Now SSL connections imposed by Amazon Neptune

Amazon Neptune is a rapid, secure, quite organised graph database service that helps to create and execute applications which operate with highly associated datasets, so further you don’t have to bother about database management activities like hardware provisioning, software patching, setup, configuration, or backups. The basics of Amazon Neptune is a purpose-built, high-performance graph database engine optimised for saving billions of relationships and querying the graph with milliseconds latency. Mostly Amazon Neptune permits only Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections via HTTPS to an instance or cluster endpoint. Now Amazon Neptune imposes SSL connections to your database. You have an alternative to deactivate SSL in regions, like US East (N. Virginia) or Europe (London), where both SSL and non-SSL connections are supported. You can deactivate SSL by altering the database cluster parameter from the AWS Management Console, or through the modify-db-cluster-parameter-group command via the AWS CLI. Amazon Neptune has always supported SSL connections to databases in every region, but did not cover the potential to impose SSL connections. Customers asked us for an easy way to allow only SSL connections to their database. When new cluster is created, the newly created neptune_enforce_ssl parameter is activated. Databases that have this parameter activated will merely undertake SSL connections. To know more about this new feature, visit the Neptune User Guide.

Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) and the Middle East (Bahrain) Region can now access Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

As per Amazon’s latest addition of Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager i.e. Amazon DLM, the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) and the Middle East (Bahrain) regions can now use the Amazon DLM for EBS snapshots. It follows a simple and fully-automated approach for data backup and offers added features that allow users to create and manage their EBS backups without using custom scripts. As we mentioned earlier that it follows a simple approach for data back up, it offers an even simpler way of usage. Users can start creating lifecycle policies using the Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (Amazon DLM) just by tagging their EBS volumes. It facilitates users with policy creation in the AWS Management Console by using either the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or the Data Lifecycle Manager APIs. This expansion of Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager covers 18 AWS regions and has features like automating the creation, retention, and deletion of snapshots. It helps in protecting valuable data as it maintains a regular backup schedule, retaining backups as needed by auditors or internal compliance, and in cutting down storage costs by deleting outdated backups.

Launching AWS Amplify for iOS and Android

AWS Amplify is an easy open-source development platform for creating secure, scalable, cloud-enabled mobile and web applications covering of libraries, UI components, and a CLI toolchain. It makes simple for you to verify users, securely save data and user metadata, approved selective access to data, integrate machine learning, analyse application metrics, and run server-side code. The Amplify libraries and CLI, part of the Amplify Framework, are open source and provide a pluggable interface which allows you to modify and design your personalised plugins. AWS Amplify includes an entire mobile application development workflow from version control, code testing, to production deployment, and it smoothly scales with your business from thousands of users to tens of millions. At AWS re:Invent 2019, AWS launching a preview of Amplify iOS and Amplify Android open source libraries that allow mobile developers to create scalable and secure cloud powered serverless applications. Adding competencies like Analytics, AI/ML, API (GraphQL and REST), DataStore, and Storage to their mobile applications using these Amplify libraries can be seamless for developers. The Amplify iOS and Android libraries are use case-centric, in contrast to the AWS service-centric Mobile SDKs, and offer a declarative interface which allows mobile developers to programmatically implement best practices with concepts occurring in a quick development cycle and shorter lines of codes. Also this release adds assistance for the Predictions category in Amplify iOS which enables developers to simply add and configure AI/ML related use cases in their iOS applications with less lines of code. Developers can fulfil use cases like text translation, speech to text generation, image recognition, text to speech, and insights from text using the Predictions category in the new Amplify iOS library and the Amplify CLI. No machine learning expertise needed. The supported use cases leverage services like Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Translate, Amazon Polly, Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Comprehend, and Amazon Textract. To know more about how to use the Amplify iOS and Amplify Android, read aws blog post.

Now AWS Chatbot helps executing commands from Slack (beta)

AWS Chatbot is an interactive AWS service agent which makes it simple to observe and communicate with your AWS resources in your Slack channels and Amazon Chime chat rooms. You can get alerts and execute commands to return diagnostic data, call AWS Lambda functions, and produce AWS support cases so that your team can cooperate and answer to events immediately using AWS Chatbot. AWS Chatbot handles AWS service notifications from Amazon SNS, and sends them to Amazon Chime and Slack chat rooms so teams can examine and take action on them straight away, no matter of location. Now AWS Chatbot assists executing AWS commands and tasks from Slack. AWS Chatbot guides commands with the help of common AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) syntax that you can use from Slack on desktop or mobile devices. Additionally by executing commands, you can fetch Amazon CloudWatch logs by only selecting the “Show logs” button on CloudWatch Alarms notifications in Slack. AWS Chatbot helps tasks for showing logs for AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway. To begin with commands, configure AWS Chatbot with Slack in the AWS Chatbot console with the predefined IAM policy templates and type “@aws help“ in the Slack channel. If you already utilize AWS Chatbot for sending notifications to Slack, you will require to design a new IAM role or update the current one with more permissions to activate executing commands. You can check blog post that gives you a step-by-step guide to assists you begin with executing commands in AWS Chatbot. To get the further information on AWS Chatbot, refer documentation

Interface VPC endpoint offered by Amazon Athena

Amazon Athena is easy to use interactive query service which is simple to scan data with the help of standard SQL in Amazon S3. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to run, and you charge for the queries that you execute. Amazon Athena lets you to join to Athena through an interface VPC endpoint in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You can submit your queries to Athena certainly excluding the need of Internet Gateway in your VPC using this new feature. You can get started with AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS Management console to create an interface VPC endpoint to join to Amazon Athena. You must join from an instance to utilise Amazon Athena which is inside the VPC or join your private network to your VPC with the help of Amazon VPN (Virtual Private Network) or AWS Direct Connect. To know further about this feature, refer Creating an Interface Endpoint. This feature is accessible in every AWS Regions where Amazon Athena is obtainable excluding EU (Stockholm) and US (GovCloud). There are no extra charges for Amazon Athena to utilize this feature. Interface VPC endpoint charges apply. To read more on this feature, go through the documentation.

