AWS Official Blog

Today we have a very special guest post. My colleague Shannon Kellogg is a senior member of our Public Policy team. He has an interesting perspective on the role of public policies for renewable energy, with a focus on how they affect investment and economic growth.

— Jeff;

In late September, I traveled to Virginia’s Eastern Shore to join Governor Terry McAuliffe and other state and local officials for his announcement of the Commonwealth’s issuance of its first permit for a new 80 megawatt solar facility that will be constructed in Accomack County. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has partnered with Community Energy to build the new installation — Amazon Solar Farm US East — and the project is expected to more than quadruple the amount of solar energy currently installed in Virginia. In his announcement, Governor McAuliffe said: “The partnership between Community Energy and Amazon Web Services, which will result in the largest solar facility in the mid-Atlantic, is indicative of the types of opportunities that my Administration is working toward through our commitment to build a new Virginia economy.”

We are excited about the positive impact that Amazon Solar Farm US East can have on the local economy in Virginia as our company continues to push for more renewable energy sources nationwide. To date, we have made significant progress toward advancing renewable energy by teaming up with developers in Indiana and North Carolina to announce new wind farms in those states as well as the new solar installation on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. These projects will deliver power to electrical grids that supply current and future AWS Cloud Computing data centers. Together these three projects will generate enough new renewable energy to power the equivalent of 122,000 US homes, or a city about the size of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   We expect that the contracts we have with developers for these three installations will allow AWS to meet or exceed its goal of using 40 percent renewable power in our data centers globally by the end of 2016. That will be a major step forward in meeting our long-term goal of 100 percent renewable power for our global infrastructure.

The ground-breaking ceremony for the Amazon Wind Farm US East in North Carolina, which included state and local government officials such as North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.

When Amazon’s solar and wind farms turn on that much clean power, over time the power grid will have a reduced reliance on the equivalent amount of fossil fuel generation somewhere else because it’s no longer needed. We believe these investments help build the scale (and the business case) for solar and wind technology manufacturers to continue to innovate and continue to lower the costs of renewable power for everyone.

However, despite the progress that companies like Amazon are making toward the greater adoption of renewable energy sources, there is still quite a distance to go in the U.S. to make renewable energy sources widely available enough to keep up with growing demand by our industry and others. In August, The Economist stated that while in “some places wind turbines and solar cells are now a cheaper way of generating electricity than fossil fuels are,” the publication also noted that “renewables, other than hydropower, still provide less than 3 percent of the world’s energy.”

That gets to the second point The Economist editorial staff made; despite more solar and wind power sources being available that are priced competitively with fossil fuels, the percentage of the world’s energy in these categories is still very limited. It doesn’t have to be that way. By putting in place thoughtful policy – to provide certainty to businesses working in the renewable energy sector and to level the playing field with other sources of energy – our industry can accelerate and expand investments in new renewable projects, which will diversify the US electrical energy generation mix. That’s not only the right policy for businesses but it’s the right policy for our long-term energy security.

As federal energy and tax reform bills are considered by the U.S. Congress, policymakers have an opportunity to achieve an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that includes oil, gas, and renewable energy by giving investors access to a corporate structure with a tax advantage that is currently only available for fossil fuel-based energy projects. Congress should enact the Master Limited Partnerships (MLP) Parity Act, a bi-partisan bill introduced this summer that would give investors in renewable energy projects the same tax benefits that investors in the fossil fuel energy industry have been enjoying for decades.

There are also other steps that federal and state policymakers can take right now to ensure that renewable energy sources will continue to be competitively priced with fossil fuels in the near-term while wind and solar prices continue to fluctuate. First, Congress should adopt the two-year extension (through 2016) of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind that was included in the tax extenders bill introduced in the Senate earlier this year; second, the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar should be extended beyond 2016 if possible.  At minimum, a proposed “commence construction” provision for the ITC should be included in any federal tax extender package enacted this year. This proposed change to the ITC would adjust the federal tax credit to allow projects to qualify for the ITC if construction on the project begins prior to the statutory expiration of the existing ITC on December 31, 2016, rather than the current requirement that the project is “placed in service” by ITC expiration.

