We’d like to thank our collaborators at NOAA, CICS-NC, Unidata, and The Weather Company who helped us launch this public data set and continue to help make it available. Many others helped test and contribute tools to the data set and we welcome additional contributions. Tell us how you’re using the data via the NEXRAD on AWS page and sign up for updates on the NOAA Big Data Project here.

— Ariel Gold, Program Manager, AWS Open Data

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Monday, October 26, 2015

New EC2 Run Command – Remote Instance Management at Scale

When you move from a relatively static and homogeneous computing environment where you have a small number of persistent, well-known servers (or instances, using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) terminology) to a larger and more dynamic and heterogeneous environment, you may need to think about managing and controlling those instances in a new way.

New EC2 Run Command
Today we are introducing EC2 Run Command. This new feature will help you to administer your instances (no matter how many you have) in a manner that is both easy and secure. This feature was designed to support a wide range of enterprise scenarios including installing software, running ad hoc scripts or Microsoft PowerShell commands, configuring Windows Update settings, and more. It is accessible from the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, and the AWS SDKs. If you currently administer individual Windows instances by running PS1 scripts or individual PowerShell commands, you can now run them on one or more instances.

We built this feature after talking to many users about their management needs. Here are some of the themes that came about as a result of these conversations:

  • A need to implement configuration changes across their instances on a consistent yet ad hoc basis.
  • A need for reliable and consistent results across multiple instances.
  • Control over who can perform changes and what can be done.
  • A clear audit path of what actions were taken.
  • A desire to be able to do all of the above without the need for full remote desktop (RDP) access.

Command execution is secure, reliable, convenient, and scalable. You can create your own commands and exercise fine-grained control over execution privileges by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For example, you can specify that administrative commands can be run on a specific set of instances by a tightly controlled group of trusted users. All of the commands are centrally logged to AWS CloudTrail for easy auditing.

Run Command Benefits
The new Run Command feature was designed to provide you with the following benefits:

Control / Security – You can use IAM policies and roles to regulate access to commands and to instances. This allows you to reduce the number of users who have direct access to the instances.

Reliability – You can increase the reliability of your system by creating templates for your configuration changes. This will give you more control while also increasing predictability and reducing configuration drift over time.

Visibility – You will have more visibility into configuration changes because Run Command supports command tracking and is also integrated with CloudTrail.

Ease of Use – You can choose from a set of predefined commands, run them, and then track their progress using the Console, CLI, or API.

Customizability – You can create custom commands to tailor Run Command to the needs of your organization.

Exercising Run Command from the EC2 Console
Run Command works across all of your Windows instances and uses the existing EC2Config agent on the instances. Open the Console, select Commands, and review the prerequisites for using Run Command:

Click on Run a command to take you to the main Run Command screen. You’ll see your existing runs (if any) and the Run a command button:

Each row on the display represents a command that has been executed on an instance. Click on Run a command to start a new command:

The Command document menu contains seven predefined commands, along with any custom commands that you have created for your account:

Choose the appropriate document based on your use case and the change that you want to make to the target instance(s). Each document has a description and an explanation that will help you to make the right choice. For common administrative tasks, use the AWS-RunPowerShellScript document. This will allow you to run any PowerShell command or to call an existing PowerShell script.

After choosing the document, fill in the command (I used ipconfig), and choose the instances of interest (you can filter by attributes, tags, or keywords):

If you are running a command or script that will generate a lot of output on StdOut, you can specify an S3 bucket and a key prefix and the output will be routed there. If you don’t do this, Run Command will capture and display the first 2500 characters of console output.

When you are ready to proceed, click on Run. The Console will display a confirmation message:

Return to the command history and inspect it to find the results:

Select the desired command, and click on the Output tab:

Then click on View Output:

Using Run Command in Production
Here are some of the ways that you can make use of Run Command in your AWS environment:

  • Install and configure third-party agents and software.
  • Manage local groups and users.
  • Check for installed software or patches, and act on the results.
  • Restart a Windows service or service.
  • Update a scheduled task.

Available Now
You can use Run Command today in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) regions. Simply open the Run Command Console or use the latest AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). There is no charge for this this feature; you pay only for the AWS resources that you consume.

— Jeff;

PS – We plan to provide similar functionality for instances that run Linux. Stay tuned to the blog for more info!

