LogiCast AWS News (Video)

Logicata

LogiCast, brought to you by Logicata, is a weekly AWS News podcast hosted by Karl Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Logicata, and Jon Goodall, Lead Cloud Engineer. Each week we hand-pick a selection of news articles on Amazon Web Services (AWS) - we look at what’s new, technical how-to, and business-related news articles and take a deep dive, giving commentary, opinion, and a sprinkling of humor. Please note this is the video edition of the Logicast podcast. For the audio only edition, please check out https://logicast.podbean.com/ read less
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Episodes

Season 4, Episode 7 Maps, Stacks, and AI Tracks
Today
Season 4, Episode 7 Maps, Stacks, and AI Tracks
In Season 4, Episode 7 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Ryan Cormack. They discuss AWS Step Functions, reshaping AWS CloudFormation stacks with stack refactoring, AWS Verified Access support for non-HTTP resources, AWS's full-year profit and revenue growth, AWS documentation updates and future plans and the guys think Mark Zuckerberg's AI predictions are about as accurate as his metaverse hype – both seem to exist in a virtual reality!   05:43 - AWS Step Functions expands data source and output options for Distributed Map  This update allows Step Functions to process different file formats from S3, including JSONL and delimited files (semicolon and tab). It improves the ability to handle large datasets and reduces the need for data manipulation before processing. The distributed map feature can now handle up to 10,000 concurrent executions, making it powerful for big data processing. 10:45 - Reshape your AWS CloudFormation stacks seamlessly with stack refactoring This new feature allows users to more easily break down large CloudFormation stacks into smaller, more manageable stacks. It addresses the issues of slow updates and potential errors in large stacks. While not entirely seamless, it provides a much-needed solution for those stuck with large CloudFormation stacks and offers a way to improve infrastructure management. 16:19 - AWS Verified Access support for non-HTTP resources is now generally available  This feature allows users to connect to private resources like databases without needing bastion hosts or jump boxes. It provides a more secure, token-scoped access method integrated with single sign-on providers. While it requires a client on the user's machine and currently lacks Windows support, it's a step towards simplifying secure access to private resources in AWS. 23:25 - AWS sees full-year profit and revenue growth as AI and public cloud demand soars  AWS reported significant growth in revenue (19% to $28.8 billion) and profits (up to $10.6 billion) compared to the previous year. The growth is attributed to increased demand for AI and public cloud services. While the exact contribution of AI services to this growth is unclear, the company plans to invest heavily in infrastructure to support AI and related technologies. 31:59 - AWS Documentation update — progress, challenges, and what’s next for 2025  AWS is improving its documentation with new features like decision guides to help users choose the right services. The company is also exploring AI integration to enhance documentation searchability and summarization. While AWS documentation is generally considered good, there's room for improvement in areas like search functionality and providing more comprehensive examples.
Season 4 Episode 6: DynamoDB, Dollars, and Disappearing Buckets
1w ago
Season 4 Episode 6: DynamoDB, Dollars, and Disappearing Buckets
In Season 4, Episode 6 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Dave Hall. They discuss Dynamo DB innovations, cost optimization highlights, migration to AWS MediaConvert, S3 Bucket security risks, AWS Lambda and Serverless computing and it looks like the AWS Community Builders are drinking 'Dirty Lambda' cocktails and playing buzzword bingo while nervously refreshing their renewal applications!   05:24 - 2024: A year of innovation and growth for Amazon DynamoDB  They discuss various improvements to Amazon DynamoDB in 2024, including significant price reductions for on-demand throughput and global tables. Other innovations mentioned include zero ETL integrations with Redshift and SageMaker Lakehouse, and improvements to DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX). The speakers debate the practical value of some features like DAX, with Jon suggesting many teams may not need it. 12:19 - re:Invent 2024 Cost Optimization highlights that you were not expecting They discuss the unexpected cost optimization opportunities from re:Invent 2023. Key points include new features for Bedrock, intelligent tiering for FSX for Open ZFS, and improvements to SageMaker scaling. The speakers particularly highlighted the blurring lines between EFS and FSX, and the benefits of new auto-scaling capabilities for cloud applications. 20:03 - Migrating workflows from Amazon Elastic Transcoder to AWS Elemental MediaConvert They discuss the upcoming discontinuation of Amazon Elastic Transcoder and the need to migrate to AWS Elemental Media Convert. Jon explains the differences and advantages of Media Convert, including better codec support and higher resolution capabilities. The speakers emphasize the importance of this migration for users of Elastic Transcoder. 26:02 - Abandoned AWS S3 buckets can be reused in supply-chain attacks that would make SolarWinds look 'insignificant'  They talk about the potential security risks associated with abandoned AWS S3 buckets, as these buckets can be reused in supply chain attacks. Dave explains that this is not a new issue and advises against exposing S3 buckets publicly, recommending the use of CloudFront as a protective measure. 31:19 - A Decade Of AWS Lambda — Has Serverless Delivered On Its Hype  They discuss the adoption of serverless in enterprises versus smaller businesses, noting that perception might be skewed due to how costs appear on bills. They also touch on the lack of GPU support in serverless offerings and strategies for optimizing serverless costs.
