AWS Week in Review - February 8, 2016

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

Monday February 8	We announced that Amazon Redshift Now Supports Appending Rows to Tables and Exporting Query Results to BZIP2-compressed Files. The AWS Enterprise Blog advised you to Accelerate Your Cloud Strategy with Partners. Spotinst announced that Spotinst Elastigroup Now Integrates with AWS CodeDeploy. Cloud Academy talked about the AWS Managed Managed NAT Gateway. Joseph Rollins talked about Feeding Server Logs into Statsd using AWS Lambda. Zappa supports Serverless Python Web Applications.
Tuesday February 9	We announced Lumberyard + Amazon GameLift + Twitch for Games on AWS. We announced that Amazon Machine Learning can now Import Data from Amazon Redshift via the Console. We announced that Amazon RDS now supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Oracle Native Network Encryption (NNE) in all Amazon RDS for Oracle Editions. We launched the Amazon GameDev Blog. The AWS Security Blog explained How to Configure Rate-Based Blacklisting with AWS WAF and AWS Lambda. The AWS Startup Collection published Part 2 of a series on Building mHealth Applications. Stelligent talked about Running AWS Lambda Functions in AWS CodePipeline using CloudFormation. Botmetric noted that Having a Disaster Recovery Plan is Pivotal - The Do's and Don'ts on AWS Cloud. RightScale shared the results of their 2016 State of the Cloud Survey. Gathering Clouds talked about Incident Response on the AWS Cloud and The Case for Outsourcing. Thinking Aloud talked posted a guide to Understanding AWS RDS Recovery. Payam Moghaddam of Build ACL talked about Coded Infrastructure.
Wednesday February 10	We announced Amazon VPC Endpoints for Amazon S3 in the China (Beijing) Region. The AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog announced that Automated Sign-Up is Now Available for AWS GovCloud (US). The AWS Mobile Development Blog published a Transition Guide: Parse Analytics to Amazon Mobile Analytics. A Cloud Guru talked about Serverless on AWS as a Game Changer. Cloud Academy talked about Amazon S3 Lifecycle Policies, Versioning, and Encryption. Cloud Technology Partners discussed the EC2 Container Service and showed How to Create an ECS Cluster. ParkMyCloud saw that Formerly Wasteful Bob finds an Amazon Echo Equivalent for AWS Cloud. Dean Sheehan of Apcera talked about Event Enabling the Internet of Things Using AWS Lambda, NATS, and Apcera.
Thursday February 11	We announced that you can now Access Resources in a VPC from Your Lambda Functions. We announced an Amazon RDS Update, with Shared Encrypted Snapshots and the ability to Encrypt Existing Instances. We announced the Winners of the Hackster AWS IoT Mega Contest. We announced a VM Import Update - Faster and More Flexible, with Multi-Volume Support Now Available for AWS GovCloud (US) Customers. We announced that Amazon Aurora is Now Available in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. We announced that AWS Elastic Beanstalk Supports Docker 1.9 and Includes a New Security Update. We announced that the Amazon API Gateway Now Supports Custom Authorizers. We announced that Amazon RDS now supports R3 and T2 Instance Types, as well as Simplified Reserved Instance Purchase Options in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region. We announced that Enhanced Monitoring for Amazon RDS is Now Available for MySQL 5.5. The AWS Partner Network Blog invited you to Take Advantage of Upcoming NoSQL And IoT Services Workshops in Seattle and Boston. The AWS Big Data Blog announced the Amazon Redshift UDF Repository on AWSLabs. The AWS Startup Collection talked about Picking the Right Data Store for Your Workload. Evident offered advice on Implementing the Top Ten AWS Security Best Practices. Cloud Machine Manager listed Four Considerations to Improve Amazon EC2 Security. Flux7 talked about Making the Path to AWS Easier with Ansible Configuration Management. Gorillastack talked about What The AWS Lumberyard Announcement Really Means For Amazon. Ars Technica noted that Netflix Finished its Massive Migration to the Amazon Cloud.
Friday February 12	I shared some Resources for Migrating Parse Applications to AWS. We announced that you can now View Amazon CloudWatch Metrics within the Amazon SQS Console. The Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog announced Weekly Alexa Developer Office Hours. The AWS Big Data Blog announced an Updated Big Data Analytics Options on AWS White Paper. The AWS Compute Blog talked about Scheduling SSH Jobs Using AWS Lambda. Cloud Academy published an Amazon ElastiCache Introduction. Cloud Machine Manager talked about How Much Money You Could Save by Scheduling Servers. Cloud Zone showed you How to Run AWS Lambda Functions in AWS CodePipeline Using CloudFormation.
Saturday February 13	Botmetric announced Actionable Cloud Insights for Analyzing ROI in AWS Cloud. Mark Litwintschik explained how he stored a Billion Taxi Rides in Redshift.
Sunday February 14	Calorious talked about Exporting Data and Images out of Parse. We published an AWS Security Checklist.

New & Notable Open Source

• Vault is a tool for managing secrets.


• credstash is a little utility for managing credentials in the cloud.


• microservices-playground is for microservices running on AWS in a Docker Container using ECS.


• aws-role-editor is a Google Chrome extension to modify roles in the AWS Console.


• aws-request-signer is a Google Chrome extension that signs requests to AWS endpoints using SigV4.


• conan-aws-lambda is an AWS Lambda plugin for Conan the Deployer.


• aws-nats is a Python and CloudFormation script to run a NATS cluster in AWS.


• shepherd is a framework for building APIs using AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda.


• aws-lambda-ffmpeg ia an AWS Lambda function that resizes a video and outputs a thumbnail using FFmpeg.


• aerosol is a DSL and Gem for defining an AWS architecture.

New SlideShare Presentations

• AWS Logging, Analysis, and Alerting.


• The AWS Shared Responsibility Model in Practice.


• Transparency and Auditing on AWS.


• Account Separation and Mandatory Access Control on AWS.

New Customer Success Stories

• Bazaarvoice - The company offers a technology platform and services that help customers collect and analyze consumer content, using that data to increase sales and improve their products and services.


• Bitdefender - By using AWS, the developers at Bitdefender have additional tools to innovate and scale on demand with near-zero downtime, offering customers flexible, cost-effective security solutions.


• The Globe and Mail - The Globe and Mail is using AWS to deliver dynamic, personalized content to its readers, helping boost reader engagement by 25 percent.


• gumi Asia - Using AWS has enabled gumi Asia to achieve 99.5 percent availability, support demand peaks 50 percent higher than normal with no impact on performance, and avoid system redundancy and staffing costs.


• Intermountain Healthcare - Intermountain Healthcare, using AWS and working with APN partner Syapse, can provide fast, cloud-based services to oncologists across the United States so they can deliver precision medicine to cancer patients.


• Invision - Using AWS, InVision can offer its workforce management solution at one tenth of the cost of its physical software product, helping it to lower its costs to contact-center customers and reach a previously untapped 85 percent of the market.

New YouTube Videos

• Introduction to the AWS Snowball.


• Introduction to Amazon Route 53.


• 2016 AWS Government, Education, and Nonprofits Summit.

Upcoming Events

• AWS Loft - San Francisco.


• AWS Loft - New York.


• AWS Global Summit Series.

Help Wanted

• AWS Careers.

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

-- Jeff;