AWS Outposts 總算要開始出貨了

去年 AWSre:Invent 喊的 AWS Outposts 總算是有東西要出貨了:「AWS Outposts Now Available – Order Yours Today!」。

放在自家實體的機櫃,然後掛到 AWS 上變成一個特殊的 region。目前一個特殊的 region 只能放 16 個機櫃,但預期之後可以更多:

Capacity Expansion – Today, you can group up to 16 racks into a single capacity pool. Over time we expect to allow you to group thousands of racks together in this manner.

不過要注意的是,需要有 AWS Enterprise Support 才能下單,而且看起來硬體的維修也包在內了:

Support – You must subscribe to AWS Enterprise Support in order to purchase an Outpost. We will remotely monitor your Outpost, and keep it happy & healthy over time. We’ll look for failing components and arrange to replace them without disturbing your operations.

看了一下價錢的頁面,如果以北美的 upfront 來算,最便宜的是 OR-L8IF4WFOR-I0OGL02 的 USD$225,504.81,最貴的是 OR-HSZHMMF 的 USD$898,129.52,暫時應該用不到 XDDD

AWS 在 us-west-2 開 Local Zone

AWS 宣佈 us-west-2 (Oregon) 開 Local Zone,這應該是 AWS 第一次在美國開 Local Zone,上次看到好像是 ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo) 的 Osaka 區:「AWS Now Available from a Local Zone in Los Angeles」。

控制都還是在 us-west-2 的範圍控制,但代碼會是 us-west-2-lax-1a (目前只有一區),之後會開 us-west-2-lax-1b (第二區):

In the fullness of time (as Andy Jassy often says), there could very well be more than one Local Zone in any given geographic area. In 2020, we will open a second one in Los Angeles (us-west-2-lax-1b), and are giving consideration to other locations. We would love to get your advice on locations, so feel free to leave me a comment or two!

剛剛登入進去 VPC 的 Subnets 想要增加看看,沒看到 us-west-2-lax-1a 的選項可以選,看起來還是需要另外申請?

另外算了一下 Oregon (用 Portland 算) 到 Los Angels 的直線距離,大約要 1300km 左右 (比台北到香港還遠不少),光速單趟大約要 6.5ms?這樣對一些應用程式應該是會有感覺...

This Local Zone is designed to provide very low latency (single-digit milliseconds) to applications that are accessed from Los Angeles and other locations in Southern California.

看起來主要還是支援異地的需求...

Amazon Elasticsearch Service 可以利用 S3 當作二級儲存空間了

Amazon Elasticsearch Service 的新功能,使用 Amazon S3 當作第二級儲存空間 (UltraWarm):「Announcing UltraWarm (Preview) for Amazon Elasticsearch Service」。

UltraWarm 需要不同的機器 (跑不同版本?),機器的規格 (vCPU 與記憶體的比率) 接近 Memory Optimized 的版本,但是貴了不少,所以需要夠大的資料量才會打平回來...

us-east-1 來看,SSD EBS 的空間成本就是 USD$0.135/GB,而傳統磁性硬碟是 USD$0.067/GB (不知道收不收 I/O 費用?),但 storage 的價錢是 USD$0.024/GB。這邊值得一提的是 Amazon S3 是 USD$0.023/GB,看起來是直接包括了 API 的呼叫費用?

Cassandra 也被 AWS 包成服務了

也是剛剛發表的服務 (所以在 Twitter 上看到),把 Apache Cassandra 包成服務,叫做 Amazon Managed Apache Cassandra Service:「New – Amazon Managed Apache Cassandra Service (MCS)」。

而且是個 serverless 服務,直接用服務,不需要管理機器:

Amazon MCS is serverless, so you pay for only the resources you use and the service automatically scales tables up and down in response to application traffic.

從計費的方式也可以看出來這點,是對 Write request units、Read request units 與 Storage 收費,沒有看到機器的費用。

不過稍微算了一下不算便宜,如果沒有用到 Cassandra 的特性的話,比 DynamoDB 貴一些?

目前是 open preview 狀態,是個可以用但是不掛保證的意思:

Amazon MCS is available today in open preview in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

算是多個選擇可以玩...

Amazon EC2 推出了新一代的 ARM 系統

Amazon EC2 推出了新一代的 ARM 系統:「Coming Soon – Graviton2-Powered General Purpose, Compute-Optimized, & Memory-Optimized EC2 Instances」。

目前的 a1 系列最大到 32GB RAM,這次推出來的算是比較大台的機器,而且與 x86-64 架構相同,分化成 m/c/r 系列了:

  • General Purpose (M6g and M6gd) – 1-64 vCPUs and up to 256 GiB of memory.
  • Compute-Optimized (C6g and C6gd) – 1-64 vCPUs and up to 128 GiB of memory.
  • Memory-Optimized (R6g and R6gd) – 1-64 vCPUs and up to 512 GiB of memory.

