CloudPro #11: AMD Introduces 4th-Gen Epyc Processors on AWS, MongoDB Queryable Encryption, IBM’s Managed VMware Cloud Service
Bite-sized actionable content, practical tutorials, and resources for cloud professionals.
“Cloud computing is really a no-brainer for any start-up because it allows you to test your business plan very quickly for little money. Every start-up, or even a division within a company that has an idea for something new, should be figuring out how to use cloud computing in its plan."
- Brad Jefferson, Co-founder and CEO of Animoto
Welcome to a brand new edition of the CloudPro! In this issue, we're turning our focus to some wonderful news – AMD has introduced 4th-Gen Epyc Processors on AWS. Join us as we take a closer look at these amazing processors and what it means for the cloud community.
In this issue, we also highlight IBM’s Managed VMware Cloud Service for Hybrid Environments, MongoDB’s Queryable Encryption, Amazon’s Aurora Global Database Failover, and VMware’s NSX+.
We know how much you love your weekly dose of our handpicked cloud resources, tutorials, and secret knowledge. That’s why we also discuss how to use Kubernetes’s latest release for job failure handling, monitor OpenSearch Storage and Shard Skew with AmazonCloudWatch, and efficiently stream CloudSpanner changes with Apache Kafka.
But that’s not all! We’ve also curated the best cloud GitHub repos for you to use and test like Meshery, the self-service engineering platform, and the Kubernetes configuration management tool, Flux2.
Cheers,
Shreyans Singh
Editor-in-Chief
PS: I hope you will enjoy today's newsletter! I’m all ears for your thoughts – the good, the great, and the "meh." Share your feedback and snag a free Packt eBook(Mastering Kubernetes by Gigi Safyan). It's a win-win! Can't wait to hear what you think!
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⚡ TechWave: Cloud News & Analysis
⚡AMD Introduces 4th-Gen Epyc Processors on AWS: AMD's fourth-generation Epyc processors are now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in two configurations: HPC (high-performance computing) and general-purpose instances.
The Hpc7a instances are optimized for memory bandwidth-constrained tasks like computational fluid dynamics and weather prediction. These instances come with up to 192 virtual central processing units (vCPUs), but Amazon has disabled simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) to maximize performance. The memory configuration remains consistent across all instances, enabling customers to tune for specific memory or bandwidth needs per core.
For users seeking general-purpose instances, Amazon introduced the M7a instances, boasting up to 50% higher performance compared to their previous Epyc Milan-based M6a VMs. The M7a instances are available in various configurations, from single vCPU setups to massive instances with 192 vCPUs and 768GB of memory. These instances are supported by Amazon's custom Nitro data processing units (DPUs), which offload tasks like networking and storage from the host CPU.
⚡IBM to Offer Managed VMware Cloud Service for Hybrid Environments: IBM and VMware are working together to make businesses update their technology faster. They want to help companies that use both IBM and VMware technology, no matter where they are in their technology journey.
IBM will offer a new service that uses VMware's technology. This service will help companies use the cloud in a flexible way while keeping things simple. This service will create a mix of a company's own computers and IBM's cloud. This mix follows certain rules to keep everything secure. Companies will be able to easily move their work between their own computers and IBM's cloud without any problems. This new service can help companies spend less money, update their software quickly, and make their operations simpler. It also follows security rules.
Both companies are improving the “IBM Cloud for VMware as a Service” that lets companies share software in the cloud. They are adding more options to make it flexible and easy to use. This improved service lets companies share software while still being able to change it to fit their needs. It's like having a cake that everyone can enjoy but with their favorite toppings. Companies using these services benefit from IBM's experts. They will take care of maintenance, updates, and security.
⚡MongoDB Introduces Queryable Encryption for Enhanced Data Security: MongoDB has introduced a new feature called Queryable Encryption, which helps keep sensitive data safe while allowing specific types of searches to be performed on that encrypted data. This is really important for meeting strict rules about keeping private data private.
Imagine you have secret messages written in code. Normally, you can't read them until you decode them. Queryable Encryption is like having a way to search through those coded messages without fully decoding them. It's like looking for a specific word in a secret message without revealing the whole message.
Here's how it works: People who are allowed can search for specific things in encrypted data. When a search is requested, the system asks for special keys that can unlock the encrypted data. The search is done with the encrypted data itself. The system has a smart way to search encrypted data without fully understanding it. The results of the search are still encrypted, just like the original data. The special keys are used to fully unlock the results.
🌐From the Cloud World:
🌐 Microsoft's overall cloud business is projected to generate as much revenue in 2023 as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud combined, showcasing its dominance in the evolving cloud landscape.
🌐 A study reveals that 76% of enterprises lack visibility into access policies and application locations across various cloud platforms, leading to concerns about cloud security, identity threats, and data privacy regulations.
🌐 Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins announced that Cisco has already sold over $500 million worth of equipment for AI to major cloud computing companies, positioning itself for the growing AI cloud market after missing out on the initial cloud computing boom.
🌐 Introducing Aurora Global Database Failover, a feature that allows for automatic recovery in case of unplanned outages in Amazon Aurora's multi-region setup, reducing operational complexities.
