New Features and Benefits with AWS – Quarterly Update – Q2– 2022
Apps Associates prides itself on being a trusted partner for the management of critical business needs, providing strategic consulting and managed services for Oracle, Salesforce, integration, analytics and multi-cloud infrastructure. As such we want to make sure we continue to add value to our relationship and equip you with the latest features, functionality, and benefits of AWS.
EC2
Amazon EC2 now performs automatic recovery of instances by default – Amazon EC2 announces automatic recovery by default, a new feature that makes it even easier for customers to recover their instance when it becomes unreachable. Automatic recovery improves instance availability by recovering the instance if it becomes impaired due to an underlying hardware issue. Automatic recovery migrates the instance to another hardware during an instance reboot while retaining its instance ID, private IP addresses, Elastic IP addresses, and all instance metadata.
Amazon EC2 enables customers to protect instances from unintentional stop actions – When enabled, the Stop Protection feature blocks attempts to stop or terminate the instance via the EC2 console, API, or CLI. This feature provides an extra measure of protection for stateful workloads since instances can be stopped or terminated only by deactivating the Stop Protection feature.
Price reductions on Amazon EC2 instances running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) OS – Starting May 28th, 2022 there will be a price reduction on SLES On-Demand EC2 instances which can result in savings of up to 24% vs. the current On-Demand rates. Price reduction on Savings Plans when running SLES OS EC2 instances can result in savings of up to 52% vs. the current Savings Plans rates. With this price reduction, SLES OS Savings Plans customers will not only benefit from the same significant savings as Reserved Instances but also benefit from the flexibility and ease of use of Savings Plans.
New Instance Types:
I4i
Introducing Amazon EC2 I4i instances – Designed for storage I/O intensive workloads, I4i instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code named Ice Lake) with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, offer up to 30% better compute price performance over I3 instances, and always-on memory encryption using Intel Total Memory Encryption (TME). I4i instances offer up to 30 TB of NVMe storage from AWS Nitro SSDs. Nitro SSDs are NVMe-based and custom-designed by AWS to provide high I/O performance, low latency, minimal latency variability, and security with always-on encryption. I4i instances provide up to 60% lower storage I/O latency, and 75% lower storage I/O latency variability compared to I3 instances. Also available in bare metal.
C7g
Announcing new Amazon EC2 C7g instances powered by AWS Graviton3 processors – C7g instances are the first instances powered by the latest AWS Graviton3 processors and deliver up to 25% better performance over Graviton2-based C6g instances for a broad spectrum of applications such as application servers, microservices, batch processing, electronic design automation (EDA), gaming, video encoding, scientific modeling, distributed analytics, high performance computing (HPC), CPU-based machine learning (ML) inference, and ad serving. They offer up to 2x better floating-point performance, up to 2x faster crypto performance, and up to 3x better ML performance, including support for bfloat16, compared to AWS Graviton2 processors. Graviton3-based C7g instances are the first generally available instances in the cloud to feature the latest DDR5 memory, which provides 50% more memory bandwidth compared to DDR4, to enable high-speed access to data in memory.
M6id
Introducing Amazon EC2 M6id instances – M6id instances are powered by third generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code name Ice Lake) with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, equipped with up to 7.6 TB of local NVMe-based solid state disk (SSD) block-level storage, and deliver up to 15% better price performance compared to M5d instances. Compared to previous generation instances, M6id instances offer up to 58% higher TB storage per vCPU and 34% lower cost per TB. To meet customer demands for increased scalability, M6id instances provide a new instance size (32xlarge), with 128 vCPUs and 512 GiB of memory (both 33% more than the largest previous generation instances), and up to 20% higher-memory bandwidth per vCPU compared to previous generation instances. M6id instances also provide customers up to 50 Gbps of networking speed and 40 Gbps of bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store, twice that of comparable previous generation instances. Customers can use Elastic Fabric Adapter on the 32xlarge size, which enables low-latency and highly scalable inter-node communication.