Amazon EFS limits can be controlled using AWS Service Quotas

Amazon EFS offers an easy, scalable, and completely organised elastic NFS file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. It is designed to scale on demand to petabytes without interrupting applications, increasing and decreasing automatically as you add and remove files, removing the requirement to deliver and control capacity to adjust expansion. Now Amazon EFS helps you manage limits with the help of AWS Service Quotas. Using AWS Service Quotas, you can check and handle your quotas smoothly and at scale as your AWS workloads expand. Quotas, too mentioned to as limits, are the maximum number of resources that you can create in an AWS account. Now you can check your EFS limits and request growths for your account-level EFS limits with the help of Service Quotas through the AWS Console, AWS APIs and AWS CLI. No extra charges applicable for AWS Service Quotas. AWS Service Quotas is obtainable in each AWS region where Amazon EFS is accessible. To get full list of AWS Region where Amazon EFS is available, refer Region Table. To get further information, read Service Quotas and Service Quotas Blog.

Now Amazon RDS for Oracle offers new instance sizes

Amazon RDS makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale Oracle Database deployments in the cloud. You can deploy several editions of Oracle Database with Amazon RDS within minutes with cost-efficient and re-sizable hardware capacity. Amazon RDS lets you concentrate on application development by handling lengthy database administration activities covering provisioning, backups, software patching, monitoring, and hardware scaling. Now, Amazon RDS for Oracle db.m5 and db.r5 instance classes are accessible in new 8xlarge and 16xlarge sizes. With assistance of these new instance sizes, users who are now working with either m4.10xlarge, m4.16xlarge, r4.8xlarge, or r4.16xlarge now have a better way to the modern generation of instances. M5 instances are the recent generation of normal basic instances and give better performance across latest generation M4 instances. Whereas R5 instances are the current generation of memory optimized instances which give 5% extra memory per vCPU and up to 20% improved CPU performance over R4 instances. You can start using AWS Management Console, AWS RDS CLI, and AWS RDS API. To get information of pricing and regional availability, refer Amazon RDS for Oracle pricing page.

AWS Amplify Console Upgrades Build image with SAM CLI and Custom Container Assistance

The AWS Amplify Console is an endless delivery and hosting service for latest web applications. The AWS Amplify Console clarifies the deployment of your application front end and backend. Join to your code repository and your front end and backend are deployed in workflow, on each code commit. Now, the Amplify Console introduced multiple updates to the build service covering SAM CLI and custom container support. The AWS Amplify Console provides a Git-based workflow for constantly deploying and hosting fullstack serverless web apps. Now the default build image is utilizing Amazon Linux 2 with Node 10 and SAM CLI pre-installed. Custom Build Images can be utilized to offer a customized build environment. Custom containers let developer to exchange the default container with their individual build environment. During build time, Amplify will recover the Docker image from the container registry defined in the project configuration and utilize the environment to compile your source code, execute your tests, and deploy your application. Developers can execute SAM commands as an element of their deployment without installing any other dependencies with the SAM CLI. To read further information on AWS Amplify Console and Custom Builds, refer documentation.

Cluster Deletion Protection Is Offered By Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)

Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is swift, robust, and completely organized database service which helps to manage MongoDB workloads. You can execute the same application code and operate the same drivers and tools which you apply with MongoDB. Now you can allow deletion protection for your Amazon DocumentDB clusters to aid you avert against accidental deletion of a cluster. The cluster cannot be deleted by any user after a cluster is configured with deletion protection. By default this Deletion Protection feature is enabled in Amazon DocumentDB management console. Further, you can enable or disable deletion protection for current cluster with just few clicks in management console or with the help of AWS CLI. This feature is applied by management console, AWS CLI and AWS CloudFormation. To get the complete list of AWS region where this Deletion Protection is available, refer supported regions. To know further on Amazon DocumentDB and deletion protection, refer product page and documentation.

AWS Introduces Tag-Based Access Control for AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation service guides you model and form your Amazon Web Services resources so that you can give low time handling those resources and extra time concentrating on your applications which are executing in AWS. Now you can access to CloudFormation stacks and resources associated to tag values. AWS CloudFormation lets you to model and provision cloud resources as code in a secure, foreseeable, and constant way. AWS CloudFormation stacks are sets of AWS resources. You can consequently state and control access to CloudFormation-managed resources in an easier and more fine-grained manner. For example, you can now reject some users deletion or update privileges to stacks with a "production" tag value, simultaneously permitting modifications to stacks with a "development" tag value. To get started, you can produce or change AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to handle access associated tags. To know further, refer tag-based access control. Further you can add or alter tags on stacks with the help of the console or through the AWS CLI, with help of the CreateStack and UpdateStack Actions.