Aws Podcast

This week Simon takes you into the world of AWS Infrastructure. Regions. Availability Zones, Edge locations and more! Great for a refresher or to pick up new tips! Shownotes: AWS Infrastructure Map: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/ Insight into AWS Datacentres: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-center/data-centers/ Easier way to control access to AWS regions using IAM policies: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/easier-way-to-control-access-to-aws-regions-using-iam-policies/

Simon is joined by Chris Checco (Business Development Manager, AI/ML, AWS) to talk about how customers can best start their AI/ML journey. Including key tips and pitfalls to avoid. Shownotes: Machine Learning on AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/ ML Labs: https://aws.amazon.com/ml-solutions-lab/

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) makes it easy to create and control encryption keys, which could be used to meet encryption and deletion requirements like those associated with GDPR. Cryptographic deletion is the idea is that you can delete a relatively small number of keys to make a large amount of encrypted data irretrievable. Hear from Ken, general manager of AWS KMS, about best practices related to encryption, key management and cryptographic deletion. https://aws.amazon.com/kms/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/

Simon speaks with Ed Lima (AWS Solutions Architect) about AWS AppSync. What you can do with it, how it works and how to get started. Do you write mobile apps? Do you want data syncing? Do you need to integrate with a complex back-end? This is the episode for you! Shownotes: AWS AppSync: https://aws.amazon.com/appsync/ Ed's Blog Post: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mobile/building-a-serverless-real-time-chat-application-with-aws-appsync/ AWS Online Tech Talks: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/events/monthlywebinarseries/ AWS re:Invent 2018: https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

This week Simon takes you though an extensive set of things new and interesting - hopefully something for everyone! Shownotes: Amazon Aurora Backtrack – Turn Back Time - AWS News Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora-backtrack-turn-back-time/ Amazon Aurora Publishes General, Slow Query and Error Logs to Amazon CloudWatch | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/05/amazon-aurora-publishes-general-slow-query-and-error-logs-to-amazon-cloudwatch/ Amazon RDS for Oracle Supports New X1 and X1e Instance Types | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/05/amazon-rds-for-oracle-supports-new-x1-and-x1e-instance-types/ Amazon RDS Supports Outbound Network Access from PostgreSQL Read Replicas for Commercial Regions | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/05/amazon-rds-supports-outbound-network-access-from-postgresql-read-replicas/ Amazon RDS Database Preview Environment is now available | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/05/amazon-rds-database-preview-environ

How do you approach cost optimisation for EC2? Peter Shi and Spencer Marley (Commercial Architects) speak with Simon about some of the most common techniques customers can use. Cost Optimisation: https://aws.amazon.com/pricing/cost-optimization/

Building Your Own Q & A Bot Do your customers have questions they need answered 24/7? Ever wanted to build your own Q & A Bot? John Calhoun, AWS Solutions Architect, joins Simon to show you how! Shownotes: Q & A Bot Building Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/creating-a-question-and-answer-bot-with-amazon-lex-and-amazon-alexa/ Amazon Lex: https://aws.amazon.com/lex/ Amazon Elasticsearch Service: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/

Customers around the world strive to maintain a high security posture. But how is this best achieved? The Australian Signals Directorate recommends the “Essential 8” mitigation strategies that organisations should apply. Simon is joined by John Hildebrandt, AWS Principal Solutions Architect, to discuss his recent blog post that shows you how you can implement these mitigations using AWS in new and efficient ways. Shownotes: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-and-the-australian-signals-directorate-essential-eight https://aws.amazon.com/security/

Did you know there are more than 10 built-in ML algos you can use when doing Machine Learning with Amazon SageMaker? Simon is joined by Julien Simon (Principal AI//ML Evangelist, AWS EMEA) to discuss how to use them best! Shownotes: Amazon SageMaker: https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/ Built-in Algorithms: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/latest/dg/algos.html Amazon SageMaker Examples on GitHub: https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-sagemaker-examples

