Medium blog on AWS performance

 Ref: https://medium.com/@ganesan_senthilvel/vector-performance-5be95097ade2 

Private5G

 Last week, AWS announced the general availability of Private 5G.  It is a managed service to help enterprises set up and scale private mobile networks in their facilities in days instead of months.

With only a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, the user is able to build a mobile network and the number of devices you want to connect. AWS then delivers and maintains the small cell radio unit, the mobile network core and radio access network (RAN) software, and subscriber identity modules (SIM cards) required to set up a private mobile network and connect devices. AWS Private 5G automates the setup and deployment of the network.

No upfront fees or per-device costs are incurred with AWS Private 5G, and you pay only for the network capacity that you request.

AWS re:Post

 AWS re:Post has launched a new functionality for community members to add a profile picture or avatar to their account. re:Post members will now be able to better personalize their accounts by uploading a photo or image of their choice. 

It has the ability to add a profile image creates a visual identifier for the account and helps members form connections, build relationships, and foster learning in the community.

re:Post also introduces a functionality for community members to add inline images within questions and answers. Using this feature, members can now enhance the content they post with architectural diagrams and screenshots.

To start uploading your profile picture or adding supporting images to your content, visit re:Post.

Ph D-Day

 

Today is D-Day (PhD viva defense [D] day); post effect of 7.5 years

My journey through PhD life was similar to others - a roller coaster (or Sin wave) of highs and lows. In this journey, had a difficult time refining my research work, keeping motivation, work research balance, health struggles and then a pandemic spelling.

After these challenges, still felt that everything was hanging on the dreaded viva. Day came finally!

Honestly, everything in those three hours is a bit of a blur with my brain fogged over. Still, it's a life time opportunity!

As the hard core results of consistency, commitment and courage, God blessed me to prefix as Dr. officially. 

Thanks every well wisher to make this D-Day!

Internet Explorer Retirement

After 25+ years of helping people use and experience the web, Internet Explorer (IE) is officially retired and out of support as of yesterday, June 15, 2022. To many millions of you, Microsoft is appreciative for using Internet Explorer as the gateway to the internet world.

Ref: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/06/15/internet-explorer-11-has-retired-and-is-officially-out-of-support-what-you-need-to-know/

AWS Mainframe Modernization

 Today, I read an interesting article to modernize your mainframe applications and deploy them to AWS fully-managed runtime environments

Please go through at https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/modernize-your-mainframe-applications-deploy-them-in-the-cloud/

Well deserved transformation in the current IT industry. Kudos to AWS !

FSx Lustre Root Squash

 Amazon FSx for Lustre is a service to provide the cost-effective, high-performance, and scalable file storage for compute workloads. 

Recently, AWS started supportingroot squash, which is an administrative feature adds an additional layer of file access control on top of the current network-based access control and POSIX file permissions that FSx for Lustre provides. 

Using the root squash feature, the user can restrict root level file system access from clients that access an FSx for Lustre file system as root.

As an IT administrator, it provides the users root access on their compute instances to perform privileged operations such as changing system configurations or installing and removing software. 

Root squash feature is available at no additional cost on all Amazon FSx for Lustre file systems in all AWS Regions where FSx for Lustre is available. 

Amazon FSx for Lustre documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/fsx/latest/LustreGuide/what-is.html.

Google Maps - Immersive View

Sundar Pichai unveils the next generation of Google maps. Immersive View is coming to Google Maps - awesome innovation, viewing would become a totally new and interactive experience hereafter!

The new Immersive View is sort of a Street View in the sky: you can look over a location from above to get a sense of the neighborhood and then drop to street level to see the specific spots you might want to hit up. Maps overlays its live busyness and traffic info, so you get a quasi-augmented reality look at whatever park or street corner or beach spot you’re looking at.

