AWS CodeDeploy Enhanced Capabilities now Supports Multiple Load Balancers for Amazon EC2 Applications

AWS CodeDeploy has enhanced its capabilities by enabling deployments for applications that utilize multiple AWS Elastic Load Balancers (ELB). In the past, CodeDeploy could only facilitate a single application with Classic Load Balancers (CLB), Application Load Balancers (ALB), or Network Load Balancers (NLB). However, CodeDeploy now permits up to 10 load balancer target groups for each application on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). 

Now, you can perform both in-place and blue/green deployments of EC2 applications, utilizing as many as 10 ALBs, NLBs, or CLBs, depending on your ELB target groups. Leveraging multiple load balancer target groups offers the advantage of streamlining infrastructure code, cutting costs, enhancing testing processes, and facilitating smooth migrations between different ELB types.

View documentation to gain meaningful insights.

Introducing  Seventh Generation Memory-Optimized Amazon EC2 Instances - R7i

AWS has announced the seventh-generation x86-based offerings of memory-optimized Amazon EC2 R7i instances. These features are powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, offering top-tier compute performance.

Available in eleven sizes, they deliver a 15 percent price-performance boost compared to Amazon EC2 R6i instances. These instances are SAP Certified and ideal for memory-intensive workloads like high-performance databases, in-memory caches, and big data analytics. The larger 48xlarge variant provides up to 192 vCPUs and 1,536 GiB of memory for workload consolidation and application scaling. 

To learn more, visit R7i instances.

Introducing compute-optimized Amazon EC2 C7a instances

AWS has released the compute-optimized Amazon EC2 C7a instances. These instances are powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors (code-named Genoa) and offer a significant performance boost, up to 50% more than C6a instances.

They come with advanced processor features, DDR5 memory, and enhanced memory bandwidth, making them perfect for latency-sensitive workloads. The C7a instances are available in 12 sizes and allow up to 128 EBS volumes to be attached, making them suitable for demanding tasks like batch processing, distributed analytics, HPC, ad serving, multiplayer gaming, and video encoding. 

To learn more, see  C7a instances.

New  Features in Amazon CodeWhisperer Deliver Improved Recommendations

Amazon CodeWhisperer, enhances developers efficiency by providing fast and secure code-writing support. It excels in offering tailored code suggestions that align with the libraries and APIs they use regularly.

AWS introduced a new Amazon CodeWhisperer feature that empowers organizations to tailor CodeWhisperer to produce precise code suggestions drawn from private code repositories. This enhancement allows developers on the Amazon CodeWhisperer Professional tier to access real-time code recommendations encompassing their internal libraries, APIs, packages, classes, and methods.

Amazon CodeWhisperer can be customized and works with various tools like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ JetBrains. It also works with programming languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and C#.

Read more for more information.

AWS Well-Architected Framework Introduces New Updates

AWS is making the Well-Architected Framework even better. It will provide customers and partners with clearer instructions on how to operate in the cloud and keep them informed about the latest best practices.

This update has more detailed advice and steps for using common architecture patterns to achieve specific business goals in the AWS Cloud.

To learn more, visit the AWS Well-Architected documentation.

Announcing Amazon MSK Replicator: Fully Managed Replication for MSK Clusters in AWS Regions

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a service that makes it easy to use Apache Kafka for handling streaming data. One common way to use Apache Kafka is to copy data from one cluster to another.

AWS is introducing a new feature called MSK Replicator for Amazon MSK. It makes it simpler to set up data replication between MSK clusters, whether they're in different regions or the same one. MSK Replicator adjusts itself to manage your work effectively. You can use it with different types of MSK clusters, including the ones with tiered storage.

Using MSK Replicator, you can create both active-passive and active-active cluster topologies cluster setups to make your Kafka application more robust and reliable.

For more information, refer to Amazon MSK Replicator.

Amazon Linux Now Works with Ansible and Corretto 21 in Version AL2023.2

AWS announced the availability of Ansible and Corretto 21 on Amazon Linux 2023 in the latest update, called AL2023.2.

With Ansible, you can easily manage configurations and deploy tasks on multiple devices. It's a popular model-driven tool for making these tasks simpler. If you're using Amazon Linux, you can use Ansible through SSH without needing extra software.

Corretto, on the other hand, lets you build and run Java applications on various operating systems like Linux, Windows, and macOS. It's a reliable choice for Java development and comes with long-term support for improved performance and security. Also, it's compatible with the Java SE standard. In AL2023.2, you can install Amazon Corretto 21.

Read more for details.

Upgrade Your SSL/TLS Certificates Today for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora's 2024 Expiry

If you're using SSL or TLS with certificate verification to connect to Amazon RDS databases like MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Amazon Aurora, you should replace your certificate authority (CA) certificates in both your database and application before the current ones expire. 

Most of these certificates will expire in 2024. However, new CA certificates have been released in December 2022, which are valid for much longer, up to 100 years. So, if you update your CA certificates now, you won't have to worry about it for a very long time.

To update your certificate you need to identify your impacted Amazon RDS resources. You need to click on the certificate update tab in the console. Then you need to choose a database for updating CAs and click on apply now. After that, you need to click on the Confirm button. You can view the details about the CA for a DB instance by viewing the Connectivity & security tab in the console.

To learn more about Upgrading SSL/TLS Certificates click on the link.

Preview of Extended Support for Amazon EKS Kubernetes Versions

Amazon EKS has introduced an extended support option for Kubernetes versions, which is currently in preview. This means that starting from Kubernetes version 1.23, you can use a specific Kubernetes version for up to 26 months from when it becomes generally available in Amazon EKS.

For the first 14 months after a new Kubernetes version is made generally available, it's covered under standard support. Now, with Amazon EKS Extended Support, you get an additional 12 months of support for each Kubernetes minor version, making it a total of 26 months of support. During this extended support period, Amazon EKS will provide security patches for the Kubernetes control plane and critical patches for various components like Amazon VPC CNI, kube-proxy, CoreDNS, AWS-published EKS Optimized AMIs, and EKS Fargate nodes.

This extended support is available in the preview starting with Kubernetes version 1.23 across all AWS commercial regions. The best part is that your EKS clusters running version 1.23 or higher will automatically enter extended support, and there's no extra cost during the preview. You'll continue to pay the standard $0.10 per hour for each Amazon EKS cluster.

Learn more about Amazon EKS Extended Support.

Introducing pgactive: PostgreSQL Active-Active Replication Extension for PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS

AWS has introduced pgactive, an active-active replication extension for PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS. This tool allows you to replicate data between database instances asynchronously, increasing resilience and flexibility. It's suitable for scenarios like switching write operations to a different instance in different AWS Regions, ensuring availability.

With asynchronous active-active replication, you can have applications write to multiple database instances, enhancing availability and reducing write latency. pgactive comes with features like node synchronization, conflict resolution, and replication lag monitoring, and can replicate data across up to 16 writer instances. It also offers automatic conflict resolution strategies, including last-update wins, first-update wins, and customizable rules.

pgactive is compatible with PostgreSQL 15.4-R2 and higher in various AWS Regions, including AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

Visit the link to learn more about pgactive.