Amazon AWS Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

reviewer930093

Director - Technology Operations at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

Nov 23, 2021

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Helpful service for a variety of applications

Pros and Cons

"Amazon AWS contains a lot of helpful services."

"Amazon AWS would be improved if it were more stable and if customer support's responses were faster."

What is our primary use case?

We use Amazon AWS for many applications as well as Amazon's native services. We have a mix of content-based workloads and traditional legacy type of applications.

What is most valuable?

Amazon AWS contains a lot of helpful services.

What needs improvement?

Amazon AWS would be improved if it were more stable and if customer support's responses were faster.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for many years, somewhere between seven and ten.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution has been relatively stable. We had one issue sometime back, so the infrastructure could be more resilient.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I have contacted customer support and their response time could be faster.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We migrated to Amazon AWS from the Data Centers.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was straightforward. The installation time varies depending on workloads.

What about the implementation team?

I implemented through an in-house team. We have multiple teams for deployment and maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is no licensing cost.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution to anyone who wants to start using it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Ibrahim Rasras

Lead solution architect at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 18, 2021

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Feature-rich, integrates well, stable, scalable, and has good support that responds immediately

Pros and Cons

"It integrates well."

"I would like to see CloudFormation made more in the programming way of thinking."

What is our primary use case?

We use several features of this solution for many purposes. For example, we use CloudFormation for infrastructure as a service, Kinesis for the message queue, Lambda for integration services, and ATC for hosting.

We also use S3 for storing the data, clustering, Multizone security, AVS to attach hard disk, and assistant.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to use.

It has many features that we use.

It integrates well.

They upgrade a lot of applications.

What needs improvement?

If you are familiar with other cloud infrastructures, you can see that it is in need of some enhancements.

It is easy to enhance it to make the clustering easier.

At times, when you use CloudFormation to create five machines with a sequence name, it is difficult but can be done with Terraform easily.

I would like to see CloudFormation made more in the programming way of thinking. You have some variables, LOB, IF statements, and inheritance, where it's not just the functionality that we have, but gives you the output. They could make it close to the programming language, even if it's a scripting language. They need more control over it such as an If-Then-Else statement and a sub-loop if possible. It will make it easier to create the infrastructure.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon AWS for more than seven or eight years.

We are using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is a scalable solution.

I work as a consultant and have a couple of customers. Each customer is of a different size company but they are all over 1,000.

How are customer service and technical support?

AWS has very good technical support. They react immediately when you need help.

How was the initial setup?

When you speak of installation, you refer to applications already built or software in ATC to be installed. AWS doesn't sell applications, they give you an infrastructure as a service, application as a service, and a platform as a service but they don't give you applications to be installed.

There is no installation required in AWS.

The maintenance required depends on the size of the company. Some larger companies require a larger IT department while others don't require it at all.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

A license is required. Some customers will provide their own license and others will purchase it directly from AWS.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in it.

I would rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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Safalya Mitra

Vice President - Services at Locuz Enterprise Solutions Ltd

Jul 13, 2021

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Scalable as per the needs, quite stable, and priced based on the actual consumption of resources

Pros and Cons

"It is highly available and on-demand. So, you can scale up and scale down whenever required."

"They're really good on the business computing side, but there are other services where they can do really well. They can improve the data analytics platform and the data warehousing platform."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for hosting some of our workloads. We offer managed services for our customers, mostly in the space of security in managed IT services, and some of these workloads are hosted on AWS.

What is most valuable?

It is highly available and on-demand. So, you can scale up and scale down whenever required.

Another thing that really attracts us is the pricing, which is based on the actual consumption of resources, and that's what really helps us.

What needs improvement?

They're really good on the business computing side, but there are other services where they can do really well. They can improve the data analytics platform and the data warehousing platform.

Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is quite stable. We did not find any challenge in the reliability of the platform.

How are customer service and technical support?

We do contact their tech support, and we get the help whenever it is required. We are pretty much satisfied with them.

How was the initial setup?

