What's New in April 2021

Melbourne AWS User Group

Setting a new record for delay in editing, you can finally listen to Arjen, JM, and Guy discuss the news from April 2021. This was recorded nearly two months before it was released.

News Finally in Sydney

• Amazon Transcribe Custom Language Models now support Australian English, British English, Hindi and US Spanish
• Multi-Attach for Provisioned IOPS io2 Now Available in Thirteen Additional AWS Regions
• AWS Transit Gateway Connect is now available in additional AWS Regions
• AWS CloudShell is now available in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Europe (Frankfurt) regions

Serverless API Gateway

• Amazon API Gateway custom domain names now support multi-level base path mappings

Lambda

• AWS Lambda@Edge changes duration billing granularity from 50ms down to 1ms
• Amazon CloudWatch Lambda Insights Now Supports AWS Lambda Container Images (General Availability)
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Integrates with AWS Lambda
• AWS Lambda@Edge now supports Node 14.x

Step Functions

• AWS Step Functions adds new data flow simulator for modelling input and output processing

EventBridge

• Amazon EventBridge introduces support for cross-Region event bus targets
• AWS Chatbot now expands coverage of AWS Services monitored through Amazon EventBridge

Amplify

• Data management is now generally available in the AWS Amplify Admin UI
• Amplify iOS now available via Swift Package Manager (SPM)
• AWS Amplify now orchestrates multiple Amazon DynamoDB GSI updates in a single deployment

Containers

• eksctl now supports creating node groups using resource specifications and dry run mode
• AWS Secrets Manager Delivers Provider for Kubernetes Secrets Store CSI Driver

EC2 & VPC

• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling introduces Warm Pools to accelerate scale out while saving money
• Amazon VPC Flow Logs announces out-of-the-box integration with Amazon Athena
• MacSec Encryption for some Direct Connect (apologies, linking to this prevents the podcast from getting published :shrug:)
• New AWS Storage Gateway management console simplifies gateway creation and management
• AWS Batch now supports EFS volumes at the job level
• AWS Backup now supports cost allocation tags for Amazon EFS Backups
• Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Multicast on AWS Transit Gateway is now available in major AWS regions worldwide
• Amazon EC2 enables replacing root volumes for quick restoration and troubleshooting
• Announcing availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with High availability for Amazon EC2
• AWS Nitro Enclaves now supports Windows operating system

Dev & Ops Dev

• Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer Updates: New Predictable Pricing Model Up To 90% Lower and Python Support Moves to GA | AWS News Blog
• Now available credential profile support for AWS SSO and Assume Role with MFA in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio
• AWS CodeDeploy improves support for EC2 deployments with Auto Scaling Groups
• AWS SAM CLI now supports AWS CDK applications - public preview
• Better together: AWS SAM and AWS CDK | AWS Compute Blog

Proton

• AWS Proton allows adding and removing instances from an existing service
• AWS Proton introduces customer-managed environments
• AWS Proton adds an API to cancel deployments

CloudFormation

• You can now deploy CloudFormation Stacks concurrently across multiple AWS regions using AWS CloudFormation StackSets
• AWS CloudFormation Command Line Interface (CFN-CLI) now supports TypeScript
• AWS CloudFormation Modules now Provides YAML and Delimiter Support
• Now reference latest AWS Systems Manager parameter values in AWS CloudFormation templates without specifying parameter versions
• You can now use macros and transforms in CloudFormation templates to create AWS CloudFormation StackSets

Control Tower

• AWS Control Tower introduces changes to preventive S3 guardrails and updates to S3 bucket encryption protocols
• AWS Control Tower now provides configurable naming during Landing Zone setup

Systems Manager

• AWS Systems Manager Run Command now displays more logs and enables log download from the console
• AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store now supports easier public parameter discoverability
• Customers can now use ServiceNow to track operational items related to AWS resources
• AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store now supports removal of parameter labels
• AWS Systems Manager now supports Amazon Elastic Container Service clusters
• AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter and Explorer now integrate with AWS Security Hub for diagnosis and remediation of security findings

Security Firewalls

• How to Get Started with Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall for Amazon VPC | AWS News Blog
• Reduce Unwanted Traffic on Your Website with New AWS WAF Bot Control | AWS News Blog
• AWS Firewall Manager now supports centralized management of Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall
• AWS Firewall Manager now supports centralized deployment of the new AWS WAF Bot Control across your organization
• AWS WAF now supports Labels to improve rule customization and reporting