C6id
Introducing Amazon EC2 C6id instances – C6id instances are powered by third generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code name Ice Lake) with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, equipped with up to 7.6 TB of local NVMe-based solid state drive (SSD) block level storage, and deliver up to 15% better price performance compared to C5d instances. Compared to previous generation instances, C6id instances offer up to 138% higher TB storage per vCPU and 56% lower cost per TB. To meet customer demands for increased scalability, C6id instances provide a new instance size (32xlarge) with 128 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory (both 33% more than the largest previous generation instances) and up to 9% higher memory bandwidth per vCPU compared to previous generation instances. C6id instances also provide customers up to 50 Gbps of networking speed and 40 Gbps of bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store, twice that of comparable previous gen instances. Customers can use Elastic Fabric Adapter on the 32xlarge size, which enables low-latency and highly scalable inter-node communication.
R6id
Introducing Amazon R6id instances – R6id instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors, with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, up to 7.6 TB of local NVMe-based SSD block-level storage, and up to 15% better price performance than R5d instances. Furthermore, R6id instances also offer up to 58% higher TB storage per vCPU and 34% lower cost per TB and come with always-on memory encryption using Intel Total Memory Encryption (TME). R6id instances are ideal for memory-intensive workloads, distributed web-scale in-memory caches, in-memory databases, and real-time big data analytics. They will also benefit applications that need temporary data storage, such as caches and scratch files. To provide increased scalability, R6id instances offer a new 32xlarge size that has 33% more vCPU and memory than previous generation instances and up to 20% higher memory bandwidth per vCPU; the 32xlarge size also integrates with the Elastic Fabric Adapter, which enables low latency and highly scalable inter-node communication.
RDS
Amazon RDS Free Tier now includes db.t3.micro, AWS Graviton2-based db.t4g.micro instances in all commercial regions – Starting today, the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) free tier will include db.t3.micro and AWS Graviton2- based db.t4g.micro instances in all commercial regions. This provides you with more options in addition to the db.t2.micro instance in the current AWS Free Tier for new AWS customers.
Amazon RDS now supports Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) – Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) now offers customers the option to use Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addresses in their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on new and existing RDS instances. Customers moving to IPv6 can simplify their network stack by running their databases on a network that supports both IPv4 and IPv6.
Amazon RDS Data API now supports returning SQL results as a simplified JSON string – Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Data API can now return results in a new simplified JSON format that makes it easier to convert JSON string to an object in your application. Previously, Amazon RDS Data API returned a JSON string as an array of data type and value pairs. This required developers to write custom code to parse the response and extract the values in order to manually translate the JSON string into an object. Instead, the new format returns an array of column names and values, which makes it easier for common JSON parsing libraries to convert the response JSON string to an object.
Oracle
Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports January 2022 Patch Set Update (PSU) for 12.1 and Release Updates (RU) for 12.2 and 19c – Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle now supports the January 2022 Patch Set Update (PSU) for Oracle Database 12.1 and Release Updates (RU) for Oracle Database 12.2 and 19c. Please note 21c is already shipped with January 2022 RU. Oracle PSUs contain bug fixes and other critical security updates. Beginning with Oracle Database version 12.2.0.1, Amazon RDS for Oracle supports Release Updates (RU) in place of the PSU.
Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports M6i and R6i instances – Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle now supports M6i and R6i instances. M6i instances are the 6th generation of Amazon EC2 x86-based General Purpose compute instances, designed to provide a balance of compute, memory, storage, and network resources. M6i and R6i instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, delivering improved compute price performance over equivalent M5 and R5 instances. To meet customer demands for increased scalability, M6i and R6i instances provide a new instance size of 32xlarge with 128 vCPUs and 33% more memory than the largest M5 and R5 instances. M6i.32xlarge has 512 GiB of memory and R6i.32xlarge has 1,024 GiB of memory. They also provide up to 20% higher memory bandwidth per vCPU compared to the previous 5th generation instances.
