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Amazon Web Services (AWS) today launched a bevy of cloud services, including a preview of Amazon DevOps Guru, that collectively promise to make it much easier to deploy and manage cloud applications.
Announced during the online AWS re:Invent conference, Amazon DevOps Guru is a fully managed service that employs machine learning algorithms to automatically detecting operational issues and recommend specific responses that will be delivered via a notification. Through a single console, IT teams will also be able to visualize their operational data by summarizing relevant data from multiple AWS and third-party data sources, including PagerDuty and Atlassian.
AWS also unfurled AWS Proton, a service to automate the development and deployment of microservices-based applications built using containers and the AWS Lambda serverless computing framework. Available also in preview, AWS Proton is an application management service that enables IT teams to define reusable application components as “stacks” that can be combined with a set of curated application stacks for security, architecture and tools defined by AWS. This service then automates the provisioning of infrastructure as code, the setting up of continuous integration/continuous delivery pipelines and the setting of monitoring tools.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy told conference attendees that in effect, AWS will be managing DevOps processes on behalf of developers.
At the same time, AWS is launching Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Anywhere, which allows IT teams to use Amazon ECS to orchestrate containers in their own data centers, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Anywhere, which provides the ability to run EKS on the distribution of Kubernetes that AWS employs in local data centers. There is also now an Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) Public service for sharing container images.
At the same time, AWS previewed Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, which will make it possible to scale instances of MySQL databases instantly using the AWS serverless computing framework. Support for PostgreSQL databases is planned for next year.
AWS also announced it has added a Microsoft SQL Server-compatibility layer to its PostgreSQL database to make it easier to migrate Windows applications to an open source database. The company will also open-source that capability, dubbed Babblefish, as part of an effort to encourage the development of compatibility layers for other databases. PostgreSQL already provides compatibility with Oracle RDBMS applications.
Jassy chided providers of these proprietary database platforms for changing licensing terms when organizations deploy these databases on public clouds other than their own. Those moves have only created additional demand to migrate faster to open source databases, noted Jassy.
Finally, AWS is adding a slew of infrastructure options, including Mac instances (EC2 Mac instances) for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Built on Mac mini computers, the service will make it possible for developers to more cost-effectively build MacOS applications.
In addition, AWS is adding 1U and 2U servers to its AWS Outposts portfolio for deploying infrastructure in on-premises IT environments. Those offerings expand AWS Outposts beyond rack-based systems.
The company is adding AWS Graviton2-powered C6gn instances to deliver 100Gbps networking performance for Arm processors it designed. Those instances offer 40% better price performance over comparable current-generation x86-based instances, according to the company. There is also now M5zn instances of Intel Xeon Scalable processors that offer 45% better compute performance per core than current M5 instances, according to the company.
AWS is also adding G4ad Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) instances based on processors from AMD and revealed its intention to build its own GPUs next year. The company also plans to add an Amazon EC2 instance based on up to eight Habana GAUDI accelerators from Intel to deliver up to 40% better price performance than current GPU-based EC2 instances, according to the company.
Overall, Jassy said AWS grew 26% year over year to achieve a $46 billion run rate. As the number of services provided by the company continues to expand, maintaining that growth rate at a time when applications are moving into the cloud faster than ever looks easily achievable.
