The Utoolity team is pleased to present Tasks for AWS 2.13 – this release adds optional AWS security credentials validation at configuration time, adds explicit handling of the non standard AWS partitions AWS China and AWS GovCloud (US), adds support for the Node.js 6.10 runtime in AWS Lambda, and adds support for the Packer der in AWS Elastic Beanstalk. You can now ensure that provided AWS security credentials are valid, enable non standard AWS partitions as a Labs Feature, create an AWS Lambda Function with the Node.js 6.10 runtime, and create your own custom Elastic Beanstalk platform with HashiCorp's Packer.
Highlights
Validate AWS security credentials at configuration time
Any new or edited task now validates the provided AWS security credentials at configuration time by default to capture errors as early as possible.
- Given long-term AWS security credentials can be disabled to allow for the highly recommended regular key rotation, it is still possible to check Skip validation to cater for this and related scenarios where the underlying AWS access key is not currently valid.
Improved support for non standard AWS partitions (experimental)
The non standard AWS regions China (Beijing) and AWS GovCloud (US) have been enabled for use already. However, due to not being based in either China or the US, we are not in a position to test this add-on with those regions directly. Thanks to feedback from users with access to those regions we have identified some resulting inconsistencies and bugs, which have been addressed by being more explicit about the underlying AWS partition concept (see the info box below for some background) – here is what you need to know about this change:
- Non standard AWS partitions and their regions are now disabled by default and must explicitly be opted into as outlined in Enabling Labs Features.
- If you are Providing AWS Security Credentials via Identity Federation for AWS, the non standard partition must be enabled in both add-ons!
- If you have been using the China (Beijing) region before, you need to opt-in again as outlined in Support for the AWS China partition – existing tasks are not affected at runtime, however, the China (Beijing) region is not offered in the region widget anymore by default.
- Once enabled, you need to specify the appropriate partition when Configuring an AWS Access Key so that the add-on can use the partition specific AWS endpoints at runtime.
- Since most AWS users won't have access to non standard AWS regions, the Partition option is hidden until any non standard AWS partition is enabled.
What is an AWS partition?
The AWS partition concept pretty much lacks documentation so far and is only mentioned in passing here and there, most notably within Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces:
partition – The partition that the resource is in. For standard AWS regions, the partition is aws. If you have resources in other partitions, the partition is aws-partitionname. For example, the partition for resources in the China (Beijing) region is aws-cn.
Support for the Node.js 6.10 runtime in AWS Lambda tasks
You can now use the Node.js 6.10 runtime in the AWS Lambda Function task, see the resp. announcements:
Node.js runtime support policy
Utoolity follows the AWS Node.js runtime support policy that has been detailed in the announcement as follows:
You can continue to use Node v4.3 to create AWS Lambda functions. Node 0.10 was deprecated for new functions in Jan 2017, and we recommend switching to Node v4.3 or Node v6.10 at the earliest. To learn more about our Node runtime policy, visit our documentation.
Specifically, we have deprecated the Node.js 0.10 in Tasks for AWS 2.12 and will remove the option after it can not be used anymore in AWS Lambda (April 30th 2017).
Support for i3.* EC2 instances and Packer 0.12.1 in AWS Elastic Beanstalk tasks
The available solution stacks have been updated to include the latest versions, see the resp. announcement: Release: AWS Elastic Beanstalk on 2017-02-22 Release: AWS Elastic Beanstalk on 2017-03-08
Updated solution stacks are always usable manually as soon as they are made available by AWS - this simply updates the user interface to include those for convenient selection.
Release notes
For more details about this release, please refer to the Tasks for AWS 2.13 Release Notes.