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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

AWS Week in Review – October 12, 2015

Let’s take a quick look at what happened in AWS-land last week:

Monday

October 12
Tuesday

October 13
Wednesday

October 14
Thursday

October 15
Friday

October 16

New & Notable Open Source

  • lambda-complex is a Node.js framework for applications that run entirely within Lambda, SQS, and other high-abstraction AWS services.
  • aws-iot contains code for interacting with the AWS IoT platform.
  • AWSnycast is a routing daemon for AWS route tables that simulates an Anycast-like service.
  • votebot is a Slackbot that runs on AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda to support voting for things.
  • acli is an alternative CLI for AWS.
  • kube-cluster launches a Kubernetes cluster on AWS with 3 types of nodes.
  • wacalytics is a scalable analytics microservice for AWS using S3, Lambda, and DynamoDB.
  • live-image-resize resizes images and stores them in S3.
  • play-docker-aws-tutorial is a 101-level tutorial on the use of Docker to publish Play apps to AWS.
  • sheepherding is a collection of scripts that implement AWS reporting driven by Lambda.

New SlideShare Presentations

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (San Francisco)

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (New York)

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (Berlin) – Register Now

  • October 19 – Building a global real-time discovery platform on AWS (6 PM).
  • October 20 – Scaling Your Web Applications with AWS Elastic Beanstalk (10 AM).
  • October 20 – Managing Infrastructure and Configuration with AWS OpsWorks (10 AM).
  • October 20 – Deep Dive into Blue/Green Deployments on AWS (4 PM).
  • October 20 – AWS OpsWorks Under the Hood (October 20th).
  • October 21 – Cloud Gaming Architectures from Mobile to Social to MMO (10 AM).
  • October 21 – re:Invent 2015 Revisited (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Live Demo Day (2 PM).
  • October 22 – AWS Pop-Up Loft Morning Shower: Microservices (8:30 AM).
  • October 22 – Serverless Architecture on AWS (5 PM).
  • October 22 – Berlin’s Godfather of Tech (6 PM).
  • October 23 – Amazon Echo Hackathon (10 AM).
  • October 23 – Convert Your Code into a Microservice using AWS Lambda (4 PM).
  • October 23 – Why Load & Performance Test the Cloud? (5 PM).
  • October 23 – Lessons Learned from 7 Accelerator Programs (6 PM).
  • October 26 – re:Invent Recap (9 PM).
  • October 26 – Funding Cycles and Term Sheets (5 PM).
  • October 26 – Scaling synergy – How AWS works with VC’s (6 PM).
  • October 27 – DevOps at Amazon: A Look at Our Tools and Processes (9 AM).
  • October 27 – Taking Ops to the Next Level (10 AM).
  • October 27 – Automating Software Deployments with AWS CodeDeploy (10 AM).
  • October 27 – Releasing Software Quickly and Reliably with AWS CodePipeline (5 PM).
  • October 28 – Cache is King (9 AM).
  • October 28 – How to Save Costs and Mitigate Risks with Spot Instances (10 AM).
  • October 28 – Running Lean & Mean on AWS: How to Optimize for Cost Efficiency (5 PM).
  • October 29 – Simple Security for Startups (9 AM).
  • October 29 – Encryption Options on AWS (10 AM).
  • October 29 – Software to Services workshop – An intro to SaaS Business with AWS (2 PM).
  • October 29 – Best Practice Tech Recruiting (4 PM).
  • October 29 – Mapping Traditional Security Controls to AWS (5 PM).
  • October 29 – Transparency and Audit on AWS (6 PM).
  • October 30 – Mobile Identity Management and Data Synchronization Using Amazon Cognito (9 AM).
  • October 30 – Analyze Mobile App Data and Build Predictive Applications (10 AM).
  • October 30 – Software to Services workshop – An intro to SaaS Technology with AWS (2 PM).
  • October 30 – The Data Pipeline Powering EyeEm (6 PM).

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (London) – Register Now

  • October 20 – An Introduction to Using Amazon Web Services and the Alexa Skills Kit to Build Voice Driven Experiences + Open Hackathon (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Startup Showcase – B2C (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Chef Cookbook Workflow (6 PM).
  • October 22 – AWS Security Day (10 AM).
  • October 22 – Working with Planetary-Scale Open Data Sets on AWS (4 PM).
  • October 23 – AWS Booktamp: Taking AWS Operations to the Next Level (10 AM).
  • October 26 – Hands-on Labs Drop In (1 PM).
  • October 27 – IoT Hack Day: AWS Pop-up Loft Hack Series – Sponsored by Intel (10 AM).

Help Wanted

Stay tuned for next week! In the meantime, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feed.

— Jeff;

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Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Learn About the newest AWS Services – Attend our October Webinars

If you attended AWS re:Invent, you were among the first to know about Amazon QuickSight, AWS IoT, Kinesis Firehose, and our other new offerings. Perhaps you had time to attend a session to learn more about the new service or services that were of interest to you. If you didn’t attend re:Invent or missed a session or two and are ready to learn more, I’ve got you covered. We will be running nine new-product webinars later this month. Each webinar is designed to provide you with the information that you need to have in order to be up and running as quickly as possible.

