Season 4 Episode 23: Pricing, Protection, and Privacy

In Season 4, Episode 23, Karl and Jon are joined by Cloud Security Consultant, Deep Shankar Yadav for a wide-ranging discussion on recent cloud updates and innovations. They cover the latest enhancements to the AWS Pricing Calculator, including support for discounts and purchase commitments, making it easier for users to estimate and plan costs more accurately. The conversation moves to Amazon EC2's new feature that allows for the deletion of underlying EBS snapshots when deregistering AMIs, helping users streamline storage management. They also explore how Amazon GuardDuty and Amazon Detective can be used together to detect and investigate EC2 malware, providing stronger security insights. The episode highlights how developers can boost productivity with Claude Code and take advantage of prompt caching in Amazon Bedrock. They also reflect on AWS’s launch of a new sovereign cloud in Europe, aimed at addressing data residency and regulatory requirements. To cap it all off, the trio dives into a fun debate over whether karate is fundamentally more offensive or defensive in nature.

04:26 - AWS Pricing Calculator https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/what...
The AWS Pricing Calculator now supports discounts and purchase commitments, allowing users to get more accurate cost estimates. This update is particularly useful for product businesses and internal teams, but may add complexity for consulting businesses when explaining costs to clients. The tool's effectiveness still depends on accurately knowing usage patterns.

13:25 - Amazon EC2 and EBS snapshots https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/what...
Amazon EC2 now allows users to delete underlying EBS snapshots when deregistering AMIs. This feature helps clean up orphaned snapshots and reduces storage costs. Users need to enable this option manually, and it won't delete snapshots associated with multiple AMIs.

20:37 - Detecting EC2 malware https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicse...
The article discusses using Amazon GuardDuty and Amazon Detective together to detect and investigate EC2 malware. While this combination provides a good workflow for security investigations, it requires manual setup and lacks some features found in commercial malware protection offerings, such as automatic quarantine.

27:22 - Claude Code and Bedrock prompt caching https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-...
Anthropic's Claude Code is entering the AI coding assistant market, competing with GitHub Copilot and Amazon's Q Developer. The article highlights the benefits of using Claude Code through AWS Bedrock, including data privacy and prompt caching for improved efficiency.

33:24 -AWS sovereign cloud in Europe https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/aws/b...
AWS is launching a sovereign cloud in Europe, starting in Germany, to address data sovereignty concerns. This separate entity will be governed independently from Amazon Inc. and AWS. The move is seen as a response to growing demands for data localization and sovereignty, particularly in regions like the Middle East.