In states such as Virginia that aim to create more renewable energy jobs it is time to pursue more competitive property tax rates for large-scale renewable projects, while also considering other policies to foster the construction of renewable energy projects such as a state-level investment tax credit that could eventually help replace the federal ITC.  For those states that want to continue to attract renewable energy investment and the corresponding job creation, it is important to have the right policies in place for long-term impact to achieve the economic benefits that Governor McAuliffe, Governor McCrory, and other state leaders are seeking.

Together, advancement of these policies at both the federal and state levels could provide the runway and visibility to bring about a more abundant renewable energy future.  Amazon will continue to work hard to invest in more renewable projects as AWS continues its march toward our 100 percent renewable power goal for its global infrastructure footprint.  And, we are committed to working with our business partners, government policymakers and other stakeholders to help make it happen.

— Shannon Kellogg, Director, AWS Public Policy

The Challenge
Our City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge was designed to encourage local governments to use AWS to create innovative solutions to problems faced by local governments in the United States and other countries. Each year, we recognize winners in three categories: Best Practices, Dream Big, and Partners in Innovation.

Over the years that we have been operating this challenge, we have been impressed by the amount of energy and attention that local governments devote to creating tools, apps, and data sources that provide tangible benefits to their citizens, often assisting them with information that will allow them to lead lives that are safer more productive, and better informed.

And the Envelope Please!
I am pleased to be able to reveal the winners of the 2015 City on a Cloud Challenge!

There are three winners in the Best Practices category:

• Louisville Metro Data Initiatives (Kentucky, US) – With a focus on open data and data-driven performance, the Louisville Metro Government created a series of custom sites hosted on AWS. The sites are designed to provide citizens with meaningful insights into government priorities and actions, along with the opportunity to review, analyze, and comment on government actions and processes.
• King County (Washington, US) – This county has replaced a costly and expensive tape-powered backup and disaster recovery system with a modern, cloud-powered system that combines physical and virtual cloud-powered storage appliances with Amazon Glacier and S3, with a projected savings of $1 million in the first year, and $200K thereafter.
• South Central Development and Planning Commission (Louisiana, US) -This county created MyGovernmentOnline. This site provides cloud-powered, location-oriented tracking of assets owned by government agencies of any size.

There are two winners in the Dream Big category:

• City of Chicago (Illinois, US) – The city created OpenGrid, an open source information system that supports real-time monitoring and retrieval of historical data sources.
• City of Marquette (Michigan, US) – The proposed CemeteryHost application will allow users to quickly and easy locate graves in Marquette’s historic Park Cemetery.

We would also like to recognize Trouver of Malaysia; their cross-platform collaborative tracking platform merits an honorable mention.

Finally, there are seven winners in the category of Partners in Innovation:

• Seamless Docs (US) – A quick route to a paperless government, with conversion of existing forms and PDFs to online versions, including support for electronic signatures.
• Quicket Solutions (US) – Cloud-based solutions for law enforcement to increase officer safety, boost patrol officer productivity, and increase public convenience.
• Vizalytics Technology (US) -On-the-go insights for local businesses, residents, and government agencies, powered by real-time data sets from cities, states, and local governments.
• GrupoTX (Colombia) – Improvements to government processes which lead to a better relationship between the citizens and the government.
• DataCats (Canada) – An open source project that trivializes the creation of open data infrastructure for states, regional, and local governments.
• ViewScan (Panama) – A web application that integrates GIS and transactional information to help citizens and government track urban changes, local businesses, transportation, public services, traffic, and environmental landmarks.
• Park Smart (Italy) – A platform that provides real-time visibility into the availability of parking spaces in monitored areas.

Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks again to everyone who took the time to create and submit an entry!

— Jeff;

As we did last month, we are running a series of webinars designed to bring you up to speed on the latest AWS services & features, and to make sure that you are aware of the best ways to put them to use.

The webinars are free but “seating” is limited and you should definitely sign up ahead of time if you want to attend (all times are Pacific):

Tuesday, November 17
AWS Device Farm allows you to test your mobile apps on real devices in an automated fashion.

• Webinar: Automated Mobile App Testing with AWS Device Farm (9 – 10 AM).
• Blog Post: AWS Device Farm – Test Mobile Apps on Real Devices.

Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence tool. You can build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and get business insights from your data.

• Webinar: Introducing Amazon QuickSight (10:30 – 11:30 AM).
• Blog Post: Amazon QuickSight – Fast & Easy to Use Business Intelligence for Big Data at 1/10th the Cost of Traditional Solutions.

