In Season 4, Episode 37, Karl and Jon welcome AWS Community Builder Mahmoud Khatib to the show. Together, they dive into some of the latest AWS announcements, including Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling’s new support for forced cancellation of instance refreshes, Amazon RDS enabling cross-region and cross-account snapshot copy, and the expansion of AWS Organizations service control policies to cover the full IAM language. They also explore how log management can be simplified through Amazon CloudWatch centralization, and reflect on AWS being named a leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI code assistance. Somewhere along the way, the conversation takes an entertaining detour into the world of tech relics, from floppy disks to Amazon Dash Buttons.

09:19 - EC2 Auto Scaling Forced Cancellation 

This new feature allows for immediate cancellation of instance refreshes, which is particularly useful when pushing out bad updates. Previously, users had to wait for in-progress refreshes to finish before canceling, potentially causing more issues. The new feature enables instant cancellation, reducing stress for on-call engineers.

15:52 - RDS Cross-Region and Cross-Account Snapshot Copy 

This feature simplifies the process of copying RDS snapshots between regions and accounts. Previously, it required two steps, but now it can be done in one command. This saves time and potentially reduces costs associated with orphaned snapshots.

21:13 - AWS Organizations Service Control Policy 

The update allows for full IAM language support in service control policies (SCPs). This enables more granular control and simplifies policy management, potentially replacing some use cases for permissions boundaries. The speakers were particularly excited about the improved wildcard support and the ability to centralize policies.

30:27 - CloudWatch Logs Centralization 

This new feature simplifies log management by allowing easier centralization of logs from multiple accounts. It's particularly useful for organizations with multiple single-tenant applications or those needing to collect logs from customer accounts. The process is now simpler, requiring fewer steps and potentially reducing costs.

37:51 - AWS in Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI Code Assistance 

AWS was named a leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI code assistance. The speakers discussed their experiences with AWS's AI coding tools, including Q Developer and Kiro, noting significant improvements in recent versions. They also expressed some skepticism about the exclusion of certain tools from the Magic Quadrant.

You can connect with Mahmoud online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahmoud-khatib-45900052/

Medium: https://medium.com/@khatib.edge

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mahmoud-Khatib-2