I just spent a couple of hours playing around with AWS’ new Cloud9 product, a fully browser based IDE with a lot of integration into AWS services.

I’m really impressed with the product overall. I have not ever had the chance to use Cloud9 prior to AWS purchasing it, but I can definitely understand the merits and interest by a lot of developers in a completely cloud-based IDE.

Here are some of my thoughts and findings that are more relevant from an infrastructure operations perspective. I know developers will be eager to get their hands on this product in the enterprise!

AWS’ DNS offering, Route 53, is a great option for managing the basics of name resolution when resources exist solely within the AWS ecosystem. Route 53 integrates with most all of AWS’ services, offers great alias record functionality, and is easy to automate. However, for enterprises looking to make the move to AWS, especially in a hybrid deployment, Route 53 will most likely not be enough to provide all of the name resolution capabilities required. Because of this, hybrid DNS solutions need to be explored and implemented.

Amazon’s EC2 Systems Manager was launched at re:Invent 2016. It brings with it a lot of very useful tools meant to ease the administration and management of your EC2 instances and associated resources. One part of the EC2 Systems Manager suite is the Parameter Store. I think the Parameter Store is actually really quite powerful and can help secure your AWS environment in ways that may not be initially obvious.

This past week I had the opportunity to attend AWS’ 2016 re:Invent conference for the first time. It was awesome! The connections I made and the things I learned will definitely stick with me for a long time to come! This year’s conference had over 30,000 people, and while that probably sounds overwhelming, it was overall run very well.

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