Season 4 Episode 5 - Metadata, Models, and Milestones: Celebrating 100 Episodes of AWS News
04-02-2025
Season 4 Episode 5 - Metadata, Models, and Milestones: Celebrating 100 Episodes of AWS News
In Season 4, Episode 5 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Hero, Peter Sankauskas. They discuss Amazon S3 metadata, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, DeepSeek R1, Amazon Simple Email Service, AWS survey on AWS service usage and trends and Jon finally got to go Apple reaction crazy for our 100th episode!   06:14 - Amazon S3 Metadata is now generally available  This feature, announced at re:Invent, is now generally available. It provides automated metadata for S3 objects, potentially reducing the need for manual metadata management. However, it's currently only available in three US regions and has a complex pricing structure that may be challenging to calculate. 10:52 - AWS Elastic Beanstalk adds default support of EC2 Launch Template when creating new environments  Elastic Beanstalk, which has seen renewed development recently, now supports EC2 launch templates when creating new environments. This update aligns with the deprecation of launch configurations. The speakers discussed Beanstalk's position as a starter service and its potential limitations for more advanced users. 14:46 - DeepSeek-R1 models now available on AWS  AWS quickly made DeepSeek's efficient AI models available on Bedrock following recent media attention. This move is seen as reactionary but necessary to compete with other AI providers. The pricing model differs from other Bedrock offerings, being based on infrastructure costs rather than per-token pricing. 20:17 - Amazon SES celebrates 14 years of email sending and deliverability  The Simple Email Service's 14th anniversary was discussed, with mixed opinions on its usefulness. While it has improved over time, some users find third-party email services more convenient, particularly due to SES's initial restrictions and approval processes. 27:03 - Answers for AWS survey  Peter Sankowskas discussed his annual survey of AWS service usage and sentiment. The survey provides insights into which services are popular, trending, or declining in the AWS ecosystem. Notable findings include high satisfaction with services like SQS and DynamoDB, and interesting trends in CI/CD tool preferences. Peter's survey for this year: https://answersforaws.com/survey/   Guest was Peter Sankauskas https://www.linkedin.com/in/petersankauskas
Season 4 Episode 4 - Serverless Insights, Backup Best Practices, and Multi-Region Myths
28-01-2025
Season 4 Episode 4 - Serverless Insights, Backup Best Practices, and Multi-Region Myths
In Season 4, Episode 4 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Bojan Zivic. They discuss observability in ECS, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Backup best practices, AWS security best practices to mitigate ransomware attacks, architecting with multiple AWS regions for enhanced resilience and Jon found his missing piece of the puzzle - a Lego Millennium Falcon!   05:37 - AWS Adds Container Insights with Enhanced Observability to Elastic Container Service  AWS has added Container Insights with enhanced observability to ECS, providing a more cost-effective alternative to third-party solutions like DataDog. This feature offers out-of-the-box dashboards and metrics, making it easier for users to monitor their container environments without the need for extensive setup or additional tools. 10:03 - Amazon EventBridge announces direct delivery to cross-account targets  EventBridge now supports direct delivery to cross-account targets, simplifying event-driven architectures across multiple AWS accounts. This feature reduces latency, eliminates the need for complex routing setups, and allows for more streamlined and efficient event processing in multi-account environments. 14:03 - 4 AWS Backup best practices for reliable data protection  They discuss four key AWS backup best practices: balancing retention periods and storage costs, optimizing management with tagging, implementing cross-regional replication, and setting RPO and RTO goals. The discussion also highlighted the importance of testing backups and the challenges in accurately predicting backup costs due to AWS's incremental backup pricing model. 22:57 - AWS Releases Best Security Practices To Mitigate Ransomware Attacks AWS released best practices to mitigate ransomware attacks, particularly focusing on S3 buckets. Recommendations include implementing short-term credentials, using MFA, monitoring for anomalous activity, and restricting SSE-C usage when unnecessary. The discussion emphasized the importance of balancing security measures with cost considerations and practical implementation. 28:53 - Enhance the resilience of critical workloads by architecting with multiple AWS Regions  They discuss enhancing workload resilience by using multiple AWS regions. While the concept sounds appealing, the discussion revealed that multi-region architectures are complex, expensive, and often unnecessary for most applications. The speakers suggested that multi-AZ setups are usually sufficient for most use cases, and multi-region architectures are more relevant for large-scale, critical applications.   Guest was Bojan Zivic https://www.linkedin.com/in/bojan-zivic-65431033/
