LogiCast AWS News

Season 3 Episode 40 - Lambda's Birthday, CloudFormation Timeline & Bedrock Agents

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

Season 3 Episode 39 - Lambda Enhancements, Bedrock Prompt Management & Remote Working Natives

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/

Season 3 Episode 38 - Q Developer, Security Group Sharing, and Amazon's RTO

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
 

Season 3 Episode 37 - Jam, Sessions & The Nuclear Option

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

Season 3 Episode 36 - CodePipeline, Valkey and AI Exec Departure

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 

Season 3 Episode 35 - Graviton 4, ChatOps & Bananas

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. 

Season 3 Episode 34 - Cheap Containers, Backup Visibility & Building in AWS

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

Season 3 Episode 33 - AI, more AI and some not AI!

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

Season 3 Episode 32 - Step Functions Validation, Lambda Layers & Neon Signs

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

Season 3 Episode 31: Macs, Loops, and Misconfigurations

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/