It was not too complex. We are very straightforward and not too complex in terms of our infrastructure.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its pricing can be simplified a little bit more. Even though they have been reducing it, I still believe they can do better as compared to GCP, Google Cloud.

What other advice do I have?

We advise people to go on AWS. We also do a readiness assessment for our customers. We do a kind of a TCO analysis for our customers, and depending on the use case, workload, and pricing model, we advise our customers. We do it for AWS, Azure, and GCP. I would expect customers to do the same thing. They should do a proper analysis because it depends on what workloads they want to move to the cloud. Based on that, they should select a hyperscaler.

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

Jai_Prakash

Senior Manager IT at OakNorth Bank

May 14, 2021

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Easy to set up, good support, and feature-rich

Pros and Cons

"The installation and initial setup are easy."

"We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives."

What is our primary use case?

We use the AWS Cloud service for storing company-related information.

What is most valuable?

The cloud-based infrastructure has several good products that people normally use.

What needs improvement?

We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for the past seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I use AWS several times each day, and we plan to continue using it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have 7,000 users on AWS.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support and customer service are good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have also worked with Microsoft Azure and I find the initial setup of AWS to be easier.

How was the initial setup?

The installation and initial setup are easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is a subscription-based product.

This is not an expensive product but it would be an improvement if the price were cheaper. Google Cloud, for example, is cheaper.

What other advice do I have?

This is definitely a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user178248

Owner at a tech vendor

May 14, 2017

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You can set up buckets and upload files using the console.

What is most valuable?

The price point and ease of use are the most valuable features. The cost per GB per month has always been reasonable.

How has it helped my organization?

It is easy to set up buckets and upload files using the AWS Console.

What needs improvement?

The ease with which you can move files from short-term (S3) to long-term storage (i.e., Glacier) via a dashboard. With the introduction of Glacier as a long-term storage option, having some type of function key to simplify the transfer of files between the S3 and Glacier environments would be beneficial and increase efficiency. Perhaps it could be incorporated as an option when using the S3 Service or Glacier service; i.e., a "Transfer to Glacier" and "Transfer to S3."

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AWS S3 since 2007 or 2008.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not had any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not had any scalability issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used in-house data storage (HD and NAS).

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy and straightforward, as opposed to some other solutions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I cannot speak to the licensing questions, but the pricing per GB/month is reasonable and competitive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn’t look at alternatives, as it was the first cloud platform solution on the market at the time, at least that I was aware of.

What other advice do I have?

There are a plethora of options, but it certainly should be given primary consideration.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user6186

Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com

Feb 22, 2017

Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier

In case you missed it, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has enhanced their cloud services (Elastic Cloud Compute or EC2) along with storage offerings. These include Relational Database Service (RDS), DynamoDB, Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Simple Storage Service (S3). Enhancements include new functionality along with availability or reliability in the wake of recent events (outages or service disruptions). Earlier this year AWS announced their Cloud Storage Gateway solution that you can read an analysis here. More recently AWS announced provisioned IOPS among other enhancements (see AWS whats new page here).

Before announcing Glacier, options for Amazon storage services relied on general purpose S3 or EBS with other Amazon services. S3 has provided users the ability to select different availability zones (e.g. geographical regions where data is stored) along with level of reliability for different price points for their applications or services being offered.

Note that AWS S3 flexibility lends itself to individuals or organizations using it for various purposes. This ranges from storing backup or file sharing data to being used as a target for other cloud services. S3 pricing options vary depending on which availability zones you select as well as if standard or reduced redundancy. As its name implies, reduced redundancy trades lower availability recovery time objective (RTO) in exchange for lower cost per given amount of space capacity.

AWS has now announced a new class or tier of storage service called Glacier, which as its name implies moves very slow and capable of supporting large amounts of data. In other words, targeting inactive or seldom accessed data where emphasis is on ultra-low cost in exchange for a longer RTO. In exchange for an RTO that AWS is stating that it can be measured in hours, your monthly storage cost can be as low as 1 cent per GByte or about 12 cents per year per GByte plus any extra fees (See here).