Developers are already using the API to make apps that are even more useful and provide an easy way to interact with both the digital and physical worlds at once. Shared electric vehicle company 

Lime is piloting the API in London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Madrid, San Diego, and Bordeaux to help riders park their e-bikes and e-scooters responsibly and out of pedestrians’ right of way. Telstra and Accenture are using it to help sports fans and concertgoers find their seats, concession stands and restrooms at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne

Artificial Intelligence will continue to play a critical role in making Google Maps the most comprehensive and helpful map possible for people everywhere.

ElatiCache dashboard

 

Last week, AWS announced new Amazon ElastiCache console to provide an intuitive way, which manages ElastiCache resources with simpler navigation and richer contextual information. The new console provides a more consistent look and feel with other AWS service consoles.

The new ElastiCache dashboard provides an overview of most important actions, resources and information. It is restructured and simplified the cluster creation experience for ElastiCache for Redis and ElastiCache for Memcached.

It also helps you perform tasks faster by providing you with contextual information and help panels. It is redesigned in the user and user group management pages with new controls, making interaction much more intuitive.

The new ElastiCache console is now available in all AWS Regions.

MSK Serverless

 

Amazon MSK Serverless is a cluster type for Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK). Last week, AWS announced the general availability of Amazon MSK Serverless

It makes easy for the users to run Apache Kafka without having to manage and scale cluster capacity.

MSK Serverless automatically provisions and scales compute and storage resources, so the user can use Apache Kafka on demand and pay for the stream/retain data.

It is fully compatible with Apache Kafka to run the existing applications without any code changes or create new applications using familiar tools and APIs.  With pay-as-you-go pricing, there are no upfront commitments or minimum fees. The user pay an hourly rate per cluster and an hourly rate for each partition.

MSK Serverless also provides private connectivity via AWS PrivateLink, secure client access via AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), serverless stream processing and analytics via Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics and AWS Lambda, and schema evolution control via AWS Glue Schema Registry. In addition to these features, MSK Serverless is compliant with GDPR and provides a 99.9% availability SLA.

AWS CF Ready

 

Amazon CloudFront (CF) Ready partners provide solutions-focused offerings to AWS customers in the end-to-end media management, security, monitoring and analytics, and content acceleration space.

These solutions help complement and augment existing AWS services to help customers optimize their use of Amazon CloudFront. Amazon CloudFront Ready software products are vetted by AWS Partner Solutions Architects for their sound architecture, adherence to AWS best practices, and demonstrated customer success.

With the new Amazon CloudFront Ready designation, customers can quickly and confidently identify validated AWS Partner software products that support Amazon CloudFront.

Ref: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/partners/?partner-solutions-cards.sort-by=item.additionalFields.partnerNameLower&partner-solutions-cards.sort-order=asc&awsf.partner-solutions-filter-partner-type=partner-type%23technology

CloudWatch Metrics Insight

 

Metrics Insights is a new feature from Amazon CloudWatch that is now generally available. 

As a fast, flexible, SQL based query engine, Metrics Insights enables developers, operators, systems engineers, and cloud solutions architects to identify trends and patterns across millions of operational metrics in real time and helps you use these insights to reduce time to resolution. 

With Metrics Insights, you can gain better visibility on your infrastructure and large scale application performance with flexible querying and on-the-fly metric aggregations. Use Metrics Insights and other CloudWatch features to monitor your AWS and hybrid environments, and to respond to operational problems promptly.

While Metrics Insights comes with standard SQL language, you can also get started with Metrics Insights by using the visual query builder. To use the query builder, first, you select your metrics of interest, namespaces and dimensions visually, and the console automatically constructs your SQL queries for you, based on your selections. Metrics Insights is now available in all commercial AWS Regions and you can start using it immediately. 

It is easy to get started with Metrics Insights.  To learn more about Metrics Insights please refer to AWS documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/query_with_cloudwatch-metrics-insights.html

Amazon GameSparks

Amazon GameSparks is a managed AWS service to provide game developers with features for building, running, and scaling the backend for their games without having to manage servers or low-level cloud primitives.

It comes with out-of-the-box backend features that require minimal setup and is pre-integrated with the Unity game engine.

