Cloud Patches: AWS Workspaces For All, Azure In China

Last week in cloud computing: a stack of AWS announcements from price cuts to Workspaces availability. Plus Azure in China and general cloud cluelessness down under.

Cloud picture from Shutterstock

  • As we reported last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS_ cut prices on many of its services. One thing that didn’t change (and probably never will): Amazon’s Sydney data centre remains more expensive.
  • Amazon Workspaces, which offers cloud-based Windows 7 desktops, has moved from limited preview to general availability. Check out our detailed overview and the new launch details.
  • AWS rolled out version 2014.03 of the Amazon Linux AMI, its custom Linux install designed for cloud instances. One point to highlight: some features from older AMI releases are now being removed, so check carefully if you’re using older features. More details here.
  • CloudSearch, Amazon’s managed service for controlling search features on AWS-hosted websites, was revamped with additional search types, languages and IAM features.
  • Amazon OpsWorks was also updated to support version 11.10 of Chef, which adds new customisation features.
  • Users of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud can now create VPC peering connections within the same region. More details here.
  • Microsoft rolled out an Azure hosting site in China. The Chinese site was actually announced after plans for Sydney and Melbourne were announced, but those Australian sites haven’t yet opened.
  • Google updated its Cloud Platform service with new developer tools and tweaks.
  • Oh, and it turns out that lots of Australians are using cloud computing, but most remain clueless about it.

Cloud Patches rounds up new features and services added to major cloud computing platforms each week..


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