Here is a note that I received from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team:
----------------------
Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,
We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Amazon Glacier – a secure, reliable and extremely low cost storage service designed for data archiving and backup. Amazon Glacier is designed for data that is infrequently accessed, yet still important to keep for future reference. Examples include digital media archives, financial and healthcare records, raw genomic sequence data, long-term database backups, and data that must be retained for regulatory compliance. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably and durably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01/GB/month. As with all Amazon Web Services, you pay only for what you use, and there are no up-front expenses or long-term commitments.

Amazon Glacier is:

Low cost- Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost, pay-as-you-go storage service that can cost as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, irrespective of how much data you store.
Secure – Amazon Glacier supports secure transfer of your data over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and automatically stores data encrypted at rest using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetrix-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys.
Durable- Amazon Glacier is designed to give average annual durability of 99.999999999% for each item stored.
Flexible -Amazon Glacier scales to meet your growing and often unpredictable storage requirements. There is no limit to the amount of data you can store in the service.
Simple- Amazon Glacier allows you to offload the administrative burdens of operating and scaling archival storage to AWS, and makes long term data archiving especially simple. You no longer need to worry about capacity planning, hardware provisioning, data replication, hardware failure detection and repair, or time-consuming hardware migrations.
Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – You can use AWS Import/Export to accelerate moving large amounts of data into Amazon Glacier using portable storage devices for transport. In the coming months, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) plans to introduce an option that will allow you to seamlessly move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier using data lifecycle policies.

Amazon Glacier is currently available in the US-East (N. Virginia), US-West (N. California), US-West (Oregon), EU-West (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Japan) Regions.

A few clicks in the AWS Management Console are all it takes to setup Amazon Glacier. You can learn more by visiting the Amazon Glacier detail page, reading Jeff Barrs blog post, or joining our September 19th webinar.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team
----------------------

What is AWS Glacier?

Glacier is low-cost for lower performance (e.g. access time) storage suited to data applications including archiving, inactive or idle data that you are not in a hurry to retrieve. Pay as you go pricing that can be as low as $0.01 USD per GByte per month (and other optional fees may apply, see here) depending on availability zone. Availability zone or regions include US West coast (Oregon or Northern California), US East Coast (Northern Virginia), Europe (Ireland) and Asia (Tokyo).

Now what is understood should have to be discussed, however just to be safe, pity the fool who complains about signing up for AWS Glacier due to its penny per month per GByte cost and it being too slow for their iTunes or videos as you know its going to happen. Likewise, you know that some creative vendor or their surrogate is going to try to show a miss-match of AWS Glacier vs. their faster service that caters to a different usage model; it is just a matter of time.

Lets be clear, Glacier is designed for low-cost, high-capacity, slow access of infrequently accessed data such as an archive or other items. This means that you will be more than disappointed if you try to stream a video, or access a document or photo from Glacier as you would from S3 or EBS or any other cloud service. The reason being is that Glacier is designed with the premise of low-cost, high-capacity, high availability at the cost of slow access time or performance. How slow? AWS states that you may have to wait several hours to reach your data when needed, however that is the tradeoff. If you need faster access, pay more or find a different class and tier of storage service to meet that need, perhaps for those with the real need for speed, AWS SSD capabilities ;).

Here is a link to a good post over at Planforcloud.com comparing Glacier vs. S3, which is like comparing apples and oranges; however, it helps to put things into context.

In terms of functionality, Glacier security includes secure socket layer (SSL), advanced encryption standard (AES) 256 (256-bit encryption keys) data at rest encryption along with AWS identify and access management (IAM) policies.

Persistent storage designed for 99.999999999% durability with data automatically placed in different facilities on multiple devices for redundancy when data is ingested or uploaded. Self-healing is accomplished with automatic background data integrity checks and repair.

Scale and flexibility are bound by the size of your budget or credit card spending limit along with what availability zones and other options you choose. Integration with other AWS services including Import/Export where you can ship large amounts of data to Amazon using different media and mediums. Note that AWS has also made a statement of direction (SOD) that S3 will be enhanced to seamless move data in and out of Glacier using data policies.

