AWS re:Invent 2022: day one announcements

For the past 2 years, the annual adventure of travelling to Las Vegas for the AWS Conference has not been possible. So, it is extremely fair to say that this year has started with a rush of energy and excitement. The first keynote – Monday Night Live with Peter DeSantis – was a brilliant start to the week.

Peter focused on Utility Services that underpin all of AWS. The team building the infrastructure that runs the world’s largest cloud has succeeded at bringing better performance to multiple AWS core critical systems.

Peter shared multiple features that the Utility Teams are working on, but if you have missed some of the official announcements, here are few core ones:

AWS Control Tower Customisations

Cloud foundations done right is a task that is evolving and getting easier. The objective is to ensure that any AWS Account pre-warming that is required before it is released into service and requires some bootstrapping (be it native AWS or others such as Terraform Cloud or Github Actions), is no longer needed. Control Tower Customisations can be blueprinted as individual modules or components, applied to an account factory process with Control Tower and once the Account is provisioned it is immediately ready for use. This can also be applied to existing accounts for standardisations across a fleet if onboarding is preferred. Improved provisioning performance was the goal, with which there has been a dramatic drop from 10-30 minutes of account creation to single minutes.

AWS Lambda SnapStart

AWS have devised a new feature called SnapStart to completely eradicate cold-starts which is a lag period whilst a lambda waits for a resource to boot up before it can run. This process ensures that the MicroVM is fully initialised to the point just before the code execution is ready and then a customised snapshot is taken with UUID strings being specified to avoid process duplication and ultimately violation and error. The use of MicroVMs and a SnapStart image will boot in micro-seconds before executing the code asset. The performance is as close to identical to a standard Lambda function in a warm cached environment. This will especially assist customers who are running Java code within Lambda functions.

A few of the other announcements included

• AWS Cloudtrail Lake Supports Configuration Items for AWS Config –
• AWS EFS improves for low latency data reads and writes –
• New EC2 Instances (EC2 R7iz , EC2 C7gn , EC2 C6in)
• AWS EC2 AMI’s can now include Microsoft Licensing for Office Applications
• AWS Control Tower Comprehensive Controls (Preview)

Across the rooms at re:Invent, there are strong themes on building, securing and evolving platforms in a more dynamic and consistent way with performance unmatched than before. Here at Versent, we always look to AWS for more elegant ways to invoke tasks or functions that support and enhance our customers services operating on AWS.

Want to discover how these AWS innovations could help transform your business?   Get in touch with a Versent advisor, and we’ll be happy to answer all your questions