Here’s what we have for you! The webinars are free but “seating” is limited and you should definitely sign up ahead of time if you want to attend (all times are Pacific):

Tuesday, October 27
QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence tool. You can build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and get business insights from your data.

AWS IoT is a managed cloud platform that lets connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices.

Amazon Kinesis Firehose is the easiest way to load streaming data into AWS.

Wednesday, October 28
Spot Blocks allow you to launch Spot instances that will run for a finite duration (1 to 6 hours).

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common exploits.

Amazon Elasticsearch Service is a managed service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale Elasticsearch in the AWS Cloud.

Thursday, October 29
AWS Lambda lets you run code in the cloud without provisioning or managing servers.

AWS Mobile Hub provides an integrated console that helps you build, test, and monitor your mobile apps.

AWS Import/Export Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS.

— Jeff;

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AWS Week in Review – October 5, 2015

Let’s take a quick look at what happened in AWS-land last week:

Monday

October 5
Tuesday

October 6
Wednesday

October 7
Thursday

October 8
Friday

October 9

New & Notable Open Source

  • awesome-aws is a curated list of awesome AWS libraries, open source repos, guides, blogs, and other resources.
  • awsm is a specification for AWS Service Modules for JAWS.
  • SimpleDynamo is a simple way yo use DynamoDB from PHP.
  • aws-scripts contains some scripts for launching environments in AWS.
  • hyperion is a Scala library and abstractions for AWS Data Pipeline.
  • spark-appliance creates a distributed Spark standalone cluster appliance for the AWS/STUPS environment.
  • troposphere is a Python library to create AWS CloudFormation descriptions.
  • awful is a Ruby gem for simple AWS command line tasks and YAML persistence.
  • JustSaying is a lightweight message bus on top of SNS and SQS.
  • simple-aws-captcha is a simple serverless CAPTCHA for AWS Lambda.

New SlideShare Presentations

New Customer Success Stories

New YouTube Videos

Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (San Francisco)

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (New York)

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (Berlin) – Register Now

  • October 15 – An overview of Hadoop & Spark, using Amazon Elastic MapReduce (9 AM).
  • October 15 – Processing streams of data with Amazon Kinesis (and other tools) (10 AM).
  • October 15 – STUPS – A Cloud Infrastructure for Autonomous Teams (5 PM).
  • October 16 – Transparency and Audit on AWS (9 AM).
  • October 16 – Encryption Options on AWS (10 AM).
  • October 16 – Simple Security for Startups (6 PM).
  • October 19 – Introduction to AWS Directory Service, Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon WorkDocs and Amazon WorkMail (9 AM).
  • October 19 – Amazon WorkSpaces: Advanced Topics and Deep Dive (10 AM).
  • October 19 – Building a global real-time discovery platform on AWS (6 PM).
  • October 20 – Scaling Your Web Applications with AWS Elastic Beanstalk (10 AM).
  • October 20 – Managing Infrastructure and Configuration with AWS OpsWorks (10 AM).
  • October 20 – Deep Dive into Blue/Green Deployments on AWS (4 PM).
  • October 20 – AWS OpsWorks Under the Hood (October 20th).
  • October 21 – Cloud Gaming Architectures from Mobile to Social to MMO (10 AM).
  • October 21 – re:Invent 2015 Revisited (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Live Demo Day (2 PM).
  • October 22 – AWS Pop-Up Loft Morning Shower: Microservices (8:30 AM).
  • October 22 – Serverless Architecture on AWS (5 PM).
  • October 22 – Berlin’s Godfather of Tech (6 PM).
  • October 23 – Amazon Echo Hackathon (10 AM).
  • October 23 – Convert Your Code into a Microservice using AWS Lambda (4 PM).
  • October 23 – Why Load & Performance Test the Cloud? (5 PM).
  • October 23 – Lessons Learned from 7 Accelerator Programs (6 PM).
  • October 26 – re:Invent Recap (9 PM).
  • October 26 – Funding Cycles and Term Sheets (5 PM).
  • October 26 – Scaling synergy – How AWS works with VC’s (6 PM).
  • October 27 – DevOps at Amazon: A Look at Our Tools and Processes (9 AM).
  • October 27 – Taking Ops to the Next Level (10 AM).
  • October 27 – Automating Software Deployments with AWS CodeDeploy (10 AM).
  • October 27 – Releasing Software Quickly and Reliably with AWS CodePipeline (5 PM).
  • October 28 – Cache is King (9 AM).
  • October 28 – How to Save Costs and Mitigate Risks with Spot Instances (10 AM).
  • October 28 – Running Lean & Mean on AWS: How to Optimize for Cost Efficiency (5 PM).
  • October 29 – Simple Security for Startups (9 AM).
  • October 29 – Encryption Options on AWS (10 AM).
  • October 29 – Software to Services workshop – An intro to SaaS Business with AWS (2 PM).
  • October 29 – Best Practice Tech Recruiting (4 PM).
  • October 29 – Mapping Traditional Security Controls to AWS (5 PM).
  • October 29 – Transparency and Audit on AWS (6 PM).
  • October 30 – Mobile Identity Management and Data Synchronization Using Amazon Cognito (9 AM).
  • October 30 – Analyze Mobile App Data and Build Predictive Applications (10 AM).
  • October 30 – Software to Services workshop – An intro to SaaS Technology with AWS (2 PM).
  • October 30 – The Data Pipeline Powering EyeEm (6 PM).