Part of stretching budgets for organizations of all size is to avoid treating all data and applications the same (key theme of data protection modernization). This means classifying and addressing how and where different applications and data are placed on various types of servers, storage along with revisiting modernizing data protection.

While the low-cost of Amazon Glacier is an attention getter, I am looking for more than just the lowest cost, which means I am also looking for reliability, security among other things to gain and keep confidence in my cloud storage services providers. As an example, a few years ago I switched from one cloud backup provider to another not based on cost, rather functionality and ability to leverage the service more extensively. In fact, I could switch back to the other provider and save money on the monthly bills; however I would end up paying more in lost time, productivity and other costs.

What do I see as the barrier to AWS Glacier adoption?

Simple, getting vendors and other service providers to enhance their products or services to leverage the new AWS Glacier storage category. This means backup/restore, BC and DR vendors ranging from Amazon (e.g. releasing S3 to Glacier automated policy based migration), Commvault, Dell (via their acquisitions of Appassure and Quest), EMC (Avamar, Networker and other tools), HP, IBM/Tivoli, Jungledisk/Rackspace, NetApp, Symantec and others, not to mention cloud gateway providers will need to add support for this new capabilities, along with those from other providers.

As an Amazon EC2 and S3 customer, it is great to see Amazon continue to expand their cloud compute, storage, networking and application service offerings. I look forward to actually trying out Amazon Glacier for storing encrypted archive or inactive data to compliment what I am doing. Since I am not using the Amazon Cloud Storage Gateway, I am looking into how I can use Rackspace Jungledisk to manage an Amazon Glacier repository similar to how it manages my S3 stores.

Some more related reading:
Only you can prevent cloud data loss
Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the NetFlix Fix?
AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

As of now, it looks like I will have to wait for either Jungledisk adds native support as they do today for managing my S3 storage pool today, or, the automated policy based movement between S3 and Glacier is transparently enabled.

[To view all of the links mentioned in this post, go to:http://storageioblog.com/amazon-cloud-storage-options-enhanced-with-glacier/ ]

Some updates:

http://storageioblog.com/november-2013-server-storageio-update-newsletter/

http://storageioblog.com/fall-2013-aws-cloud-storage-compute-enhancements/

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Walter WebbWorks

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Nov 10, 2018

I can help you guys with anything that you need to ask me about the consultancy things and all of them only on aws consulting. It is because it is a great paltform and people always help me there.
Website: www.clickittech.com

it_user194427

Chief Technology Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 9, 2016

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An amazing platform to build on but IAM policies, and cross account access needs improvement.

What is most valuable?

The whole IaaS model is an invaluable service. The ease of deployment, maintenance, and scalability, and pay as you go model make AWS an amazing platform to build on.

How has it helped my organization?

AWS sitting at the core of our service, and we have been able to provide an amazing number of features, that were otherwise very expensive, and labor intensive to put in place, these include high availability, business continuity planning, disaster recovery, among others.

What needs improvement?

AWS has an amazing feature set but I have not used all of them to be able to have a well rounded opinion about improvement. However, of the features I have used, I would say IAM policies, and cross account access would probably be one of the main areas of improvement. Amazon is working on a "Service Catalog" which could potentially fill some of these holes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Surprisingly, since starting to use AWS, the process has been quite simple. The deployment was very smooth. Despite this, it does take a bit of getting used to when working with VPCs, and networking in an AWS context, but that's a fairly quick learning curve that can be attained easily.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Like anything, failures happen every once in a while. I have experienced some failed hardware under my instances, which caused a brief outage. The stability of the service, however, is also much more reliant on the architecture of the application than the stability of the AWS infrastructure. In any case, AWS has been quite stable over all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is one of AWS' strengths. Scaling resources, be it an AWS EC2 instance, or an RDS instance is a snap. Also, scaling into multiple geographic regions in the world is also possible, and quite a realistic view in that environment.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

My experience with AWS customer service has been stellar. Everyone I come into contact with from Sales, to Technical Support are always friendly, and courteous.