Identity

• Review last accessed information to identify unused EC2, IAM, and Lambda permissions and tighten access for your IAM roles
• AWS Identity and Access Management now makes it easier to relate a user's IAM role activity to their corporate identity

Other

• AWS Config launches the ability to track and visualize compliance change history of conformance packs
• AWS Security Hub Automated Response & Remediation Solution adds support for AWS Foundational Security Best Practices standard
• You now can use AWS CloudTrail to log Amazon DynamoDB Streams data-plane API activity

Data Storage & Processing Glue

• Detect outliers and use dedicated transforms to handle outliers in AWS Glue DataBrew
• AWS Glue DataBrew now supports time-based, pattern-based and customizable parameters to create dynamic datasets
• AWS announces preview of AWS Glue custom blueprints
• AWS Glue now supports cross-account reads from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
• AWS Glue now supports missing value imputation based on machine learning
• AWS announces data sink capability for the Glue connectors
• AWS Glue DataBrew announces native console integration with Amazon AppFlow to connect to data from SaaS (Software as a Service) applications and AWS services (in Preview)

Redshift

• AQUA (Advanced Query Accelerator) – A Speed Boost for Your Amazon Redshift Queries | AWS News Blog
• Announcing cross-VPC support for Amazon Redshift powered by AWS PrivateLink
• Announcing general availability of Amazon Redshift native console integration with partners
• Announcing general availability of Amazon Redshift native JSON and semi-structured data support

EMR

• Amazon EMR Release 5.33 now supports 10 new instance types
• Amazon EMR Studio is now generally available

Athena

• Announcing general availability of Amazon Athena ML powered by Amazon SageMaker
• User Defined Functions (UDF) are now generally available for Amazon Athena

RDS

• Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Extended Events
• Amazon RDS on VMware networking now simplified and more secure

Other

• Amazon FSx and AWS Backup announce support for copying file system backups across AWS Regions and AWS accounts
• AWS Batch increases job scheduling and EC2 instance scaling performance
• Amazon Elasticsearch Service now supports integration with Microsoft Power BI
• AWS Ground Station now supports data delivery to Amazon S3
• Amazon ElastiCache now supports publishing Redis logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and Kinesis Data Firehose

AI & ML SageMaker

• Decrease Your Machine Learning Costs with Instance Price Reductions and Savings Plans for Amazon SageMaker | AWS News Blog
• New options to trigger Amazon SageMaker Pipeline executions ( EventBridge)

Other

• Detect abnormal equipment behavior with Amazon Lookout for Equipment — now generally available
• Amazon Fraud Detector now supports Batch Fraud Predictions
• Get estimated run time for forecast creation jobs while using Amazon Forecast
• Amazon Kendra launches dynamic relevance tuning

Other Cool Stuff WorkSpaces

• Amazon WorkSpaces webcam support now Generally Available
• Amazon WorkSpaces now supports smart cards with the WorkSpaces macOS client application

IVS

• Amazon Interactive Video Service adds new Cloudwatch Metrics
• Amazon Interactive Video Service adds support for recording live streams to Amazon S3

Connect

• Amazon Connect launches audio device settings for the custom Contact Control Panel (CCP)
• Amazon Connect allows contact center managers to configure agent settings in a custom Contact Control Panel (CCP)

Other

• AWS RoboMaker now supports the ability to configure tools for simulation jobs
• Amazon AppStream 2.0 adds support for fully managed image updates
• Amazon Managed Service for Grafana now supports Grafana Enterprise upgrade, Grafana version 7.5, Open Distro for Elasticsearch integration, and AWS Billing reports
• AWS Cloud9 now supports Amazon Linux 2 environments
• CloudWatch Metric Streams – Send AWS Metrics to Partners and to Your Apps in Real Time | AWS News Blog
• Announcing open source robotics projects for AWS DeepRacer
• Announcing Moving Graphs for CloudWatch Dashboards
• Amazon Nimble Studio – Build a Creative Studio in the Cloud | AWS News Blog
• AWS Snow Family now enables you to order, track, and manage long-term pricing Snow jobs

The Nanos

• AWS Console Mobile Application adds support for Asia Pacific (Osaka) region (Arjen)
• Amazon Connect reduces telephony rates in Cyprus, Belgium, and Portugal (Guy)
• AWS Cloud9 now supports Amazon Linux 2 environments (Jean-Manuel)

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