SQL Server
Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports SQL Server Agent job replication – Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports SQL Server Agent job replication. With this new feature, SQL Server Agent jobs created, modified, or deleted on the primary instance will be automatically synchronized to the secondary instance in a Multi-AZ configuration. The Multi-AZ deployment option provides enhanced availability and data durability by automatically replicating databases between two AWS Availability Zones (in the same AWS Region). These Availability Zones offer you an easier and more effective way to design and operate applications and databases, making them more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than traditional single-datacenter infrastructures or multi-datacenter infrastructures.
Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports SQL Server 2016 SP3, 2017 CU27, and 2019 CU15 – New minor versions of Microsoft SQL Server are now available on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, offering performance and security fixes. Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports the new minor versions for Microsoft SQL Server 2016, 2017, and 2019 on the Express, Web, Standard, and Enterprise Editions.
Aurora
Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 is generally available – Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, the next version of Aurora Serverless, is now generally available. Aurora Serverless v2 scales instantly to support even the most demanding applications, delivering up to 90% cost savings compared to provisioning for peak capacity. Aurora Serverless is an on-demand, automatic scaling configuration for Amazon Aurora. Aurora Serverless v2 scales database workloads to hundreds of thousands of transactions in a fraction of a second. It adjusts capacity in fine-grained increments to provide just the right amount of database resources for an application’s needs. You don’t need to manage database capacity, and you pay for only the resources consumed by your application.
Storage
FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN)
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now enables you to change the throughput capacity of your file systems – Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now enables you to change the throughput capacity of your file systems with the click of a button, providing you the flexibility to scale up or down to meet your evolving needs over time. An FSx for ONTAP file system’s throughput capacity determines the level of network I/O performance that is supported by its file servers. Starting today, you can now dynamically adjust your file systems’ throughput capacity for cyclical workloads, for one-time bursts (such as time-sensitive migrations), or to accommodate your workloads’ increasing throughput needs over time.
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP introduces a single Availability Zone deployment option – Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now supports Single Availability Zone (AZ) deployments. Single-AZ file systems are designed for use cases that do not require the data resiliency model of a Multi-AZ file system, such as running development and test workloads, or storing secondary copies of data that is already stored on premises or in other AWS Regions. Single-AZ file systems provide a lower-cost storage option than Multi-AZ file systems for these use cases, while offering all the same data management capabilities and features.
AWS Backup adds Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP to its set of services for centralized data protection – AWS Backup now allows you to protect your Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems, helping you meet your centralized data protection and regulatory compliance needs. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed AWS service that allows you to run NetApp ONTAP file systems in the AWS Cloud. You can now use AWS Backup’s policy-based capabilities to centrally protect Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP along with other AWS services for storage, database, and compute that AWS Backup supports. You can protect your Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems with immutable backups, and generate auditor-ready reports to prove compliance of your data protection policies.
Elastic Block Storage
Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive is now available in additional regions – Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive is now available in Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Canada (Central), and South America (São Paulo) Regions. We launched EBS Snapshots Archive in 17 commercial regions in November, 2021, to help you save up to 75% on storage costs for EBS Snapshots that you intend to retain for more than 90 days and rarely access. EBS Snapshots are incremental in nature, storing only the changes since the last snapshot. This makes them cost-effective for daily and weekly backups that need to be accessed frequently. If you have snapshots that you access every few months or years, and would like to retain them long-term for legal or regulatory reasons, you can use EBS Snapshot Archive to store full, point-in-time snapshots at a lower cost than what you would incur if stored in the standard tier.
Amazon EBS now supports Elastic Volumes and Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) for io2 Block Express – You can now use Elastic Volumes to dynamically increase the capacity and tune the performance of your io2 Block Express volumes with no downtime or performance impact, in the same manner as other EBS volumes. Additionally, you can now create a fully initialized io2 Block Express volume from a Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) enabled snapshot. Volumes that are created from FSR-enabled snapshots instantly deliver their provisioned performance. These features add to the capabilities of the highest-performance EBS volume type – io2 Block Express.
Networking
Amazon VPC now supports multiple IPv6 CIDR blocks – Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces the launch of multiple IPv6 classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) blocks in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), enabling customer to attach up to 5 prefixes to their VPCs. Before today, customers could add up to 5 IPv4 CIDR blocks and 1 IPv6 block. With this new feature, customers can now use multiple blocks to build logical separation within their VPCs with independent CIDR blocks. CIDR blocks can be associated from the Amazon provided pool and/or a pool of bring-your-own IPv6 addresses.
