Hero guide: DevOps and developer productivity
This guide highlights sessions at re:Invent 2024 for professionals interested in DevOps, CI/CD, and developer productivity who want to enhance their skills and be more productive on AWS. It has a particular focus on builder experience.
Johannes Koch
AWS DevTools Hero
This guide highlights sessions at re:Invent 2024 for professionals interested in DevOps, CI/CD, and developer productivity who want to enhance their skills and be more productive on AWS. It has a particular focus on builder experience.
I’ve captured hands-on sessions and a lot of knowledge sharing sessions that give you a good understanding of DevOps and what developer productivity on AWS means. This guide covers a broad base of services because all of them are required for you to level up your builder experience on AWS.
Breakout session
DAT419 | An insider’s look into architecture choices for Amazon DynamoDB
To overcome the performance and scale limitations of relational databases, AWS built Amazon DynamoDB to deliver consistent single-digit millisecond performance at any scale for the most demanding applications on the planet. In this session, learn about the architecture choices for Amazon DynamoDB. Gain a better understanding of when to use DynamoDB and why DynamoDB is used by over one million AWS customers to power hundreds of applications that exceed half a million requests per second. Leave with a new perspective on how to design your own applications.
API311 | Application integration for platform builders
Modern distributed applications leverage diverse integration components such as queues, event brokers, and workflows. To enhance developer productivity and enforce best practices, platform architects automate the management of these components, incorporating robust logging, monitoring, and security measures. In this session, explore the implementation of application integration using serverless components in enterprise environments. Gain insights on implementing effective data masking techniques, establishing comprehensive observability, and securely configuring cross-account access, and learn how to design and maintain scalable, secure distributed systems that align with enterprise-grade standards.
SVS401 | Best practices for serverless developers
Do you want to take advantage of the full power of serverless architectures for your production workloads? Are you wondering how events can help your applications scale? Have you been trying to tune your applications for higher performance and lower cost? This session provides architectural best practices, optimizations, and useful shortcuts that experts can use to build secure, high-scale, and high-performance serverless applications.
API402 | Building advanced workflows with AWS Step Functions
Are you an experienced serverless developer building applications with AWS Step Functions workflows? Are you wondering when to use a Map state, Parallel state, or a nested workflow? In this session, learn about architectural best practices and repeatable patterns for building advanced workflows. Discover how to build secure, high-scale, and high-performance serverless applications while being cost-effective. Learn how newly released features like JSONata support, variables, and private API endpoint connections can make your workflows more efficient and reduce cost. This session shares real production scenarios to illustrate the benefits.
OPN402 | Gain expert-level knowledge about Powertools for AWS Lambda
Did you learn serverless best practices but are unsure about implementation? Have you used Powertools for AWS Lambda but felt you barely scratched the surface? This session dives deep into observability practices, resilient data pipelines with AWS Batch, safe retries with idempotency, mono- and multi-function APIs, and more. Learn about each practice in depth, achieve expert-level knowledge, and hear from maintainers about what’s next.
SAS315 | SaaS meets cell-based architecture: A natural multi-tenant fit
Building a multi-tenant SaaS architecture is a balancing act. Finding the right blend of cost efficiency, scale, resilience, and operational agility can be challenging. It’s here that a cell-based architecture can often be a natural fit. The cell-based model gives you new ways to approach tenant isolation, deployment, scaling, regional distribution, and tiering, bringing a range of new possibilities to your SaaS architecture and operational footprint. In this session, dive deep on cell-based multi-tenant architecture and discover the strategies, patterns, and considerations that come with employing this model.
Builders' session
ARC308 | Harnessing generative AI to create & understand architecture diagrams
This builders’ session explores using generative AI to create and comprehend architecture diagrams, a critical aspect of software design and communication. Diagrams are often image data, custom formats of drawing programs, or text-based representations from diagram-as-code tools. Techniques are used from two different layers of the generative AI stack, Amazon Q Developer and foundational models on Amazon Bedrock. Chat-based workflows first understand and analyze existing diagrams, and then ask follow-up questions about best practices. New diagrams are created using diagram-as-code formats. Leave with practical strategies for harnessing generative AI in your software architecture workflows. You must bring your laptop to participate.
