LogiCast AWS News – Enhanced Container Insights, Cross-Account Event Delivery, Backup Best Practices, and More

In this week’s LogiCast AWS News Podcast, we dive into several exciting developments and best practices in the world of Amazon Web Services. From enhanced observability for containers to simplified event delivery across accounts, and from backup strategies to security measures against ransomware, there’s plenty to discuss. Let’s explore these topics in detail.

Enhanced Container Insights for ECS

AWS has made significant strides in improving observability for Elastic Container Service (ECS) by adding container insights with enhanced observability. This development addresses a long-standing pain point for many users who previously had to rely on expensive third-party solutions or struggle with limited native options.

Jon, our podcast co-host, shared his thoughts on this improvement: “AWS has made great strides into turning CloudWatch from this unloved second-tier service of 2-3 years ago into something that you could viably use in place of a third-party service.” He noted that while this new feature may not entirely replace solutions like Datadog or New Relic, it certainly makes high-quality observability data accessible at a much lower price point.

Bojan, this week’s guest on the podcast, expressed enthusiasm for this development, stating, “I’ve been a big fan because that barrier of entry is broken down for proper observability.” He highlighted the importance of having a familiar observability dashboard out of the box, similar to what users might expect from third-party providers.

The new container insights feature offers several benefits:

1. Reduced costs compared to third-party solutions
2. Easier access to critical metrics like CPU utilization
3. A familiar and user-friendly dashboard interface
4. Seamless integration with existing AWS services

For users who previously struggled with obtaining container metrics without third-party tools, this enhancement is a welcome addition. It simplifies the process of gathering essential data and reduces the need for complex, custom-built solutions.

Cross-Account Event Delivery in Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge has introduced a new feature that allows for direct delivery of events to cross-account targets. This development has generated excitement among AWS users, particularly those working with complex, multi-account architectures.

Bojan expressed his enthusiasm for this feature, stating, “The amount of times that you had just had to go, OK, we’re going to create more latency for you by going from a bridge to an EventBridge to source to target to so on and so forth. I love the reduction of latency.” He emphasized how this new implementation could lead to rethinking streaming logic, potentially centralizing it when targeting multiple accounts.

Jon echoed these sentiments, noting that this feature “cuts out a whole load of what I would call undifferentiated heavy lifting.” He highlighted several benefits of this new capability:

1. Simplified architecture
2. Reduced time spent on infrastructure as code (IaC)
3. Lower latency for event delivery
4. Fewer components to monitor
5. Potential cost savings

This feature is particularly valuable for organizations that need to share events across different AWS accounts, whether within the same organization or across separate entities. It streamlines the event-driven architecture process and reduces the complexity of managing cross-account communication.

AWS Backup Best Practices

Backup strategies are a critical component of any robust cloud infrastructure. An article on TechTarget outlined four AWS best practices for reliable data protection, which our podcast guests discussed in detail.

The four main points covered in the article were:

1. Balancing retention periods and storage costs
2. Optimizing management with tagging
3. Implementing cross-regional replication
4. Setting RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) goals

Jon emphasized the importance of finding the right balance between retention periods and costs, noting that “in the cloud, your architecture and your cost strategy are the same thing.” He also highlighted the value of using tags to optimize backup management, allowing for more granular control over backup plans and policies.

Regarding cross-regional replication, Jon cautioned that while it’s a best practice, it ties into cost considerations: “The more places you store things, the more money you’re gonna spend.” He advised that cross-region backup copies are particularly relevant for organizations with aggressive RPO and RTO requirements or those concerned about cross-region outages.

Bojan added an important point that wasn’t explicitly covered in the article: the critical need for testing backups. He stated, “Testing, however, I think isn’t spoken highly enough, and that’s mainly because backup’s pointless unless you know that it’s going to work.” He emphasized the importance of having a proven method and automated processes for backup testing, especially in light of potential future compliance requirements.

Both guests also discussed the challenges of accurately predicting backup costs in AWS due to the platform’s differential pricing model. Jon explained, “You pay for the difference between your backups,” which can make it difficult to estimate expenses precisely.

Security Best Practices to Mitigate Ransomware Attacks

In light of recent ransomware attacks targeting S3 buckets, AWS has released a set of best practices to help mitigate these threats. The podcast guests discussed these recommendations and their practical implications.

Some key points from the AWS recommendations include:

1. Implementing short-term credentials
2. Enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
3. Monitoring for anomalous activity
4. Restricting SSE-C (Server-Side Encryption with Customer-Provided Keys) usage when unnecessary

Bojan noted that many of these recommendations have been long-standing best practices in AWS security. He particularly highlighted the challenges of implementing MFA in infrastructure-as-code scenarios, stating, “If you’ve got infrastructure code build out buckets and you’re also gonna do, for example, bucket permissions and such, and you’re gonna allocate MFA, if you’re kind of in the world of CDK which I love, it’s kind of painful to be more granular with that.”

Regarding anomaly detection, Bojan cautioned about potential cost implications: “I’m not all for the anomalous activity side, where the expense exceeds the return.” He advised being contextually aware of what needs protection to determine if anomaly detection is worth the investment.

Jon emphasized the importance of restricting SSE-C usage, which aligns with the recommendations he made in a previous podcast episode. He explained, “If you can’t use it, no one else that’s managed to get illegitimate access can come into your system and then use it for their purposes.”

Both guests agreed that for most use cases, relying on AWS-managed encryption (SSE-S3 or KMS) is sufficient and more straightforward to implement than customer-managed keys.

Architecting with Multiple AWS Regions

The final topic discussed was an AWS Architecture blog post about enhancing workload resilience by architecting across multiple AWS regions. While this approach sounds appealing in theory, both podcast guests expressed some scepticism about its practical application for most organizations.

Bojan pointed out that while AWS has made cross-region data transfer easier with services like Aurora Distributed SQL and multi-region DynamoDB, the costs associated with such architectures can be prohibitive. He stated, “Cross-region costs for data transfer is a thing,” and questioned whether the benefits outweigh the expenses for most use cases.

He also noted that Availability Zones (AZs) within a single region are already designed to be highly resilient: “Availability zones are pretty damn resilient, right? That if there is a major earthquake by AWS’s standards, one AZ should be far enough or distinct, um, geographically enough to the other that I should be able to facilitate that.”

Jon echoed these sentiments, sharing that in his experience, most customers don’t require multi-region architectures: “If the London region goes down, we’ve got bigger problems than is my little website running.” He suggested that multi-region setups are often more about meeting regulatory and compliance requirements than addressing real-world resilience needs.

Both guests agreed that while multi-region architectures have their place, particularly for large-scale, mission-critical applications, they are often unnecessary and cost-prohibitive for smaller organizations or less critical workloads.

Conclusion

This week’s LogiCast AWS News Podcast covered a range of topics, from improved container observability to cross-account event delivery, backup strategies, security best practices, and multi-region architectures. These developments and insights highlight the ongoing evolution of AWS services and the importance of balancing performance, cost, and security in cloud architectures.

As always, it’s crucial for AWS users to carefully consider their specific use cases and requirements when implementing new features or following best practices. While AWS continues to innovate and provide powerful tools, it’s up to users to apply these capabilities judiciously and in alignment with their organizational needs and constraints.

This is an AI generated piece of content, based on the LogiCast Podcast Season 4, Episode 4.