AWS Week in Review – November 23, 2015

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

Monday November 23	We announced that EC2 Dedicated Hosts Are Now Available. The AWS Startup Collection talked about Building IoT Solutions with AWS and Intel. The CloudCheckr Blog talked about Unused and Idle Resources in AWS. The N2WS Blog showed you How to Verify That Your EC2-Based Database Backup is Complete. The Netflix Tech Blog published Part 2 of a series on Creating Your Own EC2 Spot Market. Cloudability described The Ops Team’s Cloud Cost Battle Station. The Simple Engineering Blog talked about Building Analytics at Simple. A post on R-Bloggers described Setting up an AWS instance for R, RStudio, OpenCPU, or Shiny Server.
Tuesday November 24	We published a New AWS Quick Start for Sitecore. The AWS Java Blog published Part 4 of a series of posts that showed you how to Build a Serverless Developer Authentication API in Java using AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Cognito. We updated the AWS SDK for Android, the AWS SDK for Go, the AWS SDK for Ruby, the AWS CLI, the AWS SDK for Java, and the AWS SDK for JavaScript. The AWS Security Blog showed you How to Use a Single IAM User to Easily Access All Your Accounts by Using the AWS CLI. The AWS Security Blog discussed s2n and Lucky 13. The AWS Application Management Blog showed you how to Construct Your Own Launch Stack URL. The Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog showed you how to Leverage Amazon Fling’s Remote Install to Increase Discovery of Fire TV Apps & Games Directly from Mobile Devices. The N2WS Blog shared their 5 Top Considerations in EBS Snapshot Automation. Cloud Academy talked about Applying Security Updates to Your EC2 Instance. Cloud Technology Partners reminded you to Be Thankful for These 3 Cloud Advances. Cloudonaut took A Look at DynamoDB. ParkMyCloud claimed that it is The Season to Turn off Our EC2 Instances. The Algorithmia Blog showed you how to Get Started Building Intelligent, Serverless Apps Using AWS Lambda and Algorithmia. Paul Wakeford talked about Using letsencrypt.org SSL Certificates on EC2. TechCrunch noted that AWS Lambda Makes Serverless Applications a Reality.
Wednesday November 25	The AWS Mobile Development Blog talked about Using Amazon Cognito with Swift. The AWS Application Management Blog shared some AWS CloudFormation Security Best Practices. The AWS Compute Blog announced the Improved Amazon ECS Console First-Run Experience and the Ability to Troubleshoot Docker Errors. The AWS Startup Collection published Part 1 of a series on Scaling on AWS: A Primer. Cloud Academy discussed Amazon’s Role in the Internet of Things. DZone Cloud Zone showed you How to Implement Continuous Delivery for Node.js Using AWS. Stratalux shared their Thanksgiving Thanks to Amazon.
Thursday November 26	DZone Cloud Zone talked about Selecting AWS Storage for MongoDB Deployments: Ephemeral vs. AWS.
Friday November 27	The AWS Compute Blog shared The Twelve Hours of Lambda. Cloud Enlightened showed you how to implement Automated Cross-Account DNS Management Through CloudFormation and API Access Through API Gateway.
Saturday November 28	The Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog announced New Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) Features: Voice Simulator and Yes, No, Repeat and StartOver Built-In Intents.
Sunday November 29	The Serverless Code Blog showed you how to Deploy Lambda Functions with CloudFormation. Cloud Enlightened showed you how to Execute Ruby Code in AWS Lambda. portableR (R statistics for AWS Lambda) was updated with support for Redshift and the Plotly package.

New & Notable Open Source

• go-cloudformation is a Go library for reading and producing CloudFormation templates.
• portableR is R statistics ready to run for AWS Lambda.
• satellite-image-processing-environment is a Vagrant environment for processing satellite images on AWS.
• Sparta lets you run Go functions in AWS Lambda.
• aws-key-git-hook is a Git pre-commit hook to stop you from checking in your AWS keys.
• aws-v4-sign-small is a size-optimized library for AWS v4 request signing, designed for use in the browser.
• aws-deployment-guide shows you how to deploy an app to a VPC with Elastic Beanstalk.
• aws-sdk-typescript is a TypeScript bindings generator for the AWS SDK for JavaScript.
• iam-policy-manager is a simple utility to manage AWS IAM roles and policies from a JSON model.
• aws-deployments is a set of deployment examples for F5’s Big IP platform on AWS.

New SlideShare Presentations

• AWS Pop-up Loft Berlin – Presentations.
• Adobe Creative Cloud and AWS.
• Securing Web Applications with AWS WAF.
• IAM Best Practices to Live By.

New Customer Success Stories

• BC Hydro – simulation and modeling (thanks, TriNimbus).
• Assignar -managing compliance, assets, and workforces.
• Human Recognition Systems -biometrics for identity.
• National Trust -SSV (single supporter view) data warehouse.
• Present Group -commissioning and completing electrical projects.
• tixCraft -ticketing services for concerts and other events.
• Travelstart -hosting a travel booking website.
• WirelessCar – automotive telematics.

New YouTube Videos

• re:Invent 2015 Global Partner Summit:
  • Building a Big Data Practice on AWS.
  • CI/CD on AWS.
• Earth Observation in the Cloud Demo Day:
  • How Mapbox does Earth Observation.
  • ArcGIS for Earth Observation in the Cloud.
  • Geospatial Big Data with DigitalGlobe.
  • NOAA Big Data Project.
  • Earth Observation in the Cloud using ENVI.
  • Emerging Hotspots of Global Tree Cover Loss.
  • Earth Observation Data Revolution.
  • Planet Labs on AWS.
  • Earth Observation on AWS.

Upcoming Events

• December 1 (Meetup in Chicago, IL) – APIs and IPAs.
• December 1 (Webinar) – How the City of San Diego Created an App to Resolve Parking Issues – with APN Partner Civic Resource Group International and customer CivicSD.
• December 3 (Webinar) – Migrating Your HIPAA Compliant Healthcare Analytics to AWS – with APN Partner Cloudticity and customer Caremerge.
• December 3 (Meetup in Redwood City, CA) – Loading Data Into Redshift Simplified with Schema-on-Read ELT.
• December 8 (Webinar) – Jana’s Data Warehousing Story: Then vs. Now – with APN Partner Snowflake and customer Jana.
• December 10 (Webinar) – Secure Incoming and Outgoing Traffic to Your Web Application – with APN Partner Barracuda Networks.
• December 14 (Meetup in Oslo, Norway) – Manage AWS Infrastructure as Code Using Terraform.
• AWS Lofts:
  • San Francisco.
  • New York.

Help Wanted

• DubSmash (Berlin) – Engineering Manager.
• Stelligent – DevOps Automation Engineer (Advanced, Senior, Principal).
• Senior Leader: AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).
• EC2 Systems Engineering Leader.
• Senior Software Development Manager, EC2 Networking.
• AWS Careers.

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

— Jeff;