Season 4 Episode 3: Spots, Servers, and Security
20-01-2025
Season 4 Episode 3: Spots, Servers, and Security
In Season 4, Episode 3 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Miguel Calles. They discuss AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS launching a new region in Mexico, Amazon Q Developer, interview with AWS CEO Matt Garman, ransomware attack on unsecured AWS S3 buckets and once again they got onto the subject of swag, this time AWS Community Builder swag, with renewal time looming...   04:56 - AWS Elastic Beanstalk adds additional Spot allocation strategies  AWS has introduced new spot allocation strategies for Elastic Beanstalk, including capacity optimized prioritized, lowest price, and price capacity optimized. This addition provides users with more options for optimizing their instances based on capacity and cost requirements. 12:12 - AWS Launches Infrastructure Region in Mexico  AWS is investing over $5 billion in a new Mexico Central region, which will create about 7,000 full-time jobs and add an estimated $10 billion to Mexico's GDP. This expansion will better serve Latin America with improved latency and data residency options for customers in the region. 18:24 - Unlocking AWS Console: Diagnosing Errors with Amazon Q Developer  Amazon Q Developer now offers a feature to help diagnose and solve AWS console errors. It provides step-by-step solutions for common issues, potentially saving developers time and improving the user experience for those less familiar with AWS. 25:53 - Why CEO Matt Garman is willing to bet AWS on AI AWS's approach to AI, with Garman emphasizing the importance of investing in all aspects of AI, including large language models, inference, and practical applications. He likens the potential impact of AI to that of the internet revolution. 33:18 - AWS S3 feature abused by ransomware hackers to encrypt storage buckets A new ransomware attack method targeting AWS S3 buckets was discussed. Attackers use leaked IAM credentials to upload their own encryption keys, lock down buckets using SSE-C, and then use lifecycle policies to delete the contents. The importance of proper key management and security practices was emphasized.   Guest was Miguel Calles Mastering AWS Serverless book https://masteringawsserverlessbook.com Serverless Security book https://serverlesssecuritybook.com Serverless CISO website https://serverlessciso.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguel-a-calles-mba/ https://github.com/miguel-a-calles-mba/ https://miguelacallesmba.medium.com/
Season 3 Episode 40 - Lambda's Birthday, CloudFormation Timeline & Bedrock Agents
18-11-2024
Season 3 Episode 40 - Lambda's Birthday, CloudFormation Timeline & Bedrock Agents
In Season 3, Episode 40 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Chetan Hirapara. They discuss Lambda, CloudFormation Deployments, Anthropic, Amazon Q Developer plugins, Amazon Bedrock Agents and Karl suggests that you should choose a cloud provider based on your favourite colour....   06:53 - AWS Lambda turns 10: A rare look at the doc that started it - Overview of the original PR FAQ document for Lambda - Lambda was the first functions-as-a-service offering - Lambda originally only supported Node.js, now supports many more languages and frameworks - Billing granularity has improved from 250ms increments originally to 1ms now - Cold start times for Java apps reduced by 90% with SnapStart   15:49 - Peek inside your AWS CloudFormation Deployments with timeline view  - It provides a waterfall view of CloudFormation deployments - Helps identify bottlenecks and long-running operations - Can help optimize deployments by splitting stacks, parallelizing, etc.   21:11 - Amazon considering further investment in Anthropic  - Amazon invested $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic in March 2022 - Reportedly wants Anthropic to use AWS Inferentia chips instead of Nvidia - Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives - Alphabet has also invested significantly in Anthropic   28:08 - Amazon Q Developer plugins now generally available for the AWS Management Console  - Plugins allow Q Developer to interface with third-party services like Datadog and Whiz - Provides easy access to information without leaving the AWS console - Limited to fairly simple questions currently   33:50 - How Amazon Bedrock Agents work  - Agents are like small orchestration software tools - Have capabilities like memory, prompting users, invoking APIs - Built using LLMs like Titan - Continuously run to provide answers to users   Guest was Chetan Hirapara https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetan-hirapara-90344345/ https://www.youtube.com/@upskillwithchetan
