5 Key AWS re:Invent 2020 Announcements So Far

AWS re:Invent is typically a big draw this time of year. It has been symbolic to closing a year in technology strong in Las Vegas. This year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic it’s been moved to an all-online format. (For some people, that might be a good excuse to set up casino floors at home, too!) Let’s talk what has been announced so far at this three week-long event.

1. Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) Anywhere: Did you dream of running ECS management within your own data centers? I am sure that many healthcare, finance and government customers would want to manage containers better. AWS just announced this to have consistent management planes in both environments. It promises to containerize the on-premises workloads for data centers and then connecting them to AWS cloud as needed.
2. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes (EKS) Anywhere: Similar to ECS Anywhere, EKS Anywhere lets you run your Kubernetes-based containers in your data center to deploy, upgrade and operate the clusters. This will simplify the management and deployment of clusters for more power in your hands.
3. AWS Outposts get smaller for remote facilities: For any bank, manufacturer, or healthcare provider, challenges amplify when you have a remote facility somewhere. That facility might be critical enough that it needs to be supported by IT but without using major resources. The facility could be serving a niche client or a lab. For that, AWS Outpost might provide a simple solution for this and it is now coming in two smaller flavors. These Outpost options will not only be small (1U and 2Us) but they will also connect to other AWS services such as EC2, ECS, etc. Thus, less management overhead for IT while empowering users in those remote facilities.
4. New EC2 Mac instances: This is an unexpected release. This will help AWS users run macOS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), underscoring that AWS is a customer-first organization at its core.
5. New EC2 instances: Amazon has been talking about different chip manufacturers to provide more value to its customers: faster speed at cheaper price points. They are rolling out new EC2 instances based on AMD GPUs, AWS Graviton processors, etc. These new instances will provide more flexibility to the end users while giving more scale to AWS. That’s a win-win.

To learn more about AWS re:Invent stay tuned and stay connected! We are just getting started. In the meantime, please check out our new Guide to AWS Cost Optimization.