ARC302-R | Observability-driven development [REPEAT]
Operational excellence is a must-have for a well-architected workload and is integral to delivering a fault-tolerant, resilient, and performant workload. In this builders’ session, learn architectural best practices to help develop a workload health dashboard using AWS X-Ray and Amazon CloudWatch. Insights from the dashboard can help teams track, inspect, and ingest continuous improvement toward operational excellence. Learn how you can use Amazon Q to help instrument the application with AWS X-Ray, and explore features such as machine learning (ML)–based anomaly detection to help identify abnormal usage patterns; feature flags to help experiment with launching new features; and multi-tenant cost allocations based on usage. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SVS204-R | Write less code: Building applications with a serverless mindset [REPEAT]
Building with a serverless mindset focuses on business value. You can derive more value by using built-in integrations between AWS services set up through configuration than by writing glue code. This hands-on session explores patterns for using direct service integrations using Amazon API Gateway, AWS Step Functions, and Amazon EventBridge. Discover the efficiency of utilizing configuration to streamline development tasks, and push the heavy lifting to AWS. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SAS303-R | Zero to SaaS in one hour [REPEAT]
Building a multi-tenant SaaS architecture requires teams to consider a wide range of design and architecture strategies: the footprint of your control plane, the services it will host, how you’ll handle onboarding, what tiers you’ll support, and how you’ll isolate tenants. In this session, learn the core elements of a SaaS architecture. Take an in-depth look at building out some of the core constructs while highlighting the design and implementation decisions that will impact your approach. You must bring your laptop to participate.
Chalk talk
IMP301-R | Your mission and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day [REPEAT]
Even with the best planning, hardware and software can fail, prized employees can leave, and the unexpected can disrupt operations. A disaster is often the time when it’s critical for mission-based workloads (such as credit union banking or fundraising solutions) to be available. How do you deliver on your mission when the unexpected happens? In this chalk talk, learn about ways to minimize workload impacts, including architectural practices, monitoring patterns, and gray failure detection, and discover how to build a culture of continuous resilience. Gain the knowledge necessary to deliver on your mission even when faced with a disaster.
Code talk
SVS311 | Build efficient serverless APIs with Powertools for AWS Lambda
Explore the pragmatic considerations for building serverless applications in this code talk. Learn how many AWS Lambda functions should comprise a single API, and discover techniques for progressively improving your API event handlers. Understand the challenges, solutions, and trade-offs involved in creating modular, well-architected Lambda “monoliths” (Lambdaliths). Gain insights into using Powertools for Lambda to construct efficient monolithic and microservice Lambda function architectures. Leave with a clear approach for structuring your serverless APIs using the Lambdalith and other patterns.
SVS326 | Serverless developer experience: A day in the life of a developer
What does it mean to be a serverless developer? What disciplines do you need to master to build cloud-native, serverless solutions today? In this code talk, walk through a day in the life of a serverless developer and explore the core principles, architecture patterns, frameworks, and tools you need to know to build your next-generation serverless application.
Gamified learning
GHJ301 | AWS GameDay: Developer experience (sponsored by New Relic)
Join us for an interactive and collaborative learning exercise to gain practical skills for working with code on AWS. Come blend the skills of developers and operations teams to fully harness the combined power of DevOps. Leverage and build skills in serverless applications, CI/CD pipelines, containers, infrastructure as code, and more. Whether you’re a seasoned cloud professional or just starting your journey, this developer experience AWS GameDay is an opportunity to put your theoretical knowledge to the test and gain invaluable experience. You must bring your laptop to participate. This GameDay also features a quest from New Relic.
Interactive training
TNC307 | Create functions using AWS SDK for Python with Amazon Bedrock API
In this lab, create a reusable, parameterized question answering function using AWS SDK for Python (Boto3) with Amazon Bedrock. Build text and image generation capabilities, leveraging prompt engineering to invoke foundation models. Integrate the Amazon Bedrock API, save images to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Rekognition for object detection to develop a library of Amazon Bedrock-powered services. Workstations are provided for you; no laptop required.
Workshop
DOP308-R | Accelerating enterprise development with Amazon Q Developer [REPEAT]
In this workshop, explore the transformative impact of generative AI in development. Get hands-on experience with Amazon Q Developer to learn how it can help you understand, build, and operate AWS applications. Explore the IDE to see how Amazon Q provides software development assistance, including code explanation, generation, modernization, and much more. You must bring your laptop to participate.
PEX401 | Running generative AI inference on Amazon EKS
Some of the most innovative AWS customers are using Amazon EKS to train and run inference for cutting-edge generative AI workloads. In this workshop, learn how to train and serve LLMs on Amazon EKS. Discover how to deploy the JARK stack (Jupyter, Argo Workflows, Ray, and Karpenter) into an Amazon EKS cluster, and learn how to use these tools to train a publicly available model from Hugging Face. This workshop is intended for AWS Partners.
NTA405-R | Must-know techniques to optimize your AWS environment [REPEAT]
This workshop equips you (particularly if you are new to AWS) with essential tools and techniques that can be used to optimize your environments, even before changing a single line of code in your applications. Using hands-on exercises, learn to leverage AWS Cloud Financial Management tools, AWS Security Hub, and additional resources to identify cost savings, improve performance and resilience, and strengthen your security posture. Leave equipped to take full control of your AWS environment and unlock its full potential. You must bring your laptop to participate.
Closing comments
Hopefully these recommendations give you a better understanding of DevOps and how you can improve your developer experience on AWS with a few hands-on learnings as well as informative sessions.