Technical Support:

The technical support team is quite knowledgeable, and there is no question asked that doesn't get addressed with full attention, complete with references, examples, and a recap of conversations that were conducted.

Their technical support processes are clearly well thought out. I can always know what communication to expect, and the level of help that I can expect to receive. I have yet to call them on an issue where a resolution wasn't reached on the first or second contact.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I used co-location services. The reason I switched is quite obvious:

Cost
Constant overheads
Constant challenge of meeting budgets with consistent cutting edge technology

AWS has removed all these variables, and allowed me to concentrate on growing my services without having to worry about aging servers, or under capacity hardware, etc.

How was the initial setup?

Understanding AWS is actually quite easy. There are some notions that require a bit of previous knowledge to grasp. The good news is that the documentation available about the different services is quite extensive, which can give anyone a head start in launching their AWS services. The complexity of using AWS is directly related to the robustness of the application/service that is being deployed. The more AWS services are integrated together, the more complex the deployment will become.

What about the implementation team?

All AWS services were deployed in-house, with assistance from AWS support teams.

What was our ROI?

Because there is no initial investment in AWS services (it's a pay as you go service in its basic form) the ROI is immediate. Because AWS costs are consistently being reduced, it is a great way to build services, offered at affordable prices, while still getting good returns on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

As mentioned above, AWS does not really have initial setup costs. It's like a utility company; you use the service, and pay for your usage. The daily cost is dependent upon the service being deployed at that point in time. For the flexibility, and consistent cutting edge technology that AWS operates on, it's well worth the price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated Azure, and Google as IaaS. Quite honestly, Google was too convoluted for my purposes, and although Azure had some nice "Microsoft-y" features that AWS doesn't necessarily have, I still felt that it was much easier to get started with AWS, than it is with the other services.

What other advice do I have?

Don't be afraid of "The Cloud". As prominent as it is today, a lot of people, and small businesses, are still afraid of storing their data away from their physical office. There are a ton of advantages in using AWS for your infrastructure instead of on-premises equipment. Give it a serious look before dismissing it. There is a lot that can be added here, but that could be an article all on its own.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user194427Chief Technology Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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Nov 1, 2016

Not necessarily anything that other products would lack, it would actually be more of a "nice to have". It's definitely not a deal breaker by any means. I take the idea from the concept that AWS has with AMIs, for instance, or places where there are public repositories of UDF for scripts... same type of thing, for IAMs. there are a lot of out-of-the-box IAM policies that user can benefit from, and rather than re-inventing the wheel, it would be nice if they're compiled in a central place. That said, there's nothing that a Google search can fix :)

See all 6 comments

it_user6186

Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com

May 1, 2015

Lambda and other AWS enhancements

A few weeks ago I attended Amazon Web Service (AWS) re:Invent 2014 in Las Vegas for a few days. For those of you who have not yet attended this event, I recommend adding it to your agenda. If you have interest in compute servers, networking, storage, development tools or management of cloud (public, private, hybrid), virtualization and related topic themes, you should check out AWS re:invent.

AWS made several announcements at re:invent including many around development tools, compute and data storage services. One of those to keep an eye on is cloud based Aurora relational database service that complement existing RDS tools. Aurora is positioned as an alternative to traditional SQL based transactional databases commonly found in enterprise environments (e.g. SQL Server among others).

Some recent AWS announcements prior to re:Invent include

AWS Adds EU (Frankfurt) Region
Amazon Linux AMI Updates
AWS Systems Manager for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
T2, the New Low-Cost, General Purpose Instance Type for Amazon EC2
Windows Server 2012 R2 AMI Updates
Zocalo Enterprise File Sync & Share updates (read more Zocalo here )
AWS Management Portal for vCenter Setup Enhancements

AWS vCenter Portal

Using the AWS Management Portal for vCenter adds a plug-in within your VMware vCenter to manage your AWS infrastructure. The vCenter for AWS plug-in includes support for AWS EC2 and Virtual Machine (VM) import to migrate your VMware VMs to AWS EC2, create VPC (Virtual Private Clouds) along with subnet’s. There is no cost for the plug-in, you simply pay for the underlying AWS resources consumed (e.g. EC2, EBS, S3). Learn more about AWS Management Portal for vCenter here, and download the OVA plug-in for vCenter here.