CloudWatch Dashboards lets you to build customized metrics dashboards that display Amazon CloudWatch metrics from one or more AWS regions.

• Webinar: Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards (Noon – 1 PM).
• Blog Post: CloudWatch Dashboard – Create & Use Customized Metrics Views.

Wednesday, November 18
The Amazon ECS CLI gives you command-line access to Amazon EC2 Container Service. You can create clusters, list container instances, create and manage tasks, and more.

• Webinar: Introducing Amazon ECS CLI (9 – 10 AM).
• Blog Post: EC2 Container Service Update – Container Registry, ECS CLI, AZ-Aware Scheduling, and More.

AWS Config Rules give you the ability to create compliance-checking rules that look for desirable or undesirable configurations of AWS resources.

• Webinar: Introducing Config Rules (10:30 – 11:30 AM).
• Blog Post: AWS Config Rules – Dynamic Compliance Checking for Cloud Resources.

Amazon S3’s Standard – Infrequent Access storage class is an economical way to store data that is rarely accessed.

• Webinar: Introducing a new storage class for Amazon S3: Standard-Infrequent Access  (Noon – 1 PM).
•  Blog Post: AWS Storage Update – New Lower Cost S3 Storage Option & Glacier Price Reduction.

Thursday, November 19
Over the past couple of years we have identified and refined a set of best practices for designing and building big data application that run on AWS.

• Webinar: Architectural Patterns and Best Practices for Big Data on AWS (9 – 10 AM).
• AWS Big Data Blog.

Amazon Aurora is a fast and highly scalable relational database designed to be compatible with MySQL.

• Webinar: Amazon Aurora Deep Dive (10:30 – 11:30 AM).
• Blog Post: Amazon Aurora – New Cost-Effective MySQL-Compatible Database Engine for Amazon RDS.

Amazon Redshift lets you build cost-effective data warehouses that can store well over a petabyte of data. Amazon Machine Learning helps you to perform predictive analytics on your data.

• Webinar: Advanced Analytics with Amazon Redshift and the Amazon Machine Learning Service (Noon – 1 PM).
• Blog Posts: Amazon Machine Learning – Make Data-Driven Decisions at Scale and Amazon Redshift – The New AWS Data Warehouse.

— Jeff;

The region-based AWS model has proven to be a good match for the needs of our global customer base. We have always believed that you need to be able to exercise complete control over where your data is stored and where it is processed.

Next Stop, Korea
I am happy to announce that we will be opening an AWS region in Korea in early 2016. This will be the fifth AWS region in the Asia Pacific area, bringing the global total to 12 (this does not include the regions that we are planning to open in India and Ohio, also in 2016).

There are already many AWS customers in Korea. Here are some examples:

• Hot Startups – Devsisters (re:Invent video), IGAWorks (re:Invent video), and Beatpacking (case study).
• Top Gaming Companies – Nexon (case study), Gamevil (case study), and Wemade (case study).
• Enterprises – Samsung (case study), SK Planet (case study), and SM Entertainment (case study).

These customers (and many others) have asked us for a local region; we are looking forward to making it available to them and to many other enterprises, startups, partners, government agencies, and educators in Korea.

The new region, coupled with Korea’s world-leading internet connectivity, will provide customers with quick, low-latency access to websites, mobile applications, games, SaaS applications, and more. For example, the new region will allow service providers in Korea to build the next generation of SaaS applications and to make them available to customers all over the world. The new region will allow organizations outside of Korea to reach end users in the area with very low latency; we also believe that it will spur innovation around mobile apps, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Stay Tuned
I’ll have more info on the region, including a list of AWS services and EC2 instance types, when we are ready to launch.

You can also check in with the AWS Korean-language blog and join the AWS Korean User Group (over 5,000 members).

— Jeff;

My colleague Angela Chapman wrote the guest post below to make you aware of longer instance, reservation, volume, and snapshot IDs that we will be rolling out in 2016.

– Jeff;

EC2 and EBS are planning to increase the length of some of their resource IDs over the coming year. In 2016, we will be introducing longer IDs for instances, reservations, volumes, and snapshots.  You will have until the end of next year to opt-in to receiving the longer IDs, and the switch-over will not impact most customers. However, we wanted to make you aware of these upcoming changes so you can schedule time in 2016 to test your systems with these longer IDs.