🌐 VMware Introduces NSX+ for Multicloud Network Management and Security. VMware NSX+ simplifies and centralizes network management and security across on-premises and multicloud environments, enhancing consistency and efficiency.
🔍Secret Knowledge: Learning Resources
🔍Embrace the Cloud's Full Potential for Data: Data teams often transition to modern data stacks in the cloud without fully capitalizing on the new capabilities due to sticking to legacy thinking. Learn how to leverage real-time data for operational decisions, adopt generative AI and machine learning, and switch from ETL to ELT for faster insights.
🔍The Environmental Impact of Cloud Data Centers: Cloud data centers, where digital information is stored and processed, have significant environmental impacts due to their energy consumption and carbon emissions. Explore how data centers, which consist of millions of individual servers running around the clock, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.
🔍Exploring Cedar: Designing Intuitive, Fast, and Secure Authorization: The post delves into the intricacies of Cedar, an open-source language tailored for crafting and assessing authorization policies. Cedar empowers developers to manage access to application resources in a modular way, decoupling access control from application logic.
🔍PayPal's Evolution in Microservices Architecture: The post sheds light on PayPal's journey from a monolithic architecture to a refined microservices approach. The early 2000s saw a transition from a monolithic application to somewhat isolated executables, although not true microservices. Learn how the problems of replication, deployment coordination, and internal communication emerged, leading to a shift to real microservices architecture.
🔍Challenges of Direct Database Sharing in Microservices Architecture: The post highlights the pitfalls of directly exposing microservices' databases for sharing data. Although there might be justifications for this practice, it brings about several issues. Independent deployability is compromised, scalability and reliability can be impacted, fault tolerance and the overall system's stability are jeopardized, and the coupling of services with a specific database technology restricts adaptability.
🛠️HackHub: Trending Tools
🛠️meshery/meshery: Open-source self-service engineering platform providing cloud-native management for designing and overseeing Kubernetes-based infrastructure and applications.
🛠️fluxcd/flux2: Kubernetes configuration management tool designed to maintain synchronization between clusters and configuration sources like Git repositories and OCI artifacts.
🛠️kedacore/keda: KEDA (Kubernetes Event-driven Autoscaling) enables precise autoscaling, including scaling to and from zero, for event-driven Kubernetes workloads.
🛠️authorjapps/zerocode: Streamlined solution for creating and managing automated tests with minimal effort for various data streams such as REST, SOAP, and Kafka Real Time Data Streams.
🛠️aspnetrun/run-aspnetcore-microservices: The e-commerce system involves several microservices including Catalog, Basket, Discount, and Ordering.
⭐MasterClass: Tutorials & Guides
⭐How to Use Enhancements in Kubernetes 1.28 for Job Failure Handling: The latest release of Kubernetes 1.28 introduces two new features to enhance the management of Jobs for batch users. The first feature addresses Pod replacement policy, ensuring more controlled replacements upon termination, which benefits scenarios such as machine learning frameworks that require singular Pod operation. The second feature, Backoff limit per index, offers better management of Pod failures for Indexed Jobs, allowing individual index-based control over retries and resource utilization.
⭐Monitoring OpenSearch Storage and Shard Skew with Amazon CloudWatch: A comprehensive guide to deploying Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon OpenSearch Service's storage and shard skew health. The article highlights the significance of proper shard strategy in OpenSearch Service, emphasizing the distribution of workload across data nodes. By employing an AWS Lambda function to extract and process metadata, the solution calculates skew levels and leverages CloudWatch metrics for efficient monitoring, alerting, and response, ultimately ensuring even shard distribution and enhanced domain performance.
⭐How to Efficiently Stream Cloud Spanner Changes with Apache Kafka: Learn how to use Cloud Spanner's change streams and Apache Kafka to seamlessly track and stream data changes from a Spanner database in real-time. Cloud Spanner, with its relational semantics and strong consistency, offers an ideal foundation for such operations. The authors discuss the integration of the recently launched Cloud Spanner Change Streams Kafka connector, enabling a scalable and flexible approach to streamlining data changes for various use cases, including data warehousing and triggering application logic.
⭐Implementing Multi-Tenancy in Kubernetes: Architecture and Deployment: Exploring the realm of multi-tenancy in Kubernetes, this article delves into the concept, benefits, and practical implementation of creating isolated environments for multiple users or entities. Multi-tenancy allows diverse users to share a common Kubernetes infrastructure while maintaining data and resource separation. The article details how to achieve this using Helm charts, Kubernetes API, Python Flask, and network policies, emphasizing modular architecture, streamlined deployment processes, and resource isolation techniques for enhanced security and resource management.
Just a quick heads-up about something awesome I came across. If you're even remotely into Kubernetes and AWS, "Mastering Elastic Kubernetes Service on AWS" by Packt is like a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.
It's not your typical tech read – this book dives deep into the heart of Kubernetes and Amazon EKS, making the whole learning journey feel like a fun exploration. From the basics to the nitty-gritty, it's like having a friendly guide by your side.
I stumbled upon it and couldn't help but share. Check it out if you're curious – I think you'll find it as exciting as I did! Happy reading!
Check out Mastering Elastic Kubernetes Service on AWS
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