Amazon Route 53 announces IP-Based Routing for DNS Queries – AWS announced the launch of IP-based routing for Amazon Route 53, AWS’s Domain Name System (DNS) cloud service. Route 53 provides customers with multiple routing options, such as geolocation routing, geoproximity routing, latency-based routing, and weighted routing to route their end users to optimal endpoints. With the addition of IP-based routing, customers are now additionally empowered to fine-tune their DNS routing approach based on the Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block that the query-originating IP address belongs to, allowing them to leverage knowledge of their end user base to optimize performance or network transit costs. For instance, you can now route end users within certain Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks to specific endpoints such as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). These ISP-to-CDN mappings might be unique for each customer and based on factors such as business contracts with CDNs or a partner ISP’s network topology. Customers who have developed routing decision maps based on their own analysis and want to holistically apply them to Route 53 are now able to upload IP address prefixes (CIDR blocks) to Route 53, group them into reusable entities called CIDR collections, and associate these collections with one or more Resource Record Sets (RRSets).
Amazon VPC now supports multiple IPv6 CIDR blocks – Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces the launch of multiple IPv6 classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) blocks in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), enabling customer to attach up to 5 prefixes to their VPCs. Before today, customers could add up to 5 IPv4 CIDR blocks and 1 IPv6 block. With this new feature, customers can now use multiple blocks to build logical separation within their VPCs with independent CIDR blocks. CIDR blocks can be associated from the Amazon provided pool and/or a pool of bring-your-own IPv6 addresses.
Console/General
Amazon SES V2 now supports email size of up to 40MB for inbound and outbound emails by default – With V2 of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), you can now send and receive emails of up to 40MB message size (including the email text, images, attachments, and the MIME encoding). With this launch, the default message size limit in Amazon SES V2 increases from 10MB for email sending and 30MB for email receiving, to 40MB for both sending and receiving.
AWS Systems Manager announces support for port forwarding to remote hosts using Session Manager – AWS Systems Manager announces support for port forwarding to remote hosts using Session Manager. AWS Systems Manager is the operations hub for your AWS applications and resources, providing a secure end-to-end management solution for hybrid cloud environments. Session Manager, a capability of Systems Manager, provides secure access to managed instances in your cloud, on-premises, or edge devices, without the need to open inbound ports, manage Secure Shell (SSH) keys, or use bastion hosts. Session Manager port forwarding is used to tunnel communications between a client machine and a Systems Manager managed instance. Starting today, Session Manager supports forwarding connections from a client machine to ports on remote hosts. With remote port forwarding, you can now use a managed instance as a “jump host” to securely connect to an application port on remote servers, such as databases and web servers, without exposing those servers to outside network.
Sustainability Pillar is now available in AWS Well-Architected Tool – AWS introduced the Sustainability Pillar during re:Invent 2021 to help customers minimize the environmental impacts of running cloud workloads. Today, the Sustainability Pillar is available for customers to use during workload reviews in the AWS Well-Architected Tool, a central place for cloud architecture best practices and guidance. The Sustainability Pillar is designed to help CTOs, architects, developers, and operations team members contribute to an increasing number of sustainability targets set by their organizations.
I encourage you to review the entire feed from AWS here.
– Michael Foret: VP Infrastructure/Cloud Services
About Apps Associates
Apps Associates provides services for all things Oracle on AWS. Our team manages the entire AWS environment, enabling significant cost savings, increased agility, and zero business disruption or downtime. Apps’ technical teams provide expert AWS consulting throughout the entire migration and post-migration process. From Dev Ops, to Managed Services we have you covered.
For Dev Ops Services, we provide expertise in CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub, Ansible, Python, Terraform, and AWS Cloud formation. AWS components are built/managed by automation with custom Shell / Python code to automate the deployment. We can customize the deployment process based on the application structure and stack, and we can reuse scripts and codes to ensure effective utilization of resources and time.
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