Amazon GameSparks manages the backend services, infrastructure scaling, and on-going game maintenance for customers, thereby reducing their cost and time to launch a game. This allows developers to focus on creating the best gaming experience, not spending unnecessary time on the backend.

AWS will not charge for the use of Amazon GameSparks during the preview period. Amazon GameSparks is available in the US East (N. Virginia) Region and is pre-integrated with the Unity game engine. 

Amazon GameSparks provides a downloadable AWS Mobile SDK for Unity and other resources that includes a sample game, Cloud Code API Reference material, and a developer guide. Ref: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamesparks/

AWS CF compression

 

AWS CloudFront (CF) automatically compresses certain types of objects (files) and serve the compressed objects when viewers (web browsers or other clients) support them. Viewers indicate their support for compressed objects with the Accept-Encoding HTTP header. CloudFront can compress objects using the Gzip and Brotli compression formats. When the viewer supports both formats, CloudFront prefers Brotli.

Chrome and Firefox web browsers support Brotli compression only when the request is sent using HTTPS. These browsers do not support Brotli with HTTP requests.

When requested objects are compressed, downloads can be faster because the objects are smaller—in some cases, less than a quarter the size of the original. Especially for JavaScript and CSS files, faster downloads can result in faster rendering of webpages for your users. In addition, because the cost of CloudFront data transfer is based on the total amount of data served, serving compressed objects can be less expensive than serving them uncompressed.

CloudFront only compresses objects that have one of the following values in the Content-Type response header:

1. application/dash+xml
2. application/eot
3. application/font
4. application/font-sfnt
5. application/javascript
6. application/json
7. application/opentype
8. application/otf
9. application/pkcs7-mime
10. application/protobuf
11. application/rss+xml
12. application/truetype
13. application/ttf
14. application/vnd.apple.mpegurl
15. application/vnd.mapbox-vector-tile
16. application/vnd.ms-fontobject
17. application/xhtml+xml
18. application/xml
19. application/x-font-opentype
20. application/x-font-truetype
21. application/x-font-ttf
22. application/x-httpd-cgi
23. application/x-javascript
24. application/x-mpegurl
25. application/x-opentype
26. application/x-otf
27. application/x-perl
28. application/x-ttf
29. font/eot
30. font/opentype
31. font/otf
32. font/ttf
33. image/svg+xml
34. text/css
35. text/csv
36. text/html
37. text/javascript
38. text/js
39. text/plain
40. text/richtext
41. text/tab-separated-values
42. text/xml
43. text/x-component
44. text/x-java-source
45. text/x-script
46. vnd.apple.mpegurl

Ultimately, I realize a significant performance improvement on leveraging AWS CF compression.

AWS CF vs TF

 

AWS CloudFormation (CF) is an infrastructure templating, or infrastructure as code (IaC) service provided free of charge by AWS. HashiCorp Terraform addresses similar needs, including an IaC declarative approach, but in a cloud agnostic way.

Terraform (TF) is an open source product first released by HashiCorp in 2014. Like all open source, this means limitations are out in the open (security or otherwise), and high priority changes/fixes can be made by the public if needed.

CloudFormation is a free but proprietary SaaS offering.  The implementation is not available for examination or modification except by Amazon staff.  Like all traditional software products, this means that the quality of the underlying implementation is a trade secret of AWS, and change prioritization is set by AWS.

Comparison chart is attached in the blog title image.  It's up to you and your business to choose the appropriate cloud automation framework based on your enterprise needs.

AWS .NET 6

Start of 2022, Microsoft announced .NET 6, which has the advantages of new .NET language features and performance optimizations. Ref: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet-6

Last week, AWS Lambda started to support .NET 6 as both a managed runtime and a container base image. Developers creating serverless applications in Lambda with .NET 6 can take advantage of new features such as improved logging, simplified function definitions using top-level statements, and improved performance using source generators.

