AWS re:Invent 2017 is one of the most anticipated conferences of the year, since it usually falls towards the end of November. One thing that we all can count on is a slew of announcements during re:Invent 2017. Luckily for us, AWS makes it easy to keep track of these re:Invent announcements. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights as well as where you can find all of the announcements.
AWS Compute Announcements
Of course, compute is one of the most rapidly developing areas of AWS. Specifically, several new instance types were announced. First we have EC2 M5 instances, which are the next generation of compute instances running on Intel Skylake processor based hardware. These new instances will come in 2, 4, 8, 16, 48, and 96 vCPU sizes.
Another new instance type is the H1 instance, which is the newest generation of storage optimized instances for high performance based on Intel Broadwell processors. To give you an idea of their power, the “smallest” h1 instance boasts 8 vCPUs, 32 GiB of RAM, and 2TB of storage while the largest provides 64 vCPU, 265 GiB of RAM, and 16 TB.
Finally, many are excited to see the introduction of EC2 Bare Metal instances. A public preview of the i3.metal instance is now available, which is the first of many to follow. This bare metal instance is powered by 2 Xeon processors at 2.3 GHz with 36 cores, 512 GiB of memory, 15.2 TB of local NVMe storage, and 25 Gbps of enhanced networking. These instances can take advantage of many of the features AWS customers are fond of such as Elastic Load Balancing and Scaling. Wondering how this came about? We can start by thanking VMware.
These weren’t the only compute announcements. AWS also introduced both hibernation and a new spot pricing model for Spot Instances. Be sure to take a look at the rest of the compute announcements here.
Enhancements to VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is an example of a HUGE customer who needed to take advantage of AWS’ hardware and features from a bare metal perspective. At VMworld 2017, the availability of the bare mental VMware solution hosted in AWS was announced. New to VMware Cloud on AWS is an additional supported region, as well as the introduction of Add-on features. The first add-on available is Site Recovery Manger for VMware Cloud on AWS which presents number of possibilities for protecting virtual machines.
AWS Security Announcements
Security continues to be one of the hottest topics in the industry, whether your infrastructure is on premises or in the cloud. Amazon GuardDuty seeks to continuously protect your AWS environment, and everything running within it. GuardDuty will also work across multiple AWS accounts. In addition, GuardDuty features a powerful automation engine which makes responding to threats quicker, easier, and more consistent than ever.
Where to Find re:Invent Announcements
We have only scratched the service of the re:Invent announcements this year. Luckily, AWS makes it easy to keep up with them by simply visiting aws.amazon.com/new/reinvent. Once you visit that site, you will see the AWS organizes things by categories. Simply scroll down the list and click Go to visit your category of choice, or take your time perusing the whole list.
Since AWS re:Invent is sold out, it is important to know some of the best resources for re:Invent announcements right on the AWS site as we detailed above. re:Invent also features live streams, breakout sessions, certifications and more. Last year, re:Invent had over 30,000 attendees and took over multiple resorts on the Las Vegas trip. If you are like me and prefer to beat the crowds, luckily the AWS websites have all the information you are looking to learn from the conference.