Last Month at AWS: August Edition

The events of last year might not have been fully replicated in 2021, but there is little doubt that the last eight months has still managed to provide companies with plenty of challenges to think about. And while decision makers may already be planning for the next fiscal year, AWS continues to release effective enhancements and additions to its suite of innovative cloud offerings.

It is often hard to imagine a world without AWS, but the global leader in cloud computing has never been one to sit back and relax. Anyone who has caught the promotional campaign that the company is currently running on TV will know that the goal of redefining how companies do business remains as relevant today as it was 15 years ago, an optimization strategy that Apexon is more than happy to be a part of.

Taking that into account, the AWS Partner Team has (once again) sifted through the numerous announcements from August, highlighting the ones that we believe will not only have an impact on the way you engage with cloud but also ensure that cloud is done right, first time and every time.

Announcing Custom Widgets for CloudWatch Dashboards

Posted On: Aug 27, 2021

Amazon CloudWatch announces the immediate availability of custom widgets, a new feature that enables you to gain operational visibility and agility by customizing the content of your CloudWatch dashboard such as adding visualizations, displaying information from multiple data sources or adding controls like buttons to take remediation actions. A set of templates and a sample library is provided to help you get started.

You can read the full announcement here.

Why It Matters 

As we are all aware, the digital world is built on a plethora of web applications and mobile apps. For that reason alone, the monitoring of these virtual portals becomes even more important when we want to not only achieve zero or minimal downtime but also give a good customer experience.

AWS now offers CloudWatch services with custom widgets, with the stated aim of providing operational visibility and agility. This means that we can customize the content of the CloudWatch dashboard by adding visualizations, displaying information from different data sources, or adding customization controls like buttons to take remediate actions.

Apexon makes sure that customers have ample flexibility for visualizing their data. This approach helps customers to integrate numerous customizations that dovetail with their requirements, including but not limited to the visualization of data and the ability to draw conclusion from said insights.

AWS DataSync Enhances Task Filtering and Queuing

Posted On: Aug 25, 2021

When you create an AWS DataSync task to transfer your data to and from AWS Storage, you can now specify include filters as well as exclude filters, providing you with even greater control over how your data is transferred.

With this enhancement, you can now schedule tasks that utilize both exclude and include filters to transfer only a subset of files in your source location. Additionally, you can now queue multiple executions of a task when the filter settings differ between executions.

You can read the full announcement here.

Why It Matters

As digital first becomes digital only, we are often conscious that storage is filled up with unnecessary files and directories. When you apply this knowledge to a hybrid cloud setup, it becomes more difficult to troubleshoot issues related to storage.

AWS’ upgrade now provides customers with filters and queues, which allows for a flexible approach to storage and ensures that the customer decides what files, folders or objects are transferred each time a task runs.

Using these enhanced filtering and queuing capabilities, Apexon can help customers to both reduce the duration of their data transfer tasks and avoid scanning and transferring files and folders unnecessarily. By integrating this option into the workflow, customers can save time and money.

Announcing Amazon MemoryDB for Redis

Posted On: Aug 19, 2021

Amazon MemoryDB for Redis is a new Redis-compatible, durable, in-memory database service that delivers ultra-fast performance. It is purpose-built for modern applications with microservices architectures. Amazon MemoryDB is compatible with Redis. With Amazon MemoryDB, all your data is stored in memory, which enables you to achieve microsecond read and single-digit millisecond write latency and high throughput.

To learn more, check out the link here.

Why It Matters

As businesses become more dependent on microservices, there is a defined need for, services to interact with each other as part of a requirement of storing data in-memory.

However, to seamlessly set up, run, and scale popular open-source compatible in-memory data stores in the cloud we would need a solution that can boost the performance of the databases. Amazon MemoryDB for Redis is that solution.

For example, data-intensive apps require significant caching and storing of session data. Both capabilities are important, but the same can be said of any performance-oriented application. It is for those reasons that we always recommend that customers use heavy caching solutions to improve the databases.

Amazon EMR now Supports Amazon S3 Access Points to Simplify Access Control

Posted On: Aug 11, 2021

Amazon EMR now supports Amazon S3 Access Points, a feature of Amazon S3 that allows you to easily manage access for shared data lakes. Using your S3 Access Point alias, you can simplify your data access at scale on Amazon EMR.