To build and deploy Lambda functions using .NET 6, use the .NET Core CLI, AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio, or AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM). Additionally, you can also use the AWS-provided .NET 6 base image to build and deploy .NET 6 functions using a container image. To migrate existing Lambda functions running earlier .NET versions, see the blog post linked above.

.NET 6 is the latest long-term support (LTS) release of .NET and will be supported for security and bug fixes until November 2024. AWS will automatically apply updates to the .NET 6 managed runtime and to the AWS-provided .NET 6 base image, as they become available.

AWS Budgets

 

This week, AWS Budgets has the ability to create auto-adjusting budgets. An auto-adjusting budget dynamically sets your budget amount based on historical cost or usage over a time range that you specify.

This reduces the guesswork in setting a budget limit and keeps you updated as your spend patterns change. Auto-adjusting budgets are generally available in all public AWS Regions.

On catching the spikes in cloud spend, auto-adjusting budgets can be used to receive alerts when your cost or usage patterns change as a complement to your existing budgets.
At the beginning of each new period, AWS Budgets calculates your auto-adjusted budget amount using historical billing data within the specified time range.
For example, you can create an auto-adjusting cost budget with a baseline time range of the last six months.

In this scenario, whilst spending each budget period in the last six months was $100, auto-adjusted budget amount will be $100.

Certified Azure Engineer

As committed in Multi Cloud blog, now I'm Microsoft Certified Azure engineer.

This exam is an opportunity to prove knowledge of cloud concepts, Azure services, Azure workloads, security and privacy in Azure, as well as Azure pricing and support. It makes to be familiar with the general technology concepts, including concepts of networking, storage, compute, application support, and application development.

With the earlier couple of AWS certifications & work experiences, it is making a clear road map to contribute in my home ground Microsoft technology.

Side note: 2022 industry certification goal is fulfilled earlier, with consistent 15 years mark since 2008. 

Stay tuned for continuous learning & sharing !

AWS Private 5G

 

AWS Private 5G is a managed service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale your own private cellular network, with all required hardware and software provided by AWS.

With AWS Private 5G, you can build private cellular networks to take advantage of the technological benefits of 5G while maintaining the security and granular application and device controls of a private network.

Top-3 Use Cases are

1. Run a smart manufacturing facility
2. Enable business-critical applications
3. Deliver reliable campus connectivity

Preview is available at https://pages.awscloud.com/Private5GPreview.html

UPnP

 Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) service becomes dangerous if it establishes connections with devices that are infected with malware. Such connections make DDoS attacks possible. UPnP exploitation can result in more than just the connection of an infected device

A malicious campaign known as 'Eternal Silence' is abusing UPnP turns your router into a proxy server used to launch malicious attacks while hiding the location of the threat actors.

The new rulesets defined by the hackers contain the phrase 'galleta silenciosa', which is Spanish for 'silent cookie'.

{"NewProtocol": "TCP", "NewInternalPort": "445", "NewInternalClient": "192.168.10.212",
"NewPortMappingDescription": "galleta silenciosa", "NewExternalPort": "47669"}

The injections attempt to expose TCP ports 139 and 445 on devices connected to the targeted router, roughly 1,700,000 machines running SMB services.

As the best practice, the latest firmware update should be a priority as the device vendor may have addressed any UPnP implementation flaws via a security update.

Multi Cloud

 

Covid is impacting the entire world for last 2+ years.  I'm not escaped in this list. Yes, me & my family got affected during the initial weeks of 2022. By God's grace, we recovered well now.

During the isolation days, few books inspired towards "Multi Cloud Strategy"

In fact, many successful enterprises are moving from single cloud provider to multi cloud partners.  It improves the availability and reliability of the underlying business products with load balancing across multi cloud.

In a multi-cloud environment, an enterprise utilizes multiple public cloud services, most often from different cloud providers. Hybrid cloud includes a private cloud and are typically managed as one entity. Multi-clouds involve more than one public cloud service, which often perform different functions.

To make it in action, I'm getting ready with Microsoft Azure cloud platform after the last years' Amazon AWS cloud architect certifications. My organization goal is also towards this strategy.