Season 3 Episode 38 - Q Developer, Security Group Sharing, and Amazon's RTO
06-11-2024
Season 3 Episode 38 - Q Developer, Security Group Sharing, and Amazon's RTO
In Season 3, Episode 38 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Anna Astori. They discuss Q Developer, Amazon VPC, AWS WAF, celebrating 10 years of Amazon ECS, Amazon return to office policy and once again Karl tries to extract trade secrets from our guest!   03:05 - AWS launches in-line Q Developer AI coding assistant to take on Microsoft’s Github Copilot The speakers discuss the launch of AWS's Q Developer, an AI coding assistant to compete with GitHub Copilot. Jon is skeptical about the usefulness compared to IntelliSense. Anna agrees there are pros and cons. The new integration with CodeWhisperer model 3.5 could improve it. 13:13 - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud launches new security group sharing features  Jon explains the benefits of the new VPC security group sharing feature for connecting resources across VPCs more securely. 17:30 - How to mitigate bot traffic by implementing Challenge actions in your AWS WAF custom rules  The article explains how to use WAF challenge actions to mitigate bot traffic. Jon provides an overview of how rate limiting and bot control in WAF work. 23:52 - Celebrating 10 Years of Amazon ECS: Powering a Decade of Containerized Innovation  They discuss EC2 Container Service turning 10 years old. Jon explains the pricing and simplicity benefits of ECS compared to Kubernetes. 29:40 - Amazon workers 'appalled' by AWS CEO’s return to office remarks, urge policy reversal  Employees wrote an open letter criticizing the mandated return to 5 days a week in office. Anna and Jon discuss the discrimination concerns and why hybrid doesn't work.   Guest was Anna Astori https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-astori/ https://annaeastori.medium.com/ https://x.com/AmaMidzu
Season 3 Episode 37 - Jam, Sessions & The Nuclear Option
21-10-2024
Season 3 Episode 37 - Jam, Sessions & The Nuclear Option
In Season 3, Episode 37 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Ryan Pothecary. They discuss CloudQuest and AWS Jam, AWS Session Manager, Amazon CloudWatch Evidently and AppConfig, Amazon going nuclear, Amazon's returning to office policy and Karl hopes Amazon can finally realise the Back to the Future Mr Fusion reactor...    06:22 - Enhance your real-world skills with AWS Cloud Quest and AWS Jam  - CloudQuest provides gamified learning for AWS certifications like Cloud Practitioner - Jams are in-person problem solving events, Logicata is hosting a Jam soon - Pricing for CloudQuest seems expensive compared to alternatives like Udemy courses   13:49 - Secure SSH Access to EC2 Instances with AWS Session Manager  - Session Manager provides secure remote access without exposing SSH ports - It logs all activity for auditing and compliance - Allows access through console, CLI, port forwarding   22:29 - Support for Amazon CloudWatch Evidently ending soon  - Evidently allowed testing variations of apps/websites to improve performance - Being replaced by Amazon AppConfig which provides similar functionality - Shows AWS consolidating services and giving notice before deprecation   27:01 - Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors  - To provide power for energy-hungry data centers and AI/ML workloads - Investing in grid power, not owning reactors directly - Small modular reactors easier to build and operate than large ones   33:24 - Amazon AWS CEO: Quit if you don't want to return to office  - Strong statement against remote work from Amazon leadership - Cites need for in-person collaboration and innovation - Unlikely to work as well outside the US due to logistics - Remote teams can still innovate without being co-located - Impact on attracting talent remains to be seen   Guest was Ryan Pothecary https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanpothecary/ https://dev.to/ryanpothecary
Season 3 Episode 32 - Step Functions Validation, Lambda Layers & Neon Signs
02-09-2024
Season 3 Episode 32 - Step Functions Validation, Lambda Layers & Neon Signs