AWS re:invent content

November 12, 2014 (Day 1) Keynote (highlight video, full keynote). This is the session where AWS SVP Andy Jassy made several announcements including Aurora relational database that complements existing RDS (Relational Data Services). In addition to Andy, the key-note sessions also included various special guests ranging from AWS customers, partners and internal people in support of the various initiatives and announcements.

November 13, 2014 (Day 2) Keynote (highlight video, full keynote). In this session, Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels appears making announcements about the new Container and Lambda services.

AWS re:Invent announcements

Announcements and enhancements made by AWS during re:Invent include:

Key Management Service (KMS)
Amazon RDS for Aurora
Amazon EC2 Container Service
AWS Lambda
Amazon EBS Enhancements
Application development, deployed and life-cycle management tools
AWS Service Catalog
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodeCommit
AWS CodePipeline

Key Management Service (KMS)

Hardware security module (HSM) based key managed service for creating and control of encryption keys to protect security of digital assets and their keys. Integration with AWS EBS and others services including S3 and Redshift along with CloudTrail logs for regulatory, compliance and management. Learn more about AWS KMS here

AWS Database

For those who are not familiar, AWS has a suite of database related services including SQL and no SQL based, simple to transactional to Petabyte (PB) scale data warehouses for big data and analytics. AWS offers the Relational Database Service (RDS) which is a suite of different database types, instances and services. RDS instance and types include SimpleDB, MySQL, Postgress, Oracle, SQL Server and the new AWS Aurora offering (read more below). Other little data database and big data repository related offerings include DynamoDB (a non-SQL database), ElasticCache (in memory cache repository) and Redshift (large-scale data warehouse and big data repository).

In addition to database services offered by AWS, you can also combine various AWS resources including EC2 compute, EBS and other storage offerings to create your own solution. For example there are various Amazon Machine Images (AMI’s) or pre-built operating systems and database tools available with EC2 as well as via the AWS Marketplace , such as MongoDB and Couchbase among others. For those not familiar with MongoDB, Couchbase, Cassandra, Riak along with other non SQL or alternative databases and key value repositories, check out Seven Databases in Seven Weeks in my book review of it here.

Amazon RDS for Aurora

Aurora is a new relational database offering part of the AWS RDS suite of services. Positioned as an alternative to commercial high-end database, Aurora is a cost-effective database engine compatible with MySQL. AWS is claiming 5x better performance than standard MySQL with Aurora while being resilient and durable. Learn more about Aurora which will be available in early 2015 and its current preview here.

Amazon EC2 C4 instances

AWS will be adding a new C4 instance as a next generation of EC2 compute instance based on Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) processors. The Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 processors run at a clock speed of 2.9 GHz providing the highest level of EC2 performance. AWS is targeting traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) along with other compute intensive workloads including analytics, gaming, and transcoding among others. Learn more AWS EC2 instances here, and view this Server and StorageIO EC2, EBS and associated AWS primer here.

Amazon EC2 Container Service

Containers such as those via Docker have become popular to support developers rapidly build as well as deploy scalable applications. AWS has added a new feature called EC2 Container Service that supports Docker using simple API’s. In addition to supporting Docker, EC2 Container Service is a high performance scalable container management service for distributed applications deployed on a cluster of EC2 instances. Similar to other EC2 services, EC2 Container Service leverages security groups, EBS volumes and Identity Access Management (IAM) roles along with scheduling placement of containers to meet your needs. Note that AWS is not alone in adding container and docker support with Microsoft Azure also having recently made some announcements, learn more about Azure and Docker here. Learn more about EC2 container service here and more about Docker here.