We need to do this given how fast AWS is continuing to grow; we will start to run low on IDs for certain EC2 and EBS resources within a year or so.  In order to enable the long-term, uninterrupted creation of new instances, reservations, volumes, and snapshots, we will need to introduce a longer ID format for these resources.  The new IDs will be the same format as existing IDs, but longer. The current ID format is a resource identifier followed by an 8-character string, and the new format will be the same resource identifier followed by a 17-character string.

The vast majority of our customers will not be impacted by this change. Only systems that parse or store resource IDs might be impacted. For those impacted, you can continue using the existing 8-character IDs for your existing resources; these will not change and will continue to be supported. Only new resources after you opt in to the new format will receive the 17-character IDs. The SDKs are already compatible with longer IDs and don’t require any updates.

We’ll enable you to opt in to receiving longer IDs over a transition period that starts in January and will last through December 2016. Until December 2016, use of longer IDs will be optional.  After December 2016, about 13 months from now, all new instances, volumes, reservations, and snapshots will start to receive the longer IDs.

The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, and AWS SDKs are already compatible with longer resource IDs and do not need to be updated to support the longer ID format. We will be introducing new APIs to manage the opt-in process.

Additional information, including a detailed timeline and FAQs, can be found here.  If you have any questions, you can contact the AWS support team on the community forums and via AWS Premium Support.

— Angela Chapman, Senior Product Manager

Are you planning to take the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional exam? If so, we have a new full-day workshop to help you prepare.

The new AWS Certification Exam Readiness Workshop provides an overview of the concepts and knowledge areas covered on the Solutions Architect—Professional exam, and walks you through the exam structure and question formats. You’ll take labs that provide hands-on practice with advanced use cases and practice with exam questions that test your understanding of key architectural concepts.

At the end of the workshop, you’ll also receive a voucher to take an additional online practice exam at no cost.

The new Solutions Architect—Professional exam readiness workshop is designed to complement our three-day Advanced Architecting on AWS technical course, which we recommend taking first. Check the AWS Global Class Schedule to find an upcoming session of either training course near you.

— Jeff;

Today I would like to tell you about a new cross-account snapshot sharing feature for Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). You can share the snapshots with specific AWS accounts or you can make them public.

Cross-Account Snapshot Sharing
I often create snapshot backups as part of my RDS demos:

The snapshots are easy to create and can be restored to a fresh RDS database instance with a couple of clicks.

Today’s big news is that you can now share unencrypted MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL snapshots with other AWS accounts. If you, like many sophisticated AWS customers, use separate AWS accounts for development, testing, and production, you can now share snapshots between AWS accounts in a controlled fashion. If a late-breaking bug is discovered in a production system, you can create a database snapshot and then share it with select developers so that they can diagnose the problem without having to have access to the production account or system.

Each snapshot can be shared with up to 20 other accounts (we can raise this limit for your account if necessary; just ask). You can also mark snapshots as public so that any RDS user can restore a database containing your data. This is a great way to share data sets and research results!

Here is how you share a snapshot with another AWS account using the RDS Console (you can also do this from the command line or the RDS API):

Here’s how a snapshot appears in the accounts that it is shared with (again, this functionality is also accessible from the command line and the RDS API):

Here is how you create a public snapshot:

Snapshot sharing works across regions, but does not apply to the China (Beijing) region or to AWS GovCloud (US).

— Jeff;

You can use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud to create a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud. Within the VPC, you can define your desired IP address range, create subnets, configure route tables, and so forth. You can also use a network gateway to connect the VPC to your existing on-premises network using a hardware Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. The VPN running in the AWS Cloud (also known as a VPN gateway or VGW) communicates with a customer gateway (CGW) on your network or in your data center (read about Your Customer Gateway to learn more).

Today we are adding several new features to the VPN. Here’s a summary:

• NAT Traversal
• Additional Encryption Options
• Reusable IP addresses for the CGW

In order to take advantage of any of these new features, you will need to create a new VGW and then create new VPN tunnels with the desired attributes.

NAT Traversal
Network Address Translation (NAT) maps one range of IP addresses to another. Let’s say that you have private IP space on your local LAN that all connects to the internet through a single router or firewall. You aren’t able to put your VPN device (CGW) on a public IP address of it’s own. You can now use Network Address Translation to map the CGW from a private IP to a public, and use NAT-Traversal, or NAT-T, to connect your CGW to your Virtual Private Gateway (VGW). NAT-T allows you to create IP connections that originate on-premises behind a NAT device and connect to a VPC using addresses that have been translated. This mapping process takes places when the VPN is established.

