Season 4 Episode 22: Aurora DSQL, Cost Optimization, and Cloud Dissatisfaction

In Season 4, Episode 22, Karl and Jon are joined by AWS Community Builder Mohit Saxena to unpack the latest in AWS news. They kick things off with the general availability of Amazon Aurora DSQL, followed by updates to Amazon ECS, which now provides more detailed exit reason messages. The conversation moves into developer tools, highlighting how Amazon Q’s Developer CLI agents can be used to automatically generate architecture diagrams. They also explore a new cost comparison feature in AWS Cost Explorer and improvements to the Cost Optimization Hub, which now supports preferences for savings plans and reserved instances. The episode also touches on a recent survey reflecting growing dissatisfaction with the rising costs of cloud computing. Just as the discussion hits full technical stride, things take an unexpected (and hilarious) turn when the trio dives into a spirited debate over the best way to fold a wrap—completely derailing the AWS updates in favor of culinary strategy.

 

04:58 - Aurora DSQL General Availability 

Aurora DSQL, announced at re:Invent 2023, is now generally available. It offers a globally distributed database service with millisecond-level time synchronization, solving distributed time issues. It provides active-active distributed architectures with high availability (99.99% within a single region, 99.999% multi-region) and no single point of failure.

 

10:54 - ECS Exit Reason Message Increase Amazon ECS has increased the exit reason message character limit from 255 to 1,024 characters. This change makes debugging failed container starts significantly easier by providing more detailed information. The extended message can be accessed through both the management console and the describe tasks API.

 

14:28 - Architecture Diagrams with Amazon Q

Faye Ellis wrote about creating architecture diagrams using the Amazon Q developer CLI agent. This tool can generate mermaid diagrams or Draw.io compatible diagrams from YAML templates or CloudFormation code. It's a useful feature for visualizing and understanding complex architectures quickly.

 

20:32 - Cost Explorer and Cost Optimisation Hub 

AWS Cost Explorer now offers a new cost comparison feature allowing users to overlay and compare costs from different time periods more easily. It also includes a new widget on the cost management home page showing the top 10 cost variations in the previous two months, making it easier to identify and analyze cost trends.The Cost Optimization Hub now supports savings plans and reservations preferences. Users can set their preferences for upfront payments and commitment terms, allowing for more realistic and aligned cost-saving recommendations based on their financial situation and needs.

 

30:35 - Cloud Cost Dissatisfaction Survey

A Gartner survey revealed growing dissatisfaction with cloud computing costs. The article suggests that many organizations moved to the cloud without proper planning or workload analysis, leading to higher than expected costs. It highlights the importance of due diligence and proper cloud migration strategies to realize the full benefits of cloud computing.