AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon EC2 U7i Instances, Bedrock Converse API, AWS World IPv6 Day and more (June 3, 2024)

Life is not always happy, there are difficult times. However, we can share our joys and sufferings with those we work with. The AWS Community is no exception.

Jeff Barr introduced two members of the AWS community who are dealing with health issues. Farouq Mousa is an AWS Community Builder and fighting brain cancer. Allen Helton is an AWS Serverless Hero and his young daughter is fighting leukemia.

Please donate to support Farauq and Olivia, Allen’s daughter to overcome their disease.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches that got my attention:

Amazon EC2 high memory U7i Instances – These instances with up to 32 TiB of DDR5 memory and 896 vCPUs are powered by custom fourth generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Sapphire Rapids). These high memory instances are designed to support large, in-memory databases including SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server. To learn more, visit Jeff’s blog post.

New Amazon Connect analytics data lake – You can use a single source for contact center data including contact records, agent performance, Contact Lens insights, and more — eliminating the need to build and maintain complex data pipelines. Your organization can create your own custom reports using Amazon Connect data or combine data queried from third-party sources. To learn more, visit Donnie’s blog post.

Amazon Bedrock Converse API – This API provides developers a consistent way to invoke Amazon Bedrock models removing the complexity to adjust for model-specific differences such as inference parameters. With this API, you can write a code once and use it seamlessly with different models in Amazon Bedrock. To learn more, visit Dennis’s blog post to get started.

New Document widget for PartyRock – You can build, use, and share generative AI-powered apps for fun and for boosting personal productivity, using PartyRock. Its widgets display content, accept input, connect with other widgets, and generate outputs like text, images, and chats using foundation models. You can now use new document widget to integrate text content from files and documents directly into a PartyRock app.

30 days of alarm history in Amazon CloudWatch – You can view the history of your alarm state changes for up to 30 days prior. Previously, CloudWatch provided 2 weeks of alarm history. This extended history makes it easier to observe past behavior and review incidents over a longer period of time. To learn more, visit the CloudWatch alarms documentation section.

10x faster startup time in Amazon SageMaker Canvas – You can launch SageMaker Canvas in less than a minute and get started with your visual, no-code interface for machine learning 10x faster than before. Now, all new user profiles created in existing or new SageMaker domains can experience this accelerated startup time.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New at AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional news items and a Twitch show that you might find interesting:

Let us manage your relational database! – Jeff Barr ran a poll to better understand why some AWS customers still choose to host their own databases in the cloud. Working backwards, he highlights four issues that AWS managed database services address. Consider these before hosting your own database.

Amazon Bedrock Serverless Prompt Chaining – This repository provides examples of using AWS Step Functions and Amazon Bedrock to build complex, serverless, and highly scalable generative AI applications with prompt chaining.

AWS Merch Store Spring Sale – Do you want to buy AWS branded t-shirts, hats, bags, and so on? Get 15% off on all items now through June 7th.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendars and sign up for these AWS events:

AWS World IPv6 Day — Join us a free in-person celebration event on June 6, for technical presentations from AWS experts plus a workshop and whiteboarding session. You will learn how to get started with IPv6 and hear from customers who have started on the journey of IPv6 adoption. Check out your near city: San Francisco, Seattle, New York,  London, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Manila, and Sydney.

AWS Summits — Join free online and in-person events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Register in your nearest city: Stockholm (June 4), Madrid (June 5), and Washington, DC (June 26–27).

AWS re:Inforce — Join us for AWS re:Inforce (June 10–12) in Philadelphia, PA. AWS re:Inforce is a learning conference focused on AWS security solutions, cloud security, compliance, and identity. Connect with the AWS teams that build the security tools and meet AWS customers to learn about their security journeys.

AWS Community Days — Join community-led conferences that feature technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs led by expert AWS users and industry leaders from around the world: Midwest | Columbus (June 13), Sri Lanka (June 27), Cameroon (July 13), New Zealand (August 15), Nigeria (August 24), and New York (August 28).

You can browse all upcoming in-person and virtual events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Channy

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!