In Season 3, Episode 32 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Rishab Kumar. They discuss Validation API for Step Functions, Lambda Layers, Quick Setup programmatic deployment, new certifications and courses, Challenger for Observability and the Logicata guys get serious neon sign envy...   Articles: 04:53- Announcing Validation API for AWS Step Functions  The new validation API for AWS Step Functions allows validating state machines before deployment to catch errors early. It was noted this could be useful to integrate into CI/CD pipelines. 09:19 - Why You Should Use AWS Lambda Layers  Using Lambda layers allows packaging dependencies separately from function code. This enables faster deployments when only code changes, limits package size so the console editor can still be used, and allows sharing dependencies between functions 16:51 - Deploy AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup programmatically across your AWS Organization AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup can now be deployed programmatically via CloudFormation, CDK, CLI etc. This makes it easier to enable SSM access across an organization or onboard new accounts. 23:35 - New courses and certification updates from AWS Training and Certification in August 2024 New AWS certifications and courses were announced, including AI/ML related ones like Certified Machine Learning Engineer Associate. This reflects the growing demand for cloud skills in these areas. 30:37 - AWS named as a Challenger in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms  AWS was named a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability, reflecting their improved capabilities and execution in this space even if not yet a leader.   Guest was Rishab Kumar: https://linkedin.com/in/rishabkumar7 https://rishabkumar.com/ https://x.com/rishabincloud https://youtube.com/@rishabincloud
Season 3 Episode 31: Macs, Loops, and Misconfigurations
27-08-2024
Season 3 Episode 31: Macs, Loops, and Misconfigurations
In Season 3, Episode 31 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Luis Valdivia. They discuss MacOS CI/CD, Upgrading Lambda Functions, Lambda Loop Detection, Chatbot for Security Events, ALB Misconfiguration Exposure and Jon describes how he's training his kids in the art of medieval combat...   Articles: 05:04 - Add macOS to your continuous integration pipelines with AWS CodeBuild  They discuss a new AWS CodeBuild feature that allows adding MacOS to continuous integration pipelines for building iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and MacOS applications and talk about challenges with using MacOS for builds.   15:48 - Leverage Amazon Q to upgrade Lambda runtime functions  They discuss using Amazon Q to help upgrade Lambda runtimes like moving from Python 3.7 to 3.12 and debate whether AI like Q is ready to fully take over coding.   22:35 - AWS Lambda introduces recursive loop detection APIs  They discuss a new recursive loop detection API in AWS Lambda and whether it is necessary and helpful for developers.   29:01 - Manage security events in Slack, Teams, or Amazon Chime using AWS Chatbot and Amazon Q They discuss using AWS Chatbot with Amazon Q to manage security events in Slack/Chime.    33:28 -Thousands of Apps Using AWS ALB Exposed to Attacks Due to Configuration Issue  They discuss a report about potential misconfigurations exposing thousands of AWS environments due to issues with Application Load Balancers.    Guest was Luis Valdivia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-valdivia-humareda/
Season 3 Episode 30 - Serverless Security, Multicloud and AWS Earnings
05-08-2024
Season 3 Episode 30 - Serverless Security, Multicloud and AWS Earnings
In Season 3, Episode 30 Karl & Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder, Warren Parad. They discuss AWS Step Functions Encryption, AWS Parameter Store Sharing, AWS Touts Multi-Cloud Capabilities, AWS Quietly Freezes Services, AWS Q2 2022 Earnings and Jon has a proper rant about the deprecation of CodeCommit...      Articles: 04:03 - Strengthening data security in AWS Step Functions with a customer-managed AWS KMS key  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about encrypting AWS Step Functions state machines using AWS KMS keys. They debate the usefulness and security implications of this new feature.   11:57 - Introducing Parameter Store cross-account sharing  They discuss a new capability from AWS to share Parameter Store parameters across accounts. They debate whether this simplifies operations or creates potential security issues.   17:39 - AWS and Multicloud: Existing capabilities & continued enhancements  They discuss a recent AWS blog post about their multi-cloud capabilities and tools. They consider whether the major cloud providers are becoming commoditized.   25:16 - AWS quietly freezes CodeCommit, Cloud9, SimpleDB and more, customers complain about lack of notice  They discuss AWS deprecating several services like CodeCommit and Cloud9 without notice. They express frustration at the lack of communication.   34:12 - Amazon’s cloud unit reports 19% revenue growth, topping estimates  Thy discuss Amazon's latest quarterly earnings report, which exceeded expectations largely driven by AWS growth.   Guest was Warren Parad:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-parad/ https://warrenparad.net https://dev.to/wparad