AWS Lambda

In addition to announcing new higher performance Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) compute instances along with container service, another new service is AWS Lambda. Lambda is a service that automatically and quickly runs your applications code in response to events, activities, or other triggers. In addition to running your code, Lambda service is billed in 100 millisecond increments along with corresponding memory use vs. standard EC2 per hour billing. What this means is that instead of paying for an hour of time for your code to run, you can choose to use the Lambda service with more fine-grained consumption billing.

Lambda service can be used to have your code functions staged ready to execute. AWS Lambda can run your code in response to S3 bucket content (e.g. objects) changes, messages arriving via Kinesis streams or table updates in databases. Some examples include responding to event such as a web-site click, response to data upload (photo, image, audio, file or other object), index, stream or analyze data, receive output from a connected device (think Internet of Things IoT or Internet of Device IoD), trigger from an in-app event among others. The basic idea with Lambda is to be able to pay for only the amount of time needed to do a particular function without having to have an AWS EC2 instance dedicated to your application. Initially Lambda supports Node.js (JavaScript) based code that runs in its own isolated environment.

Various application code deployment models

Lambda service is a pay for what you consume, charges are based on the number of requests for your code function (e.g. application), amount of memory and execution time. There is a free tier for Lambda that includes 1 million requests and 400,000 GByte seconds of time per month. A GByte second is the amount of memory (e.g. DRAM vs. storage) consumed during a second. An example is your application is run 100,000 times and runs for 1 second consuming 128MB of memory = 128,000,000MB = 128,000GB seconds. View various pricing models here on the AWS Lambda site that show examples for different memory sizes, times a function runs and run time.

How much memory you select for your application code determines how it can run in the AWS free tier, which is available to both existing and new customers. Lambda fees are based on the total across all of your functions starting with the code when it runs. Note that you could have from one to thousands or more different functions running in Lambda service. As of this time, AWS is showing Lambda pricing as free for the first 1 million requests, and beyond that, $0.20 per 1 million request ($0.0000002 per request) per duration. Duration is from when you code runs until it ends or otherwise terminates rounded up to the nearest 100ms. The Lambda price also depends on the amount of memory you allocated for your code. Once past the 400,000 GByte second per month free tier the fee is $0.00001667 for every GB second used.

Why use AWS Lambda vs. an EC2 instance

Why would you use AWS Lambda vs. provisioning an Container, EC2 instance or running your application code function on a traditional or virtual machine?

If you need control and can leverage an entire physical server with its operating system (O.S.), application and support tools for your piece of code (e.g. JavaScript), that could be an option. If you simply need to have an isolated image instance (O.S., applications and tools) for your code on a shared virtual on-premise environment then that can be an option. Likewise if you have the need to move your application to an isolated cloud machine (CM) that hosts an O.S. along with your application paying for those resources such as on an hourly basis, that could be your option. Simply need a lighter-weight container to drop your application into that’s where Docker and containers comes into play to off-load some of the traditional application dependencies overhead.

However, if all you want to do is to add some code logic to support processing activity for example when an object, file or image is uploaded to AWS S3 without having to standup an EC2 instance along with associated server, O.S. and complete application activity, that’s where AWS Lambda comes into play. Simply create your code (initially JavaScript) and specify how much memory it needs, define what events or activities will trigger or invoke the event, and you have a solution.

View AWS Lambda pricing along with free tier information here.

Amazon EBS Enhancements

AWS is increasing the performance and size of General Purpose SSD and Provisioned IOP’s SSD volumes. This means that you can create volumes up to 16TB and 10,000 IOP’s for AWS EBS general-purpose SSD volumes. For EBS Provisioned IOP’s SSD volumes you can create up to 16TB for 20,000 IOP’s. General-purpose SSD volumes deliver a maximum throughput (bandwidth) of 160 MBps and Provisioned IOP SSD volumes have been specified by AWS at 320MBps when attached to EBS optimized instances. Learn more about EBS capabilities here. Verify your IO size and verify AWS sizing information to avoid surprises as all IO sizes are not considered to be the same. Learn more about Provisioned IOP’s, optimized instances, EBS and EC2 fundamentals in this StorageIO AWS primer here.

