Oracle’s stock jumped in value more than 40% on Wednesday, lifting the company’s share price to a record high and placing the company in striking distance of a trillion-dollar market value. The surge also sent Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s wealth soaring, narrowing the gap between him and Elon Musk in the contest to be the […]
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By Chris Williams
I’m going to briefly talk about the new services that have were announced, but I’m not going to do a deep dive on any one of them… the reason being that (a) there is going to be MUCH more coming out on the services in the future & anything I say here will probably be incorrect and (b) you can go straight to the source... so I’ll link where appropriate, and (c) there were so many new services that I’m only going to hit on the big ones that I have better than passing knowledge of anyway 
There were many more announcements. If you want the whole comprehensive list please go here: https://aws.amazon.com/new/reinvent/
Alternatively, if you are on the road I recommend listening to the AWS Podcast & the AWS Tech Chat, both are excellent.
I suggest you go to as many hackathons, chalk talks, hands-on labs, and workshops that you can. Basically, anything that isn’t being recorded that you can watch later that you want to do, go do that. I met some really excellent people at the 1 hackathon that I attended. Next year I will try to hit at least 2. In terms of getting the most value out of my time, Hackathons, the Expo hall (here’s my interview with Linux Academy!), and simply walking up and talking to people were my top 3.
My hackathon team thanks to Calvin’s 360 camera… which I am now ordering
Team Nakatomi in the house #reinvent #awsjamsessions – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
All in all, I had a great time. Sure the conference had some issues that needed tweaking, but I learned more, came away with more energy and excitement than I have from a conference in a long time. Now I need to rest up on the couch with #ITKitty, Kim, and a giant iced coffee
Thanks for checking out my AWS re:Invent re:Cap 2017!
GreenPages Enterprise Consultant and Cloud Architect, Chris Williams, is currently preparing for his AWS-SA professional certification. Check out his 9 article series on the AWS Solutions Architect exam. Start with the intro here: http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes/
Remaining eight articles here:
http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes/
http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-1/
http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-2/
http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-3/
http://mistwire.com/2016/10/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-4/
http://mistwire.com/2016/11/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-5/
http://mistwire.com/2016/11/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-6/
http://mistwire.com/2016/11/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-7/
http://mistwire.com/2016/11/aws-certified-solutions-architect-pro-study-notes-domain-8/
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Amazon Web Services has contracted green energy specialist EDP Renewables to build and run the 100 megawatt (MW) Amazon Wind Farm US Central in Ohio.
The project is due to complete by May 2017 when it will begin producing enough to power run, 29,000 average US homes for a year, it claims. AWS says the latest addition to its green energy stable would generate 320,000 MWh of electricity a year from a new wind farm in the US.
Amazon also claims the energy generated will feed the electrical grid supplying both current and future AWS cloud data centres.
In November 2014 AWS committed to running its infrastructure entirely on renewable energy – in the long term – and claimed that 25% of the electricity running its cloud services was green. By the end of 2016 it aims to have pushed the proportion to 40%.
Earlier this year it announced a renewable project with the Amazon Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) in Indiana could generate 500,000 MWh of wind power annually. In April it then began a pilot project using Tesla’s energy storage batteries to power data centres at times when wind power and solar are not available. In the same month AWS joined the American Council on Renewable Energy and the US Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance to work with government policy makers on developing more renewable energy options.
In June 2015 it said its new AWS Solar Farm in Virginia could generate 170,000 MWh of solar power annually and a month later it added another wind farm in North Carolina that could generate 670,000 MWh a year. In total, AWS claims to have the potential to create 1.6 million MWh of power.
“We continue to pursue projects that help to power AWS data centres and bring us closer to achieving total renewable energy,” said Jerry Hunter, VP of Infrastructure at AWS.
Managed hosting provider Rackspace has announced a ramped up suite of products featuring enhanced support and functionality with Amazon Web Services.
The agreement with AWS, announced at re:Invent in Las Vegas this week, will see Rackspace launch managed service offerings including tools, expertise, application management and operational support for AWS Cloud. “Fanatical Support for AWS” is the core service offering featured as part of the agreement, with three beta offerings supplementing the managed service – Managed Security for AWS, Compliance Assistance for AWS and Managed Cloud for Adobe Experience Manager.
Through Fanatical Support, Rackspace tells its customers to “leave the heavy lifting to us” as it claims to take care of migration, architecture, security and operations for companies looking to adopt AWS for application hosting.
Rackspace has also become an authorised reseller at AWS, as well as a managed services partner, and has joined the AWS Partner Network. CEO Taylor Rhodes spoke about the announcement on the company’s blog page.
“Over the past year, more and more of them [customers] have told us that they love Rackspace expertise and Fanatical Support, and would like to get it for the workloads that they prefer to run on AWS,” he said. “We have spent the past several months working with those customers and with AWS, to create the best managed-service offering on that platform.”
Rhodes went on to say that AWS adds to Rackspace’s existing commitment to support a number of other platforms.
“We help businesses tap the power of the cloud without the pain and expense of managing it all themselves,” he said. “We have gone deep on support for platforms such as OpenStack, Microsoft and VMware. Our success in leading the managed cloud market for those technologies has been validated by industry experts such as Gartner, and most importantly, by our 300,000-plus business customers.”