You can read the full announcement here.

Why It Matters

Any organization that works with big data is familiar with Amazon EMR, a service that provides leading tools such as Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Apache HBase, Apache Flink, Apache Hudi, and Presto. This latest upgrade by AWS offers new functionality to reduce the overhead of data management access via Amazon S3.

At no additional cost, the customer can create a single shared data lake for the organization on S3 with multiple access points. This function includes specific access permissions and the use of corresponding S3 Access Points through your Amazon EMR application. This ensures that the customer provides access only to the specific data needed at that time.

Apexon seeks to prioritize cost optimization for our customers by highlighting various cloud best practices and solutions. The integration of S3 Access Points for EMR applications would certainly tick that box.

IAM Access Analyzer (Enhancement)

Posted On: Aug 20, 2021

In April 2021, IAM Access Analyzer added policy generation to help you create fine-grained policies based on AWS CloudTrail activity stored within your account. Now, we are extending policy generation to enable you to generate policies based on access activity stored in a designated account.

You can read the full announcement here.

Why It Matters

Security has and always will be a top priority for any organization. To put it more simply, companies and decision makers want to be 100% certain that data assets are stored safely and not shared with any unintentional users.

AWS IAM Access Analyzer features helps customers identify all the resources in an organization and its accounts (, such as Amazon S3 buckets or IAM roles) that are shared with an external entity. This tool lets them identify unintended access to their resources and data, alleviating the chances of an unintended security risk or potential breach.

Apexon’s insistence that customers use IAM Access Analyzer to secure their shared resources not only gives a real-time view of which entities have access but only also flags up any potential pain points.

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis now Supports Auto Scaling

Posted On: Aug 20, 2021

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis now supports auto scaling to automatically adjust capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. You can automatically scale your cluster horizontally by adding or removing shards or replica nodes. ElastiCache for Redis uses AWS Application Auto Scaling to manage scaling and Amazon CloudWatch metrics to determine when it is time to scale up or down.

You can read the full announcement here.

Why It Matters

Automatically scaling, monitoring applications and automatically adjusting the capacity to maintain a steady and predictable performance at a low price to the customer is part of AWS’s appeal.

As we noted above, caching plays a key role for data-intensive apps. A heavy flow of incoming traffic can have an impact on that app’s performance, so the ability to keep the caching server available is a bonus. In addition, by leveraging the CloudWatch alarm function and the Elasticache autoscaling capability, customers will be able to achieve a robust infrastructure for an application.

Thanks to our team of dedicated cloud professionals, Apexon ensures that customers implement auto-scaling solutions for their applications. This commitment means that app performance remains high and end users get the experience they demand.

AWS Database Migration Service Now Supports Redis as a Target

Posted On: Aug 30, 2021

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) expands functionality by adding support for Redis, Amazon ElastiCache for Redis, and Amazon MemoryDB for Redis as targets. Amazon ElastiCache for Redis is a fully managed caching service that combines the speed, simplicity, and versatility of open-source Redis with manageability, security, and scalability from Amazon to power the most demanding real-time applications.

Why It Matters

When it comes to cloud computing, every organization wants to take advantage of high availability, reliability and consistency. And while some companies might want to maintain their own data centers but are looking to move to cloud functionality, AWS Data Migration Service (AWS DMS) exists to migrate on-premises to the cloud.

Redis is an open-source in-memory caching solution as a database. Managing data in-memory can result in read or write operations taking less than a millisecond, with hundreds of millions of operations performed each second. This expanded functionality from AWS means that users can take advantage of Redis as it works as a stand-alone target. Additionally, the tool integrates with your Redis clients and uses the open-source format to store your data.

Apexon’s ongoing commitment to Cloud Done Right means that customers can be confident that their data migration needs will be met, not only in terms of flexibility and agility, but also in the integration of solutions that make the most of our cloud expertise.

To find out how Apexon can ensure that your digital transformation and cloud migration are done right, first time and every time, please contact us today. Alternatively, to learn more about our cloud services and solutions, please fill out the form below.