Application development, deployed and life-cycle management tools

In addition to compute and storage resource enhancements, AWS has also announced several tools to support application development, configuration along with deployment (life-cycle management). These include tools that AWS uses themselves as part of building and maintaining the AWS platform services.

AWS Config (Preview e.g. early access prior to full release)

Management, reporting and monitoring capabilities including Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) for monitoring your AWS resources, configuration (including history), governance, change management and notifications. AWS Config enables similar capabilities to support DCIM, Change Management Database (CMDB), trouble shooting and diagnostics, auditing, resource and configuration analysis among other activities. Learn more about AWS Config here.

AWS Service Catalog

AWS announced a new service catalog that will be available in early 2015. This new service capability will enable administrators to create and manage catalogs of approved resources for users to use via their personalized portal. Learn more about AWS service catalog here.

AWS CodeDeploy

To support code rapid deployment automation for EC2 instances, AWS has released CodeDeploy. CodeDeploy masks complexity associated with deployment when adding new features to your applications while reducing human error-prone operations. As part of the announcement, AWS mentioned that they are using CodeDeploy as part of their own applications development, maintenance, and change-management and deployment operations. While suited for at scale deployments across many instances, CodeDeploy works with as small as a single EC2 instance. Learn more about AWS CodeDeploy here.

AWS CodeCommit

For application code management, AWS will be making available in early 2015 a new service called CodeCommit. CodeCommit is a highly scalable secure source control service that host private Git repositories. Supporting standard functionalities of Git, including collaboration, you can store things from source code to binaries while working with your existing tools. Learn more about AWS CodeCommit here.

AWS CodePipeline

To support application delivery and release automation along with associated management tools, AWS is making available CodePipeline. CodePipeline is a tool (service) that supports build, checking workflow’s, code staging, testing and release to production including support for 3rd party tool integration. CodePipeline will be available in early 2015, learn more here.

What this all means

AWS continues to invest as well as re-invest into its environment both adding new feature functionality, as well as expanding the extensibility of those features. This means that AWS like other vendors or service providers adds new check-box features, however they also like some increase the depth extensibility of those capabilities.

Besides adding new features and increasing the extensibility of existing capabilities, AWS is addressing both the data and information infrastructure including compute (server), storage and database, networking along with associated management tools while also adding extra developer tools. Developer tools include life-cycle management supporting code creation, testing, tracking, testing, change management among other management activities.

Another observation is that while AWS continues to promote the public cloud such as those services they offer as the present and future, they are also talking hybrid cloud. Granted you have to listen carefully as you may not simply hear hybrid cloud used like some toss it around, however listen for and look into AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), along with what you can do using various technologies via the AWS marketplace.

AWS is also speaking the language of enterprise and traditional IT from an applications and development to data and information infrastructure perspective while also walking the cloud talk. What this means is that AWS realizes that they need to help existing environments evolve and make the transition to the cloud which means speaking their language vs. converting them to cloud conversations to then be able to migrate them to the cloud. These steps should make AWS practical for many enterprise environments looking to make the transition to public and hybrid cloud at their pace, some faster than others. More on these and some related themes in future posts.

The AWS re:Invent event continues to grow year over year, I heard a figure of over 12,000 people however it was not clear if that included exhibiting vendors, AWS people, attendees, analyst, bloggers and media among others. However a simple validation is that the keynotes were in the larger rooms used by events such as EMCworld and VMworld when they hosted in Las Vegas as was the expo space vs. what I saw last year while at re:Invent. Unlike some large events such as VMworld where at best there is a waiting queue or line to get into sessions or hands on lab (HOL), while becoming more crowded, AWS re:Invent is still easy to get in and spend some time using the HOL which is of course powered by AWS meaning you can resume what you started while at re:Invent later. Overall a good event and nice series of enhancements by AWS, looking forward to next years AWS re:Invent.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.