預定是 2020 年推出:

I will have more information to share with you in 2020.

不過如果目前想要玩的話,可以找 AWS 申請 m6g 的機器先測試看看:

M6g Preview
We are now running a preview of the M6g instances for testing on non-production workloads; if you are interested, please contact us.

價錢好像也還沒出來,先放著等新消息好了...

AWS 展示了 DeepComposer

今年 AWSre:Invent 又開始了,照慣例有很多東西會在會場上發表 (尤其是現場表演起來會很炫的),其中一個是 AWS DeepComposer:「AWS DeepComposer – Compose Music with Generative Machine Learning Models」。

在現場有人錄影下來放到 Twitter 上可以直接看:

現場展示了輸入一段旋律,而 AWS DeepComposer 可以補上其他樂器的配樂。在 blog 上的介紹文章也可以看到同樣的說明:

  • Log into the DeepComposer console,
  • Record a short musical tune, or use a prerecorded one,
  • Select a generative model for your favorite genre, either pretrained or your own,
  • Use this model to generate a new polyphonic composition,
  • Play the composition in the console,
  • Export the composition or share it on SoundCloud.

就... 很炫 XD

Amazon Aurora 可以直接使用 AWS 的 Machine Learning 服務

AWS 宣佈了 Amazon Aurora 可以直接使用 AWS 自家的 Machine Learning 服務:「New for Amazon Aurora – Use Machine Learning Directly From Your Databases」。

整合了兩個服務,分別是 Amazon SageMaker (各類的模型) 以及 Amazon Comprehend (文字處理相關)。

目前只有 Amazon Aurora MySQL 5.7 的版本有支援,其他的還在做:

The new machine learning integration is available today for Aurora MySQL 5.7, with the SageMaker integration generally available and the Comprehend integration in preview. You can learn more in the documentation. We are working on other engines and versions: Aurora MySQL 5.6 and Aurora PostgreSQL 10 and 11 are coming soon.

這個整合讓程式用起來更方便了...

Amazon Aurora MySQL 5.7 也可以上 Global Database 了

AWSAmazon Aurora MySQL 5.7 版本推出了 Amazon Aurora Global Database:「Aurora Global Database is Now Supported on Amazon Aurora MySQL 5.7」。

看起來 MySQL 系的 Global Database 就是跨區的 master-slave 架構 (所以標榜降低了 read latency,但沒有提到 write latency):

An Amazon Aurora Global Database is a single database that spans multiple AWS regions, enabling low latency global reads and disaster recovery from region-wide outages.

另外可以看到是 1 秒,所以應該是 async replication:

Aurora Global Database replicates writes in the primary region with typical latency of <1 second to secondary regions, for low latency global reads.

然後可以跨區切換:

In disaster recovery situations, you can promote the secondary region to take full read-write responsibilities in under a minute.

看了一下好像不用多付服務費用,就是各區自己的費用,加上傳輸的費用而已,看起來是個還不錯的服務?

AWS Chatbot 支援 Slack

看到「AWS Chatbot now supports running commands from Slack (beta)」以及「Running AWS commands from Slack using AWS Chatbot」這篇文章,裡面提到了 AWS Chatbot 現在支援 Slack,本來是自己找 3rd-party software 接,現在包成服務了:

AWS Chatbot now supports running AWS commands and actions from Slack.

然後因為 AWS Chatbot 可以 invoke lambda,所以很多功能都可以用這個方法接起來:

You can retrieve diagnostic information, invoke Lambda functions and create AWS Support cases right from your Slack channels, so your team can collaborate and respond to events faster.

有些常用功能就直接放進內建功能了,像是讀 CloudWatch Logs:

In addition to running commands, you can also retrieve Amazon CloudWatch logs by simply clicking the “Show logs” button on CloudWatch Alarms notifications in Slack. AWS Chatbot supports actions for displaying logs for AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway.

不過因為權限系統沒有整合的關係,可以看到還是有很多權限的授權得由人工操作,而不是一鍵就全部授權完成...

Amazon Redshift 會自動在背景重新排序資料以增加效能

Amazon Redshift 的新功能,會自動在背景重新排序資料以增加效能:「Amazon Redshift introduces Automatic Table Sort, an automated alternative to Vacuum Sort」。

版本要到更新到 1.0.11118,然後預設就會打開:

This feature is available in Redshift 1.0.11118 and later.

Automatic table sort is now enabled by default on Redshift tables where a sort key is specified.

重新排序的運算會在背景處理,另外帶一些行為學習分析:

Redshift runs the sorting in the background and re-organizes the data in tables to maintain sort order and provide optimal performance. This operation does not interrupt query processing and reduces the compute resources required by operating only on frequently accessed blocks of data. It prioritizes which blocks of table to sort by analyzing query patterns using machine learning.

算是丟著讓他跑就好的東西,升級上去後可以看一下 CloudWatch 的報告,這邊沒有特別講應該是還好... XD