Title: Issue #71: New Feature Extravaganza Publication: Ready, Set, Cloud! Series: Ready, Set, Cloud Picks of the Week Author: Allen Helton Published: August 07, 2023 URL: https://www.readysetcloud.io/newsletter/71/ So many announcements last week rounded out amazing blog posts from the community. ### Serverless Superhero Our serverless superhero this week is [Neetu Mallan](https://twitter.com/NeetuMallan), DevOps manager at [EZOPS Inc](https://twitter.com/ezopsinc) and AWS Community Builder. She is the organizer of the AWS User Group Madurai and a great blogger. Neetu asks some tough questions around serverless and always pushes the boundaries making you think twice about a solution. She's a great person to follow and bounce ideas off of. Thank you, Neetu, for all your contributions to the community! ### Interesting Reads Congrats to a brand new batch of [AWS Security Heroes](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-the-first-aws-security-heroes/)! Security is a brand new category of AWS Hero and we now have 6 of them! Super exciting! I am really excited to see an update from [Marcin Sodkiewicz](https://twitter.com/MarcinSod) about how [he improved his AWS compute pricing calculator](https://sodkiewiczm.medium.com/to-serverless-or-not-to-serverless-that-is-the-question-86c6f99a2734). Marcin built an app that directly compares equivalent forms of compute in AWS. His post covers all the improvements he recently made and gives you a direct link to the app itself. Fun fact, this project was how I was initially introduced to Marcin years ago. [Arpad Toth](https://twitter.com/arpadt) wrote an analysis on the [components of an S3 object Lambda](https://dev.to/aws-builders/returning-customized-content-based-on-location-with-s3-object-lambda-3hgm). He walks readers through a use case where he converts a JSON object on fetch based on the caller's location. Arpad talks about each resource in the process and shows how to build it yourself. We got a great look at [how to build a serverless file manager](https://jimmydqv.com/serverless-filemanager/index.html) from [Jimmy Dahlqvist](https://twitter.com/jimmydahlqvist) last week. He demonstrates how to build a cool multi-tenant system that maintains files and tracks metadata around them. I've built a system like this before and wish I had this as a reference point before I got started. I stumbled upon a really neat app from [David Behroozi](https://twitter.com/rooToTheZ) last week. The app is called [speed run](https://speedrun.nobackspacecrew.com/) and is a browser extension you can use to convert Markdown-based code blocks into secure, runnable dev tools directly in a GitHub readme or wiki files. It's a nifty little project that I can see seriously speeding up dev processes and lowering the barrier to entry on open-source projects. ### Spotlight The AWS Amplify and Hashnode hackathon ended last week. There were tons of cool projects highlighting the creativity of the tech community. I highly recommend [browsing through the entries](https://hashnode.com/n/awsamplifyhackathon) to see if inspiration strikes you. ### Tip of the Week [Yan Cui](https://twitter.com/theburningmonk) reminds us of 7 ways to save money when going serverless. He has a nice graphical format that points out easy to make mistakes and how to avoid them. ### New Releases [Momento](https://twitter.com/momentohq) announced a serverless vector index at MoCon last week. The service is aimed at abstracting away schema and dimension management and providing consumers with 2 simple APIs - `add to index` and `search`. The service is in closed beta and you can [join the waitlist here](https://events.gomomento.com/momento-vector-index). [Ampt](https://twitter.com/amptdev) announced [long-running tasks](https://www.getampt.com/blog/introducing-long-running-tasks/) last week. These are powerful jobs that let you run tasks longer than 15 minutes and enable you to run them now, later, just once, or on a schedule. CloudFormation released a new retention policy for resources - [RetainExceptOnCreate](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/07/aws-cloudformation-deletion-policies-dev-test-cycle/). If you've ever struggled through failed initial deployments and deleted your retained resources over and over again so you can redeploy... rejoice! That is now a thing of the past. App Composer got some [cool new updates](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/08/aws-application-composer-updates-undo-redo-export-local-sync/) last week. You can now undo and redo operations, export the entire canvas, and locally sync in real-time as you make changes. SQS received an [increased throughput quota for FIFO queues](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/08/amazon-sqs-increased-throughput-quota-fifo-high-throughput-mode/). It now will process up to 9,000 transactions per second in some regions and 4,500 tps in select others. A great update for EventBridge Scheduler came out last week, allowing [one-time schedules to delete automatically after running](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/08/amazon-eventbridge-scheduler-deletion-completion/). This is a big convenience update so you no longer have to clean them up yourself. ### Last Words WOW! What a week for serverless! It seems like we're having breakthrough after breakthrough, enabling faster and better apps than ever before. I'm curious - are you building something new? Is there a new piece of tech you're trying our for the first time? What is it? Let me know what you learn! If you'd like to make a recommendation for the serverless superhero or for an article you found especially useful, send me a message on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/allenheltondev), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenheltondev/), or [email](mailto:allenheltondev@gmail.com). Happy Coding! Allen