1. Introduction

To kick off the 10th AWS re:Invent, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky addressed the stage and introduced a long number of new services available now or will be available shortly from the web hosting giant. All AWS customers have been overwhelmed and excited by the last week of the AWS re:invent event. In AWS re:invent keynote, there are a bunch of new service announcements made this year, and I wanted to give you all a quick summary of the major ones that came up.

AWS re:invent 2021 splashed tones of updates and new services this year. So, we decided to present most of those services in a consolidated manner divided into two parts. So, let us get started with the Part-I of the update journey.

2. Compute

a. Graviton3:

AWS re:invent 2021 started with introducing a new processor that follows the popular Graviton 2 chip but obviously, it’s named Graviton3. Graviton3, like the chips before it, is an in-house developed AWS processor that was created for cloud computing. The processor supports lower energy use, faster processing, and many other features. The Graviton3 is a big step up over Graviton2, featuring 25% faster speed for general compute, 2x faster floating-point and cryptographic workloads, and 3x faster machine learning workloads. In addition, these processors use up to 60% less energy than a chip with comparable specifications.

b. C7G:

AWS announced a new ec2 instance called C7g type that will use the new Graviton3 based processors. Additionally, AWS has announced support for Graviton processors for services like AWS Lambda, and ECS over the past year. By analyzing this pattern of support, we can expect that in 2022 we will see support for these new processors and those services as well.

c. TRN1:

AWS also announced a new TRN1 instance type for EC2 optimized for machine learning model training. The latest instance features 800 gigabytes per second network bandwidth and seems to be optimized for a machine learning training cluster where workloads are shared across many machines.

3. Architecture

a. AWS Well-Architected Sustainability pillar:

Since 2015, the AWS Well-Architected Framework has assisted AWS customers in improving their cloud architectures with five pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, and Cost Optimization. In addition, a new 6th pillar in the AWS Well-Architected Framework has been announced – the Sustainability Pillar to help organizations learn, measure, and improve their workloads using environmental best practices for cloud computing. Compared to a traditional on-premises setup, AWS clients can save approximately 80% on energy costs for the cloud’s sustainability. This pillar will become part of the review process in the year 2022.

In AWS reinvent, a lot of time was spent discussing data governance this year, including databases, machine learning, data lakes, and analytics. There are a couple of different announcements in this category. Let’s look at those services in following segment.

4. Analytics

a. Row and cell-level security for Lake formation:

A popular AWS service aggregates data from many different sources and stores it securely and reliably. Row and cell-level security allow administrators to apply granular access controls to data tables to ensure that the data security isn’t compromised.

b. Lake Formation Transactions:

AWS also announced transactions for governed tables that support ACID. Using transactions, you can now rely on Data Lakes to gracefully handle conflicts and errors between datasets ensuring consistent views and eliminating the need for custom error handling code.

c. Serverless for Redshift, Kinesis, MSK, EMR:

Setting up and managing infrastructure for these services is a major pain, but we all believe that AWS will always come up with an improved approach. This time AWS has taken this burden of maintenance off the hands of the developer, managing it behind the scenes. AWS has made it possible to achieve much lower costs using the serverless versions of these products so that you only pay for the time that you’re using the product.

5. Databases

a. New Amazon DynamoDB table class:

Amazon launched a new feature Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent access table class. It is a new storage class, and as of now, we have only a standard storage class. This new Standard-Infrequent storage class will reduce the cost of storage by 60% for infrequently accessed data. Traditionally, the only option left for customers to store infrequently accessed data was to move that data to some other type of storage class from DynamoDB for cost-saving purposes. With the help of Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent access table class, customers will now be able to store a large amount of data cost-effectively.

b. Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server Is Generally Available:

Amazon Relational Database Service Custom is a managed database service that allows users to access the underlying OS and DB while using legacy, custom, and packaged applications. You can now use Amazon RDS Custom with the SQL Server database engine. Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server automates the setup, operation, and scaling of databases in the cloud while granting access to the database and underlying operating system to configure settings, install drivers, and enable native features to meet the dependent application’s requirements.

Our coverage has thus far been centered on categories such as analytics, architecture, computing, and databases. And guess what, this is not the end of our discussion. We will be exploring many more announcements from other service categories such as Migration & Transfer, networking, storage, and machine learning in the next part, i.e., AWS re:Invent 2021 highlights Part-II. Until then, stay tuned and updated!

6. Conclusion:

As a pioneer in the Cloud consulting realm, CloudThat is a Microsoft Gold Partner, AWS (Amazon Web Services) Advanced Consulting Partner, and Training partner. We are on a mission to build a strong cloud computing ecosystem by disseminating knowledge on technological intricacies within the cloud space. Our blogs, webinars, case studies, and white papers aim at enabling all the stakeholders in the cloud computing sphere.

To get started, go through our Expert Advisory page and Managed Services Package that is CloudThat’s offerings. Then, you can quickly get in touch with our highly accomplished team of experts to carry out your migration needs.

Feel free to drop a comment or any queries that you have about Compute, Analytics, Architecture, and Databases, and we will get back to you quickly.

WRITTEN BY Aishwarya Joshi

Aishwarya works as a Research Associate (AWS Media services) with CloudThat. She is an enthusiastic individual and a good team player. A positive attitude is her way of dealing with everything. She enjoys learning new technologies and exploring various ways of problem-solving. As of late, she has become proficient in cloud services and enjoys writing technical blogs.