What's New in March 2020

Melbourne AWS User Group

In our first episode we go through an extended version of our usual What's New segment of the podcast. For this, Arjen is joined by Jean-Manuel and Guy. This episode was recorded on the evening of the 27th of March 2020 (Australian time).

COVID-19

• Working From Home? Here’s How AWS Can Help | AWS News Blog
• Remote Work & Learning | Amazon Web Services (see the offers section for the extended free tiers)
• Amazon’s COVID-19 blog: daily updates on how we’re responding to the crisis
• COVID-19 Global Hackathon 1.0: #BuildforCOVID19 Global Online Hackathon - Devpost

Finally in Sydney

• AWS Control Tower now available in Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region
• Amazon Forecast is now available in three new regions - Asia Pacific (Sydney, Mumbai) and Europe (Frankfurt)
• AWS Migration Hub is now available in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region

Serverless

• AWS Lambda@Edge now supports Node 12.x and Python 3.8
• AWS Serverless Application Repository adds support for sharing applications with AWS organizations
• API Gateway offers private integrations with AWS ELB and AWS CloudMap as part of HTTP APIs GA release
• Amplify Console adds command line interface for configuring continuous deployment and hosting

Containers

• Now proactively manage your ECR API use with CloudWatch Metrics and Service Quotas
• Amazon EKS adds envelope encryption for secrets with AWS KMS
• Amazon EKS now supports Kubernetes version 1.15
• Announcing Bottlerocket, a new open source Linux-based operating system purpose-built to run containers
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk Launches Docker on AL2 Platform (Beta)
• AWS App Mesh launches support for end to end encryption
• Amazon ECS supports in Preview updating Placement Strategy and Constraints for existing ECS Services

EC2 & VPC

• Amazon EC2 Hibernation now Lets you Pause and Resume Your Workloads on T2 Instance Types
• Announcing 36% faster EBS-optimized performance on additional AWS Nitro System-based Amazon EC2 instances
• Amazon Lightsail now supports resource monitoring, alarming and notifications
• Use Amazon VPC Endpoint Policies for granular control of Amazon EC2 APIs

Security

• AWS Secrets Manager now supports larger size for secrets and higher request rate for GetSecretValue API
• Introducing AWS Config multi-account, multi-region support for advanced query
• AWS WAF adds Anonymous IP List for AWS Managed Rules
• Amazon GuardDuty Price Reduction
• AWS Site-to-Site VPN now supports certificate authentication for connections to AWS Transit Gateway
• Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) Adds Support For 1 hour Backup Interval

Dev & Ops

• AWS CodeCommit Introduces git-remote-codecommit, a New Git Credential Helper
• Introducing Customizations for AWS Control Tower solution
• Execute Chef recipes on Linux with AWS Systems Manager
• AWS Control Tower now supports single-step account provisioning
• AWS AppConfig announces integration with Amazon S3
• Amazon CloudWatch now allows you to combine multiple alarms

Databases

• NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB is now generally available
• Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility Supports User Authentication with Kerberos and Microsoft Active Directory
• New AWS Certification validates expertise in AWS databases
• Amazon RDS Performance Insights Supports Amazon RDS for MySQL Version 8.0
• Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility supports Amazon Aurora Global Database
• Amazon Redshift launches pause and resume
• Amazon ElastiCache for Redis announces Global Datastore
• Announcing column-level access control for Amazon Redshift

AI / ML

• Amazon Transcribe now supports automatic content redaction
• Announcing Time Expression for Amazon Comprehend Medical
• Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth Now Supports Multi-Label Image and Text Classification and Amazon CloudWatch Events
• Introducing Amazon Personalize Optimizer Using Amazon Pinpoint Events
• AWS RoboMaker simulation now supports GUI streaming for robot and simulation applications

Other cool stuff

• You can now take all AWS Certification exams with online proctoring. See the AWS Certification FAQs
• AWS Cost Explorer now offers Savings Plans Recommendations for Member (Linked) Accounts
• AWS adds the ability for customers to enable AWS Local Zones themselves
• AWS Global Accelerator now supports Bring Your Own IP Addresses and Resource Tagging
• AWS Console Mobile Application Launches a New Android Version
• Amazon Connect announces per-second billing, saving customers up to 5% in telephony costs
• Amazon Connect makes it easier to customize the caller experience by adding attributes to existing contact flow blocks
• Amazon AppStream 2.0 adds support for native application mode on Windows PCs
• Automate index management with Amazon Elasticsearch Service
• Amazon FSx for Lustre CSI Driver Supports New File System Deployment Options
• Amazon Elasticsearch Service announces support for Elasticsearch versions 7.4

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