You don’t need to do anything to set this up in the AWS Management Console. You just need to configure your NAT device for NAT-Traversal. You will also need to open up UDP port 4500 in your firewall in order to make use of NAT-T.

Additional Encryption Options
You can now make use of several new encryption options.

When the VPC’s hardware VPN is in the process of establishing a connection with your on-premises VPN, it proposes several different encryption options, each with a different strength. You can now configure the VPN on the VPC to propose AES256 as an alternative to the older and weaker AES128. If you decide to make use of this new option, you should configure your device so that it no longer accepts a proposal to use AES128 encryption.

The two endpoints participate in a Diffie-Hellman key exchange in order to establish a shared secret. The Diffie-Hellman groups used in the exchange will determine the strength of the hash on the keys. You can now configure the use of a wider range of groups:

• Phase 1 can now use DH groups 2, 14-18, 22, 23, and 24.
• Phase 2 can now use DH groups 1, 2, 5, 14-18, 22, 23, and 24.

Packets that flow across the VPN connection are verified using a hash algorithm. A matching hash gives a very high-quality indicator that the packet has not been maliciously modified along the way. You can now configure the VPN on the VPC to use the SHA-2 hashing algorithm with a 256 bit digest (also known as SHA-256). Again, you should configure your device to disallow the use of the weaker hash algorithms.

Reusable CGW IP Addresses
You no longer need to specify a unique IP address for each customer gateway connection that you create. Instead, you can now reuse an existing IP address. Many VPC users have been asking for this feature and I expect it to be well-used.

To learn more, read our FAQ and the VPC Network Adminstrator Guide.

— Jeff;

My colleague Ariel Gold wrote the guest post below to introduce the newest AWS Public Data Set.

— Jeff;

You can now access real-time and archival NEXRAD weather radar data as an AWS Public Data Set.

The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) is a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that detects precipitation and atmospheric movement and disseminates data in approximately 5 minute intervals from each site. NEXRAD enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors. As part of our research agreement with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we are making NEXRAD data freely available on Amazon S3.

The real-time feed and full historical archive of NEXRAD Level II data, from June 1991 to present, is now available for anyone to use. Level II is original resolution, base data from the NEXRAD system.

This is the first time the full NEXRAD Level II archive has been accessible to the public on demand. A wide range of customers have expressed interest in this data, including insurance providers, climate researchers, logistics companies, and weather companies. We’re excited to see what you do with it!

You can learn more about the data and how to access it on our NEXRAD on AWS page.

How We’re Sharing the Data
We’ve been testing out new ways to make NEXRAD data easy to use in the cloud. Before I get into some of the details of our approach, here are a couple of radar data terms for the uninitiated. First, “volume scan” refers to the data collected by the Doppler radar site as it scans the atmosphere. The NEXRAD site breaks these volume scans into “chunks” – small packages of data that are quickly transmitted as a real-time feed. The NEXRAD network generates about 1,200 chunks per hour.

We are storing the real-time chunks and archive (volume scan files) Level II data in two public Amazon S3 buckets. Data flows into the chunks bucket via Unidata’s Local Data Manager (LDM) system with minimal latency from the NEXRAD sites. The chunks are then assembled into volume scan files and added to the archive bucket within seconds or minutes of production. This creates a continuously updated, near-real-time archive of volume scan files.

You can find information on the data structure on our NEXRAD on AWS page. You’ll see that the real-time data is hosted in the “unidata-nexrad-level2-chunks” Amazon S3 bucket. Unidata provides data services, tools, and cyberinfrastructure leadership for the earth science community and they have been fantastic collaborators on this project. You can read more about their experience setting up the NEXRAD real-time feed on AWS on their blog.

Getting Started with NEXRAD on AWS
Unidata, The Climate Corporation, and CartoDB have contributed tutorials to help you get started using NEXRAD on AWS. For example, this tutorial from The Climate Corporation shows you how to read and display the NEXRAD Level II archive data from your Python programs.