Another big round up of useful new capabilities for customers! Shownotes: Announcing S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access, a New Amazon S3 Storage Class | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/announcing-s3-one-zone-infrequent-access-a-new-amazon-s3-storage-class/ Amazon S3 Select Is Now Generally Available | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/amazon-s3-select-is-now-generally-available/ Amazon DynamoDB Adds Support for Continuous Backups and Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR) | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/03/amazon-dynamodb-adds-support-for-continuous-backups-and-point-in-time-recovery/ Amazon DynamoDB Encryption at Rest Now Available in Additional Regions | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/amazon-dynamodb-encryption-at-rest-now-available-in-additonal-regions/ Amazon AppStream 2.0 Enables Custom Branding | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/03/appstream2-enables-custom-branding/ AWS Cloud9 Supports Local Debugging of AWS Lambda Functi

Call in the Solutions Builders! In this episode Simon speaks with Garvit Singh and Tom Horton from the AWS Solutions Builder team about the solutions for Centralised Logging and Game Analytics. Centralised Logging Solution: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/logging/centralized-logging/ Gaming Analytics Pipeline: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/big-data/gaming-analytics-pipeline/

How can Government Agencies take advantage of the cloud to deliver better citizen services? Mark Ryland (Director of Solutions Architecture, AWS) chats with Simon about customer experiences in this sector, and what he has seen work. Shownotes Addressing Data Residency with AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/addressing-data-residency-with-aws/ AWS in the Public Sector: https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/ FINRA: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/finra/ DigitalGlobe: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/digitalglobe/

Simon speaks with Adrian Cockcroft (VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy, AWS) about the domain of Chaos Engineering and Architecture. They also discuss AWS activity in the Open Source community. Shownotes: Adrian’s 2017 re:Invent Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLSFGLJ6Byo Drift Into Failure: https://www.amazon.com/Drift-into-Failure-Components-Understanding-ebook/dp/B009KOKXKY Netflix Chaos Engineering: http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/chaos-engineering.csp Open Source at AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/

Technology can enable people with Special Needs to access more services than ever before, and improve their quality of life. In this episode Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly about some of the things people are doing with Amazon Polly to make this possible. https://aws.amazon.com/polly/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/pollexy-building-a-special-needs-voice-assistant-with-amazon-polly-and-raspberry-pi/

It is update time! Simon shares a great selection of new things for customers - what will be your favourite? Shownotes: Amazon Polly Gives WordPress a Voice! - AWS Machine Learning Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/amazon-polly-gives-wordpress-a-voice/ Amazon Polly New Phonation Tag Enables You to Create Softer Speech | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/amazon-polly-new-phonation-tag-enables-you-to-create-softer-speech/ Amazon Connect Adds Speech Synthesis Markup Language Support for Amazon Lex Chatbots | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/amazon-connect-adds-speech-synthesis-markup-language-support-for-amazon-lex-chatbots/ Announcing Responses Capability in Amazon Lex and SSML Support in Text Response | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/announcing-responses-capability-in-amazon-lex-and-ssml-support-in-text-response/ Now Export and Import your Amazon Lex Chatbot Schema | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/now-export-and

Elections and their associated campaigns are important, complex and an great example of a “spikey one shot deal workload”. Simon speaks with Michael Jackson (Strategy Lead, State & Local Government, AWS) and Leo Zhadanovsky (Principal Solutions Architecture, AWS) about how Elections are run on AWS and some great “war stories” from past campaigns. Shownotes: https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/election-as-a-service/elections-management/

Simon is joined by Jeff Barr, Ana Visneski & Daniel Westermann-Clark to discuss why the AWS Blog exists, how it gets produced and a few other interesting things you might want to hear about!! The AWS Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/

Do you have SFTP in your environment? How about need to do a lift-and-shift of a high volume system? Simon speaks with Jeff Thorn, CEO of Thorn Technologies about how they have helped customer overcome these and other challenges using AWS. Shownotes: SFTP gateway: https://www.thorntech.com/products/sftpgateway/ SMS Cloud Migration: https://www.thorntech.com/story/cloud-migration-top-tier-wireless-carrier/ Mobile Banking in AWS: https://www.thorntech.com/story/ongo/

What is a WAF and why would you use it? Simon speaks with Sundar Jayashenkar (Senior Product Manager, AWS) to get into some detail. https://aws.amazon.com/waf/

Simon chats with Sandy Carter (AWS VP of Enterprise Workloads) about her blog post where she discusses her experiences joining Amazon. Blog post: http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/09/01/seven-valuable-lessons-from-a-new-amazonian/