AWS has updated Video on Demand on AWS, a solution that automatically provisions the AWS services necessary to build a scalable, distributed video-on-demand workflow. The solution now leverages AWS Elemental MediaConvert Quality-Defined Variable Bitrate (QVBR) encoding mode which ensures consistent, high-quality video transcoding with the smallest file size for any type of source video content. With QVBR, the encoder determines the right number of bits to use for each part of the video to maintain the video quality that you specify.

You can now use search expressions to define Amazon CloudWatch dashboards. This enables you to create dashboards that update automatically as new resources are created that match the search query, providing up-to-the-minute visibility with reduced operational overhead.

The search function is an enhancement of Amazon CloudWatch metric math and can be combined within math functions like SUM, AVG, MIN, and MAX. For example, you can combine SUM with SEARCH to track the count of failed health checks across all EC2 instances in an account.

It’s easy to get started with search expressions through the Amazon CloudWatch console, or the GetMetricData API. From the metrics tab, just search for metrics then click the Graph Search button and a search expression will be automatically generated on your chart.

Search expressions are now available in all AWS public regions, including AWS GovCloud. Learn more about how to use search expressions in graphs . 

Scenario-based learning on Coursera, from the experts at AWS, develops skills in building and deploying serverless solutions.Using real-world examples of a serverless website and chat bot, the learner builds on their knowledge of the cloud to take advantage of the benefits of modern architectures for greater agility, innovation, and lower total cost of ownership across a range of AWS services, including AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB. On-demand and digital, the courses are convenient and available to audit for free with a completion certificate available for $49. 

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We are excited to announce a new python script that makes it easy to get started with Amazon Elastic Inference.

Amazon DynamoDB has reduced the price of global tables by eliminating associated charges for DynamoDB Streams. Previously, cross-region replication performed by global tables incurred charges for streams. Now, you are no longer billed for streams resources used by global tables for replicating changes from one replica table to all other replicas. You still are billed for any streams usage performed by your applications that read from a replica table’s stream.

This Quick Start automatically deploys SUSE Cloud Application Platform, which is a fully containerized implementation of Cloud Foundry, on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. 

You can now restore an encrypted Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility cluster from an unencrypted snapshot. You can choose any existing Amazon Key Management Service (KMS) key or create a new key to encrypt your new database.

You can now create tags in CloudWatch alarms that let you define policy controls for your AWS resources. This enables you to specify fine grained permissions, improving security for monitoring resources and cost allocation.

You can add tags to CloudWatch alarms to create groups of resources and categorize them by purpose, owner, or environment. You can also view of your resources organized by common tags. And finally, you can define IAM policies in your AWS account that when attached to a resource, grants or denies access based on a tag. For example, you can create a PROD tag for your alarms in production environment, and attach an IAM policy so that only specific users can delete your alarms in that environment. For cost management, you can allocate and track costs by tagging groups of resources , get detailed billing reports across your groups, as well as define IAM permissions on these tagged groups .

Resource level policies for CloudWatch alarms is now available at no extra cost in all AWS public regions , including AWS GovCloud. You can learn more about how to create tags on your resources and use them to define permissions using the CloudWatch CLI and SDK.

At AWS re:Invent 2018, we announced updates to the overall AWS Partner Network (APN) program that will further recognize and support the growth, investment, and innovation of our evolving APN Partner community, and better align APN Partners to more structured program benefits. Changes to the APN Program include: 1) renaming the Standard tier to Select tier, 2) Structured benefits for APN Consulting & Technology Partners, 3) New program critera.

Today, the APN team officially launched the 2019 program enhancements. beginning today, you will experience a new look and feel upon logging in to your APN Partner Central account, including a newly refreshed Partner Scorecard referencing new APN tier requirements. 

Learn more about the new APN Program in the APN Blog Posts below: 

2019 APN Benefits  |  2019 APN Requirements 

This Quick Start automatically deploys a multi-master, production instance of IBM Cloud Private for Data into a new virtual private cloud (VPC) on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. A standard deployment takes about 3 hours, and a high availability (HA) deployment takes about 4 hours.