The special sauce of all NET+ programs is at its tastiest (and most nutritious) when we gather as a community to share our work and our challenges and work through them together. This has been particularly piquant in the NET+ AWS program of late. In this newsletter, I share several excellent events and a couple of quick news items.

Events

There are so many hot conversations coming up, I had to write them all down for you. The first one is TOMORROW and you won’t want to miss it.

September

NET+ AWS Tech Jam

  • Topic: Show Me the Money - Two sides of the billing coin
    • Nick Adair from Baylor College of Medicine has brought this challenge to the TJ Table: “I would like to use AWS Control Tower to manage research accounts in a master-payer structure. Each subscription (account) will have a bill generated, including the master-payer account. The billing detail will include service totals for chargeback purposes.”
    • Kevin Murakoshy, AWS SA extraordinaire, responded that he’d see that challenge and raise it one, “Come help us design a billing tool! In this tech jam, we’re going to gather requirements for a tool that will help us build bills for recharge. Beyond simply allocating the bill, we’re also going to look at ways to move charges for certain services into the payer (i.e. networking/security), and more!
  • Time: Wednesday, September 21 at 11am PDT/2pm EDT

October

NET+ AWS Tech Share

  • Topic: Update and Demo of StreamOne Ion (SIE), the CloudCheckr replacement from DLT
  • Description: DLT is phasing out CloudCheckr as the tool for you and your account holders to track their AWS costs. Gotthard Szabo, Director of Cloud FinOps at DLT will join us to describe the transition for NET+ AWS customers, give a demo of SIE and update us on the timeline.
  • Audience: Anyone involved in the operational management of AWS at subscribing NET+ institutions.
  • Speaker: Gotthard Szabo, Director of Cloud FinOps, DLT
  • Time: Wednesday, October 5 at 8am PDT/11am EDT

NET+ AWS Town Hall 

  • Topic: Key Considerations for Supporting Academic Researchers
  • Description: Researchers are increasingly leveraging computational technologies as a key approach within their research. More and more disciplines are leveraging data, simulation, and advanced analytics to perform their research. Researchers have increasingly complex requirements and expectations as they join institutions and funding agencies are requiring new and more complex data retention approaches. At the institutional level, developing a strategy on how to support the wide range of requirements in a supportable, cost-effective, and secure way has become a critical strategic initiative. This session will discuss a perspective on how to support researchers, impacts from the funding agencies, and AWS technology solutions. 
  • Audience: This session is for higher education information technologists, VPs of Research, and principal investigators interested in using cloud to accelerate and scale their scholarship.
  • Speaker: Rick Friedman – Head, US EDU Research Strategy and Business Development team
  • Time: Wednesday, October 19 at 11am PDT/2pm EDT
  • Place/Registration: https://internet2.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__YP4BH8IToKuW9ArcaAPsQ 

November

NET+ AWS Tech Share

  • Topic: Account provisioning practices of UW-Madison
  • Description: Regular attendees of the bi-weekly Tech Share calls have already learned a thing or two from Wisconsin’s Kelly Rivera. On a recent call she described in detail their part-automated/par-manual process of provisioning accounts in their AWS Org. The elegance of their maneuvering through the various policy, configuration, technical, and maybe even spiritual obstacles was so profound that on the spot her peers demanded some show and tell. Kelly herself admits that she’s never satisfied until it’s perfect, but it sounded mighty good to all on the call. Thankfully she gave in to the group’s pleadings and will share her team’s hard-won wisdom. You won’t want to miss this!
  • Audience: Anyone involved in the operational management of AWS at subscribing NET+ institutions.
  • Speaker: Kelly Rivera, Lead Cloud Engineer, UW-Madison
  • Time: Wednesday, November 2 at 8am PDT/11am EDT

NET+ AWS Subscriber Call (Leadership Edition)

  • Topic: The Role of Cloud in Institutional Resilience
  • Description: The last two years have demonstrated the unique role hyper-scale, on-demand computing in keeping the institution operational when faced with unexpected circumstances. A recent EDUCAUSE QuickPoll on institutional resilience prompted the question of the part cloud computing should, and shouldn’t, play in your organization’s resilience planning. Invite your leadership to join leaders from our community to discuss how, where and when we should be thinking about these powerful tools.
  • Audience: Strategic IT thinkers and decision makers – CIOs, AVPs and Directors of Infrastructure, Cloud Enablement Managers
  • Panel:
    • Damian Doyle, Deputy CIO, UMBC
    • Rick Rhoades, Chair, NET+ AWS SAB and Manager, Cloud Services, PSU
    • Kari Robertson, Executive Director of Infrastructure Services at UCOP
    • Jennifer Sparrow, Senior Manager, Higher Ed Business Development, AWS
  • Time: Wednesday, November 16 at 11am PST/2pm EST

December

AWS Game Day at Internet2 TechEx

  • Topic:  AWS Game Day
  • Description: AWS Game Day is an exciting, risk-free, hands-on way to explore and improve your AWS skills. Teams of 3-4 band together to run a company selling mythical animals through the ups and downs of that notoriously turbulent market. 
  • Audience: Anyone from seasoned cloud pros to those with minimal experience. Special prices for student teams. Tell your faculty!
  • Details: Full event details including the ridiculously low price (thank you sponsors!), the special pre-event training opportunities, prizes, etc. can be found on the event page.
  • Time: Monday, December 5, 9am-3pm MST
  • Place: On-site, in-person, IRL @ the Internet2 Technology Exchange in Denver

News Shorts

NIH STRIDES Initiative

Earlier this year we announced that the NIH STRIDES Initiative for AWS was now available through the NET+ AWS Program. Full documentation on how to request STRIDES accounts or enable existing accounts for STRIDES is now available on the NET+ AWS program wiki. Vist that or jump straight to the links themselves! 

If you have any questions, frequent or unique, please contact Bob Flynn (bflynn@internet2.edu) 

HECVAT

AWS has recently finished a new HECVAT Full updated to the 3.03 version. It is available to customers who are under NDA. Contact your AWS Account Manger (AM) to request access. If schools don’t know who their AM is, they can use the “contact us” link on the AWS webpage to find out.

AWS is also working on a HECVAT 3 Lite that will be available without NDA. That document is still going through legal as they massage language on a couple of questions. 

It is hoped both will be posted to the HECVAT Community Broker Index soon.