Upcoming Events at the AWS Loft (London) – Register Now

  • October 14 – Masterclass Live: Amazon EMR (10 AM).
  • October 14 – IoT on AWS (Noon).
  • October 14 – FinTech in the Cloud: How to build scalable, compliant and secure architecture with AWS (2 PM).
  • October 14 – AWS for Startups (6 PM).
  • October 15 – AWS Container Day (10 AM).
  • October 16 – HPC in the Cloud Workshop (2 – 4 PM).
  • October 19 – Hands-on Labs Drop In (1 PM).
  • October 20 – An Introduction to Using Amazon Web Services and the Alexa Skills Kit to Build Voice Driven Experiences + Open Hackathon (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Startup Showcase – B2C (10 AM).
  • October 21 – Chef Cookbook Workflow (6 PM).
  • October 22 – AWS Security Day (10 AM).
  • October 22 – Working with Planetary-Scale Open Data Sets on AWS (4 PM).
  • October 23 – AWS Booktamp: Taking AWS Operations to the Next Level (10 AM).
  • October 26 – Hands-on Labs Drop In (1 PM).
  • October 27 – IoT Hack Day: AWS Pop-up Loft Hack Series – Sponsored by Intel (10 AM).

Help Wanted

Stay tuned for next week! In the meantime, follow me on

Twitter and subscribe to the RSS

feed.

— Jeff;

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Friday, October 9, 2015

AWS Mobile Hub – Build, Test, and Monitor Mobile Applications

The new AWS Mobile Hub (Beta) simplifies the process of building, testing, and monitoring mobile applications that make use of one or more AWS services. It helps you skip the heavy lifting of integrating and configuring services by letting you add and configure features to your apps, including user authentication, data storage, backend logic, push notifications, content delivery, and analytics—all from a single, integrated console.

The AWS Mobile Hub helps you at each stage of development: configuring, building, testing, and usage monitoring. The console is feature-oriented; instead of picking individual services you select higher-level features comprised of combinations of one or more services, SDKs, and client code. What once took a day to properly choose and configure can now be done in 10 minutes or so.

Diving In
Let’s dive into the console and take a look!

The Mobile Hub outlines (and helps with) each step of the mobile app development process:

I will call my project SuperMegaMobileApp:

Each feature is backed up by one or more AWS services. For example, User Sign-In is powered by Amazon Cognito and Push Notification is powered by Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). I simply click on a feature to select and configure it.

I click on Push Notifications and Enable push, then choose the destination platform(s):

I want to push to Android devices, so I select it. Then I need to enter an API Key and a Sender ID:

I can add logic to my application by connecting it to my AWS Lambda functions:

After I have selected and configured the features that I need, I click on Build to move forward:

The Mobile Hub creates a source package that I can use to get started, and provides me with the links and other information that I need to have at hand in order to get going:

I can download the entire package, open it up in my preferred IDE, and keep going from there:

I can use this code as a starter app and edit it as desired. I can also copy selected pieces of code and paste them in to my existing mobile app.

I can also make use of the AWS Device Farm for testing and Amazon Mobile Analytics to collect operational metrics.

Visit the Hub
Whether you are creating a brand new mobile app or adding features to an existing app, AWS Mobile Hub lets you take advantage of the features, scalability, reliability, and low cost of AWS in minutes. As you have seen, AWS Mobile Hub walks you through feature selection and configuration. It then automatically provisions the AWS services required to power these features, and generates working quickstart apps for iOS and Android that use your provisioned services.

You can now spend more time adding features to your app and less time taking care of all of the details behind the scenes!

To learn more, visit the Mobile Hub page.

— Jeff;

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