Unidata has also made the NEXRAD Level II archive data available via their THREDDS Data Server. You can also browse the archive contents via the AWS JavaScript S3 Explorer:

Learn more about ways to use the data on our NEXRAD on AWS page.

Thank You
We’d like to thank our collaborators at NOAA, CICS-NC, Unidata, and The Weather Company who helped us launch this public data set and continue to help make it available. Many others helped test and contribute tools to the data set and we welcome additional contributions. Tell us how you’re using the data via the NEXRAD on AWS page and sign up for updates on the NOAA Big Data Project here.

— Ariel Gold, Program Manager, AWS Open Data

When you move from a relatively static and homogeneous computing environment where you have a small number of persistent, well-known servers (or instances, using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) terminology) to a larger and more dynamic and heterogeneous environment, you may need to think about managing and controlling those instances in a new way.

New EC2 Run Command
Today we are introducing EC2 Run Command. This new feature will help you to administer your instances (no matter how many you have) in a manner that is both easy and secure. This feature was designed to support a wide range of enterprise scenarios including installing software, running ad hoc scripts or Microsoft PowerShell commands, configuring Windows Update settings, and more. It is accessible from the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, and the AWS SDKs. If you currently administer individual Windows instances by running PS1 scripts or individual PowerShell commands, you can now run them on one or more instances.

We built this feature after talking to many users about their management needs. Here are some of the themes that came about as a result of these conversations:

• A need to implement configuration changes across their instances on a consistent yet ad hoc basis.
• A need for reliable and consistent results across multiple instances.
• Control over who can perform changes and what can be done.
• A clear audit path of what actions were taken.
• A desire to be able to do all of the above without the need for full remote desktop (RDP) access.

Command execution is secure, reliable, convenient, and scalable. You can create your own commands and exercise fine-grained control over execution privileges by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For example, you can specify that administrative commands can be run on a specific set of instances by a tightly controlled group of trusted users. All of the commands are centrally logged to AWS CloudTrail for easy auditing.

Run Command Benefits
The new Run Command feature was designed to provide you with the following benefits:

Control / Security – You can use IAM policies and roles to regulate access to commands and to instances. This allows you to reduce the number of users who have direct access to the instances.

Reliability – You can increase the reliability of your system by creating templates for your configuration changes. This will give you more control while also increasing predictability and reducing configuration drift over time.

Visibility – You will have more visibility into configuration changes because Run Command supports command tracking and is also integrated with CloudTrail.

Ease of Use – You can choose from a set of predefined commands, run them, and then track their progress using the Console, CLI, or API.

Customizability – You can create custom commands to tailor Run Command to the needs of your organization.

Exercising Run Command from the EC2 Console
Run Command works across all of your Windows instances and uses the existing EC2Config agent on the instances. Open the Console, select Commands, and review the prerequisites for using Run Command:

Click on Run a command to take you to the main Run Command screen. You’ll see your existing runs (if any) and the Run a command button:

Each row on the display represents a command that has been executed on an instance. Click on Run a command to start a new command:

The Command document menu contains seven predefined commands, along with any custom commands that you have created for your account:

Choose the appropriate document based on your use case and the change that you want to make to the target instance(s). Each document has a description and an explanation that will help you to make the right choice. For common administrative tasks, use the AWS-RunPowerShellScript document. This will allow you to run any PowerShell command or to call an existing PowerShell script.

After choosing the document, fill in the command (I used ipconfig), and choose the instances of interest (you can filter by attributes, tags, or keywords):

If you are running a command or script that will generate a lot of output on StdOut, you can specify an S3 bucket and a key prefix and the output will be routed there. If you don’t do this, Run Command will capture and display the first 2500 characters of console output.

When you are ready to proceed, click on Run. The Console will display a confirmation message:

Return to the command history and inspect it to find the results:

Select the desired command, and click on the Output tab:

Then click on View Output:

Using Run Command in Production
Here are some of the ways that you can make use of Run Command in your AWS environment:

• Install and configure third-party agents and software.
• Manage local groups and users.
• Check for installed software or patches, and act on the results.
• Restart a Windows service or service.
• Update a scheduled task.

Available Now
You can use Run Command today in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) regions. Simply open the Run Command Console or use the latest AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). There is no charge for this this feature; you pay only for the AWS resources that you consume.

— Jeff;

PS – We plan to provide similar functionality for instances that run Linux. Stay tuned to the blog for more info!