Finally, Rhodes then highlighted how Fanatical Support has evolved with today’s announcements, and how it will benefit various customer segments. He claims it will appeal to businesses that have desired AWS integration with existing Fanatical Support functionality; for rapidly growing businesses needing to outsource some IT functionality in order to reallocate technical resource to other areas; and for customers new to both AWS and Rackspace.
Meanwhile, AWS’s VP of worldwide partner ecosystem Terry Wise, welcomed Rackspace’s increased integration and functionality of AWS.
“We’re pleased to see Rackspace support AWS customers and achieve membership in the AWS Managed Service Program,” he said. “A growing number of businesses who want the benefit of the AWS Cloud will find value in working with AWS Managed Service Partners like Rackspace. We have been impressed with Rackspace’s commitment to include beta customers in their AWS managed services offerings, along with certifying a large number of their technical staff.”
SequenceIQ will help boost Hortonworks’ position in the Hadoop ecosystem
Hortonworks has acquired SequenceIQ, a Hungary-based startup delivering infrastructure agnostic tools to improve Hadoop deployments. The company said the move will bolster its ability to offer speedy cloud deployments of Hadoop.
SequenceIQ’s flagship offering, Cloudbreak, is a Hadoop as a Service API for multi-tenant clusters that applies some of the capabilities of Blueprint (which lets you create a Hadoop cluster without having to use the Ambari Cluster Install Wizard) and Periscope (autoscaling for Hadoop YARN) to help speed up deployment of Hadoop on different cloud infrastructures.
The two companies have partnered extensively in the Hadoop community, and Hortonworks said the move will enhance its position among a growing number of Hadoop incumbents.
“This acquisition enriches our leadership position by providing technology that automates the launching of elastic Hadoop clusters with policy-based auto-scaling on the major cloud infrastructure platforms including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and OpenStack, as well as platforms that support Docker containers. Put simply, we now provide our customers and partners with both the broadest set of deployment choices for Hadoop and quickest and easiest automation steps,” Tim Hall, vice president of product management at Hortonworks, explained.
“As Hortonworks continues to expand globally, the SequenceIQ team further expands our European presence and firmly establishes an engineering beachhead in Budapest. We are thrilled to have them join the Hortonworks team.”
Hall said the company also plans to contribute the Cloudbreak code back into the Apache Foundation sometime this year, though whether it will do so as part of an existing project or standalone one seems yet to be decided.
Hortonworks’ bread and butter is in supporting enterprise adoption of Hadoop and bringing the services component to the table, but it’s interesting to see the company commit to feeding the Cloudbreak code – which could, at least temporarily, give it a competitive edge – back into the ecosystem.
“This move is in line with our belief that the fastest path to innovation is through open source developed within an open community,” Hall explained.
The big data M&A space has seen more consolidation over the past few months, with Hitachi Data Systems acquiring big data and analytics specialist Pentaho and Infosys’ $200m acquisition of Panaya.
Cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape. Forrester research indicates the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalization of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio.
Cloud platforms, most notably Amazon Web Services, were only collectively $4.7 billion last year but are maturing quickly thanks to stronger recent solutions from traditional IT partners IBM, HP and Microsoft. The growth in use, maturity, and financial viability of public cloud platforms are proving their longstanding value as legitimate deployment options for enterprise applications. While not a one-for-one replacement for on-premise, hosting, or colocation, cloud platforms fit well as ideal deployment options for elastic and transient workloads built in modern application architectures.
For applications and services built in an agile mode with modern architectures, discrete cloud services, such as database, storage, integration and other standalone cloud middleware components, will empower developers by freeing them from the management and maintenance of these components and reduce overall deployment footprint and cost. They are also managed and enhanced by vendors as often as daily delivering new capabilities that can help a company maintain pace with the changing desires of an empowered customer base
As the largest clouds continue to invest in efficiencies that can only be achieved at their massive scales, the gulf between the cost efficiencies that can be had from the cloud and what is possible on-premise or through other outsourcing and hosting options will widen dramatically.
How Forrester came to these conclusions.
For more detail and opinions read this, and listen to this.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is urging developers using the code sharing site GitHub to check their posts to ensure they haven’t inadvertently exposed their log-in credentials.
When opening an account, users are told to “store the keys in a secure location” and are warned that the key needs to remain “confidential in order to protect your account”. However, a search on GitHub reveals thousands of results where code containing AWS secret keys can be found in plain text, which means anyone can access those accounts.
From a security perspective it means they can basically go in and gain access to any of the files that are stored in the AWS account.
According to an AWS statement, ”When we become aware of potentially exposed credentials, we proactively notify the affected customers and provide guidance on how to secure their access keys,”
There is more detail (and some cautionary tales involving big, and unexpected, AWS bills) here.
Amazon Web Services has filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims related to Central Intelligence Agency action in following recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office following an action filed in February by IBM after the CIA awarded AWS a contract worth up to $600 million over four years to build a private cloud for the entire intelligence community.
FCW has the details.
