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AWS Celebrates International Women’s Day, Introduces Carbon Footprint Tool, and Releases Delete Account API

March 29, 2022       Cris Daniluk       ,         Comments  0

With the endless flood of new products, features and changes from AWS and its surrounding ecosystem, it can be easy to miss an update. Our monthly round-up highlights major AWS news, announcements, product updates, and behind-the-scenes changes we think are most relevant.

Happy (belated) International Woman’s Day!

International Woman's Day Meme

AWS is celebrating national woman’s day by shining the spotlight on women engineers and giving us some stats on women in the workforce. According to this celebratory AWS Blog post, women are valuable in the workforce (duh) but tend to take technical jobs at a lower rate than men. India may be the one exception. If there is still doubt about the value of women in technology, though there shouldn’t be, AWS provides a list of architecture tools and a selection of blog posts all written by women. My favorite post took a look at implementing feedback loops for system operations, which is critical if you’re interested in continuous improvement (that should be everybody).

This complicated rocket surgery can be a bit offputting for your average Jill, who’s just getting her head in the cloud. For those still hesitant, AWS showcases the human side of women in tech through a series of interviews dubbed their “Breaking the Bias” series. It starts with a chat with some of the lovely ladies that make up the AWS developer relations team, but we also get to meet a big data architect, a product lead, and a mechatronics engineer. AWS must know something about attracting female talent, and they offer suggestions on how to make the workplace more inclusive for women. The AWS architects think women are particularly well suited to the solutions architect position but have a hopeful message to all women interested in starting a career in technology. I didn’t see any mention of MacKenzie Scott (Bezos’ former wife) even though she is third on the list of richest women in the world, in no small part due to AWS.

Is AWS Environmentally Friendly?

Weather Boy Meme

Without the ability to measure something, you cannot control it. Up until recently, measuring the environmental impact of your cloud workloads was largely guesswork. With the launch of the carbon footprint tool, AWS gives you the ability to measure your cloud resource’s carbon footprint. Chances are AWS is already measuring it because they’ve pledged to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. The calculations are interesting. They consider the emissions based on the electric grid of the region your services are running in. Between now and 2040, I would think they could make a few bucks by offering a carbon-offset cloud service.

They also let you know how efficiently your workload is over a traditional data center. How they calculate these numbers is less clear. I assume that services like S3 are somehow more efficient than running your own NAS in a data center. Personally, these numbers would be more meaningful if they compared AWS to running my infrastructure out of a dusty closet with an extra AC unit cranked up to 11. Resource link here.

Delete AWS Account API released!

Once upon a time, there was no way to automate the entire lifecycle of AWS accounts. To delete an account, you had to log into the console and reassure AWS of your certainty by typing variations of “yes, I’m sure” multiple times. For anyone who runs an organization that spins up and down AWS accounts, this is not only annoying but makes certain account workflows impractical.

That day is no longer as AWS has silently released the DeleteOrganization action for the Organizations API. Now management accounts in an AWS organization can delete member accounts, provided that they do not manage any accounts themselves. The only stupidly frustrating limitation of this API is that you can only delete 10% of your active accounts every 30 days, up to 200. The upside of this new API is that closing accounts through the console is slightly less infuriating.

I understand that the idea of customers deleting their accounts isn’t palatable for AWS marketing and is likely why this important release has been quiet. There is a solution, though, because this AWS API call is also the only single API call you can make that will ensure your data is never hacked.

Hacked Meme

Miscellaneous News

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