Monthly Cloudy Updates, March 2024

Table of Contents

Hello World!

First, let me share with you some interesting articles I read recently:

This article talks about the evolution of SSDs and how this is not being reflected in the Cloud, SSDs Have Become Ridiculously Fast, Except in the Cloud.

This post from the Allegro team talks about how they used eBPF to troubleshoot some performance issues they were noticing on their Kafka environment, Unlocking Kafka’s Potential: Tackling Tail Latency with eBPF.

First HashiCorp announced they were changing their licensing model for Terraform. Now we learn they are looking to be acquired. Now, pray to the Cloud Gods Broadcom doesn’t buy them. I’d be very careful if I were to use some of HashiCorp’s products in my platform.

Redis INC decided to change their licensing for future releases, Once again, the Open Source Community comes to the rescue.

And last but not least, Malicious SSH backdoor sneaks into xz, Linux world’s data compression library

And now, to the updates.

AWS

Mistral AI foundation models now generally available on Amazon Bedrock

Mistral AI’s Mixtral 8x7B and Mistral 7B foundation models are now generally available on Amazon Bedrock.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP doubles maximum throughput capacity to 72 GBps

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/fsx/latest/ONTAPGuide/performance.html

Amazon Neptune is authorized for DoD Impact Level 4 and 5

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/03/amazon-neptune-dod-impact-level-4-5/

AWS WAF enhances rate-based rules to support configurable time windows

AWS WAF now supports configurable evaluation time windows for request aggregation with rate-based rules. Customers can now select time windows of 1 minute, 2 minutes or 10 minutes, in addition to the previously supported 5 minutes.

Application Load Balancer now supports Resource Map in AWS Management Console

Application Load Balancer (ALB) now supports Resource Map, a tool in the console that displays all your ALB resources and their relationships in a visual format on a single page, providing you a clear understanding of your ALB architecture.

Experience up to 40% faster stack creation with AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation improved its stack creation speed by up to 40% and introduced a new stack creation event, CONFIGURATION_COMPLETE.

Amazon EFS now supports up to 20 GiB/s of throughput

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) has increased the throughput per file system to up to 20 GiB/s of read throughput and up to 5 GiB/s of write throughput. More info here

Amazon MSK Replicator now supports replicating existing data on Kafka topics

With this new configuration, you can now start replication from earliest position in your source cluster’s topics in addition to latest position. More info here.

With AWS PrivateLink, you can simplify private network connectivity between virtual private clouds (VPCs), DynamoDB, and your on-premises data centers using interface VPC endpoints and private IP addresses. More info here.

IAM Roles Anywhere now offers credentials that are valid for up to 12 hours

Previously, IAM Roles Anywhere credentials were valid for up to 1 hour. Now, you can request credentials that are valid for up to 12 hours. More info here.

Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus collector now supports CloudFormation

You can now easily create, configure, and manage Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus collectors using CloudFormation templates.

Azure

Well-Architected Framework assessment on Azure Advisor

More info here.

Cloud Services (classic) deployment model is retiring on 31 August 2024

In case you need to extend the life of these workloads, visit this site.

Public preview: New Generation AMD VMs - Dasv6/Easv6/Fasv6

More info here.

Azure Functions Support for Node.js 20

Need help upgrading your Node.js functions to Node.js 20? Here is a link that might help you.

Public preview: Change Actor

With Change Analysis you can now see who initiated the change and with which client that change was made, for changes across all your tenants and subscriptions.

WhatsApp Business Platform now available for applications built on Azure

This enables developers to send and receive messages from their applications through third party social messaging platforms, like the WhatsApp Business Platform.

Microsoft Entra ID integration with Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL

You can now use Microsoft Entra ID authentication on Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL clusters in addition or instead of the native Postgres authentication.

Public Preview: Tomcat support in Azure Container Apps

Azure Container Apps now supports Apache Tomcat in the code-to-cloud build process. This means that you can use your existing code, and configuration, to create a cloud-native container app without the hassle.

Free data transfer out to internet when leaving Azure

More info here.

You can now opt in automatically renew your reservation at time of purchase.

More info here.

Azure CNI overlay dual stack Support in AKS

This feature introduces dual stack networking in AKS using overlay networking, allowing nodes and pods to have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, enhancing connectivity and application compatibility.

Microsoft open sources Retina: A cloud-native container networking observability platform

The Microsoft’s Azure Container Networking team is announcing Retina, a cloud-native container networking observability platform that enables Kubernetes users, admins, and developers to visualize, observe, debug, and analyze Kubernetes’ workload traffic irrespective of Container Network Interface (CNI), operating system (OS), and cloud.

Automatic Scaling for App Service Web Apps

More info here.

Rate Limiting on ExpressRoute Direct Circuits

This essential Quality of Service (QoS) feature provides enhanced control over bandwidth usage. More info here.

Azure Front Door (classic) will be retired on 31 March 2027

To avoid potential disruptions in service, migrate to Azure Front Door Standard or Premium by 31 March 2027.

Free managed certificates on Azure Container Apps

More info here.

GCP

AlloyDB for PostgreSQL

When you create a secondary cluster, any backup plans on the primary cluster are automatically copied to the new secondary cluster. For more information, see cross-region replication.

Compute Engine

You can use SSH-in-browser to connect to TPU VMs. For more information, see Connecting to a Cloud TPU.

Artifact Registry

Artifact Registry remote repositories support basic authentication to user-defined and preset upstream sources for Docker, Maven, npm, and Python formats. More info here.

App Hub

App Hub is now GA, more info here.

Cloud Load Balancing

Now supports mTLS.