AWS re:Invent 2018: What to Expect

Enterprise Security: As enterprise cloud adoption grows, so, too, does the need for stronger governance and security. Amazon GuardDuty was released at re:Invent 2017, so we may see new capabilities around this threat-detection service, such as improved integration with other AWS products. Meanwhile, AWS announced its Compliance Center service for financial services companies in September. We expect to hear more about it at this year’s show, too. It’s also very likely that AWS and its partners will highlight security and visibility for ephemeral resources, such as containers, and AWS Lambda.

Transit Virtual Private Cloud Service: For many years, we have had the architectural challenge of transitive routing in AWS. My guess is AWS will address the issue at this year’s show. With other recent, related product releases and significant activity around Transit VPC via Cloud Formation Template in combination with Lambda, tags and Cisco Cloud Services Routers, it feels like we’re almost there. Surely, AWS will not let another year pass without a solution.

General Releases: Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager was released in July and is a simple way to schedule and manage Elastic Block Storage volume backups without relying on a third-party tool. We expect to see expansion of this service into more regions and are hopeful for more granular snapshot timing options as well. Currently, the service allows scheduled backups to run only every 12 or 24 hours. As has become the norm, we anticipate new instance types and/or families to be announced at re:Invent. Last year, we saw M5 and H1 instance types as well as bare-metal instances (preview) introduced. Per an article by Jeff Barr earlier this year, bare metal instances with 6TB, 9TB, 12TB and more are in the works — all designed specifically for SAP HANA and other in-memory workloads. We wouldn’t be surprised to see additional details on these offerings.