AWS re:Invent 2024: The Age of Data and AI

20 Dec 2024 AWS re:Invent 2024: The Age of Data and AI

AWS re:Invent has wrapped up for 2024, so in this post myself and my colleague Clive Li (that’s us in the picture above!) will share our highlights from attending the event in Las Vegas.

Alex

Deep Diving into Infrastructure (AWS Nitro)

My conference kicked off with EC2 Nitro networking under the hood, an interesting deep dive into squeezing every ounce of network performance from AWS infrastructure. I also recommend this older talk AWS re:Invent 2022 which covers Nitro capabilities more generally. It’s impressive how much functionality AWS have managed to offload to hardware that would otherwise have to be virtualised via a software hypervisor, gaining some tangible security and performance benefits.

Serverless Database Evolution (Aurora DSQL)

One of the most intriguing announcements was Aurora DSQL, Amazon’s new distributed SQL offering announced during the CEO Keynote with Matt Garman. This solution appears to bring the operational simplicity of DynamoDB to a relational database that is PostgreSQL-wire compatible. Compared to other RDS offerings, Aurora DSQL:

• Uses an active-active architecture for better fault tolerance (Aurora RDS needing seconds of downtime to failover)
• Appears to scale down to zero and back up again efficiently enough for practical use (unlike Aurora Serverless V2)
• Scales without needing read replicas or sharding (optionally run globally beyond a single AWS region)
• Doesn’t need RDS Proxy for connection pooling when using with AWS Lambda

Aurora DSQL is in preview at the moment and has a number of limitations to be aware of. However, if it works as advertised this looks amazing for many use cases, I’m just hoping I’ll still feel the same once pricing is announced 🤞.

See the AWS announcment blog post for more information, or check out Marc Brooker’s content on this topic:

• The series of blogs post starting with DSQL Vignette: Aurora DSQL, and A Personal Story
• The re:Invent presentations Get started with Amazon Aurora DSQL and Deep dive into Amazon Aurora DSQL and its architecture

AWS Managed Iceberg (S3 Tables)

Also announced during the CEO Keynote were S3 Tables, which appears to be an AWS managed solution for Apache Iceberg built on an S3 foundation.

I’ve read a lot about data lake technologies like Iceberg, Delta Lake and Hudi, and have wondered which to go with should an opportunity arise. Recently Iceberg has been gaining more and more adoption and with this announcement it’s looking like a solid option, I’m excited to try it out.

For more information, see the AWS announcement blog post or re:Invent presentation.

Step Functions step up

AWS Step Functions now support variables (yep, they didn’t previously 😒) and a new query / transformation language called JSONata (in place of JSONPath).

This is a very welcome change. I’ve been frustrated in the past with having to create an AWS Lambda for basic transformations that felt like they should have been possible in the Step Function itself. With JSONata I’m hopeful this will be necessary a lot less.

The other announcement of interest was support for calling private APIs via the EventBridge Connections feature. This again empowers Step Functions (and EventBridge rules) to do more without needing extra little Lambdas to glue things together.

For more information, see the AWS announcement blog posts:

• Simplifying developer experience with variables and JSONata in AWS Step Functions
• Securely share AWS resources across VPC and account boundaries with PrivateLink, VPC Lattice, EventBridge, and Step Functions

or re:Invent presentations:

• Building advanced workflows with AWS Step Functions
• Private API integration for Amazon EventBridge and AWS Step Functions

Clive

This year at AWS re:Invent, AI stole the show. Out of about 3,000 sessions, more than 1,000 focused on AI. Generative AI (Gen AI) was everywhere, and nearly half the Expo booths showcased something related—from innovative tools to groundbreaking solutions.

Security in AI was also a big focus. Just before the event, OWASP released the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications 2025, a helpful guide for understanding security risks in AI applications.

AWS also spotlighted new features in Amazon Q Developer. One that caught my attention was its ability to upgrade Java 8 applications to Java 17, along with framework updates. Since many clients are still running legacy Java 8 apps, I’m excited about the potential to trial this new feature in Q Developer soon.

A Fun Challenge: Migrating EC2 Instances to Graviton

One of the coolest sessions I joined was a GameDay where we migrated EC2 instances from x86 to Graviton. The goal? Handle more traffic with fewer resources and lower costs. It was a fun blend of tech skills and strategy.

Phase 1: Easy Wins

We started by switching to Arm64-based Graviton instances. They’re cheaper and just as powerful. Then we resized the instances to get the best cost-per-request ratio.

Phase 2: Getting Creative

In the second half, things got interesting. We realised the test website was just static pages. So, we replaced the Python Gunicorn server with Nginx, which is much better for serving static content. This change boosted performance and cut down resource usage.

Phase 3: Going All In

By the end, we started migrating the whole website to S3, eliminating the need for EC2 instances entirely. We didn’t finish in time, but it was clear this would’ve been the most cost-efficient solution. It was awesome to see how far we could take the challenge.

Insider Tip: Don’t Miss the Vendor Parties!

If you’re planning to attend re:Invent in person next time, don’t skip the vendor parties. AWS re:Invent provides breakfast and lunch, but the real fun happens after hours. Vendors host parties with free dinners, drinks, and even activities like golf or tickets to the Sphere. These events aren’t listed in the AWS re:Invent app, but you can find a detailed list at Conference Parties. They’re great for networking, unwinding, or just getting some great photos:

That wraps up our recap of highlights from re:Invent 2024. Couldn’t make it yourself? No worries! You can still catch up on the keynotes and breakout sessions on the AWS Events Channel on YouTube.