What is the NET+ AWS Program?

The Internet2 NET+ AWS program is both a community-driven and crafted vehicle for contracting AWS and an active professional peer community that meets regularly to learn from each other and industry experts, share and document best practices, and innovate to advance the research and educational missions of their institutions.

Many Internet2 member and non-member institutions take advantage of this service offering. If your institution is one of them then this wiki will provide details on how to make the most of your participation in the program by interacting with AWS staff and peers from other subscribing institutions. 

NET+ AWS Program Basics

Contract

There are now two options for the NET+ AWS contract, the longtime contract with TD SYNNEX (formerly DLT) and a new contract with Four Points Technology. Both agreements provide a number of contractual and operational benefits designed for the needs of the research and education community.

Benefits

Some of the benefits common to both include:

• A customer agreement created through a process involving a group of member campuses that incorporates community best practice terms, access to a Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA workloads, and access to AWS GovCloud for sensitive workloads.
• A Data Egress Fee Waiver that refunds egress charges up to 15% of an account's monthly spend for eligible accounts.
• A common minimum discount for all subscribers, regardless of their cloud spend.
• The ability to enable support on an account-by-account basis.
• Ready access to the NIH STRIDES Initiative with discounts and enhanced support options.
• 800+ Gb/s of private peering capacity to the Internet2 Network for member institutions.
• A framework for enterprise-scale consumption, including the option of a single institutional bill or direct billing to account holders, with a variety of payment options including credits.
• A community advisory board to drive continued benefits for all subscribers.
• An active facilitated peer community working together on best practices of adoption, use, and innovation with AWS.

To all members, Internet2 also provides:

• 800+ Gb of network peering between AWS and the Internet2 Network, accessible from most Regional Connector networks.

Eligibility

This program is open to all Internet2 higher education, affiliate and federal affiliate members as well as non-member US higher education institutions. If you are looking details on how to join the program, please click Sign Up on the NET+ AWS webpage or email netplus@internet2.edu and ask about NET+ AWS.

Learn More

For information about your NET+ AWS contracting options email netplus@internet2.edu and ask about NET+ AWS.

AWS Direct Connect through Internet2 

Learn how to reach AWS Direct Connect using Cloud Connect, leveraging Internet2 and your regional’s infrastructure to allow shared, dedicated Layer 2 and Layer 3 access with up to 5Gbps of connectivity.

NET+ AWS Frequently Asked Questions

Community Resources

Cloud Infrastructure Community Program

NET+ AWS subscribers pay an annual program fee The NET+ Cloud Infrastructure Community Program opens the door to the benefits of the NET+ AWS program and is a prerequisite for subscribing to the program.

Participate in the Community Conversation:

A key benefit of the NET+ AWS program for subscribing institutions is participating in the Cloud Infrastructure Community Program. Any member of a subscribing institution's community is eligible to join. In addition to an email discussion list, we host a series of regular events for program subscribers. They include:

• Bi-weekly NET+ AWS Technology Share calls where campus cloud enablement professionals, cloud engineers, developers, and others meet to discuss their challenges, share lessons learned and collaborate to find the best answers for their institutions' AWS deployment. AWS solutions architects and DLT support engineers regularly attend and participate.
• Quarterly NET+ AWS Town Halls welcome experts from AWS to present targeted topics to the community. Past Town Halls covered Ransomware, AWS Academy, Research Support Tools, Security Lake, Generative AI and more. We encourage subscribers to suggest topics we can work with AWS to bring to us.
• Quarterly NET+ AWS Stratgey Calls are home to strategic and directional conversations. This is an opportunity to discuss the role of cloud in IT strategy with your peers. The intended audience is cloud and infrastructure leadership, but anyone working on your AWS team is welcome to attend. Once a year we invite AWS EDU leadership to join us and encourage campus infrastructure and IT leadership to come.
• Quarterly NET+ AWS Tech Jams are technical deep dives on a specific issue facing one or more institutions. We put a couple of subscriber schools in the "hot seat" to lay out their challenge and ask technical experts from AWS to talk through the problem and its solutions. The rest of us watch and learn, tossing in our own questions as well. Example topics are building compliant environments, enforcing policies for FinOps best practices, bending Control Tower to your will, etc. The December Jam is devoted to a rapid-fire recap of the announcements coming out of the annual AWS re:Invent conference that are most relevant to the NET+ subscriber community. Always a highlight of the year.

Take a look at the Please contact netplus@internet2.edu to be added to any of these conversations.

Join the AWS Community Forum (Open to all community members):

Users of AWS are encouraged to join the AWS Community Channel in the Educause Cloud Computing Community Group Slack. See the Higher Ed Cloud Community page for instructions to join.

Collaborate on the Cloud Wiki:

Speaking of community, did you know about the Cloud Wiki? This was created specifically for YOU, members of the higher education community to collaborate with each other. See a listing of the cloud websites and strategy statements of peer institutions. Are you drafting a new cloud position description? Log in to see a Cloud Job descriptions page and contribute your knowledge!

Contribute Code:

Looking to share your latest Terraform config? Add it to the Cloud Wiki Helpful GitHub Repos list or email bflynn@internet2.edu to request access and create a repo in the Community Cloud Config GitHub organization.

Service Evaluation Resources

A fundamental function of the NET+ program is to gather the information all institutions do for their due diligence work prior to acquiring an IT service. A group of peer institutions gather for a service evaluation and pilot program. Below are some of the assets gathered for the NET+ AWS Service Evaluation.

Accessibility:

• Voluntary Product Accessibility Template® (VPAT)

Identity:

• NET+ AWS Portal Identity Guidance - For end user self service AWS account requests

• InCommon-enabled Group to role mapping for AWS Accounts

Information Security:

• Cloud Controls Matrix - please email Internet2NetPlus@dlt.com

• Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT) - contact your AWS account manager. If you don't know who that is, reach out to NET+ AWS Program Manager, Bob Flynn (bflynn@internet2.edu) and he will connect you.

Key Program Updates

Subscribers may review our mailing list archives for monthly program and AWS updates.

Bring your game to GameDay at Community Exchange and the Cloud Forum

Bob Flynn posted on Jan 25, 2023

If you’re up for an engrossing, wild ride that’s crazy fun, then you’re ready for AWS GameDay.

Internet2 NET+, together with AWS, DLT, and Cloud Academy, are bringing AWS GameDay to the 2023 Community Exchange and Cloud Forum in Atlanta, GA.

What is AWS GameDay?

A “collaborative learning exercise that tests skills in implementing AWS solutions to solve real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment.”

How do you play?

• Recruit your own team (preferred) or show up and join one onsite.
• Compete against the game and against other teams for glory and prizes. 
• Walk away with sharper AWS skills and a story to tell. 

Highlights:

First Place B Squad	Second Place Keystone Cloud Crushers	Third Place Active Cumulus	Best Team Name Raiders of the Lost Architecture	Stick With It Award Team Won
Jim Charters – University of Michigan Heather Mitchell – Vanderbilt University Martin Sager – University of Michigan	Shlomo Balass – Carnegie Mellon University Ethan Connor – Carnegie Mellon University Brian Pasquini – University of Pittsburgh Harshul Sharma –Bucknell University	Doug Dawson– Clemson University Marissa Jules – Georgia Institute of Technology David Lacey – The J. Paul Getty Trust Zekai Otles – University of Wisconsin - Madison	Shane Albright – REN-ISAC Kunalan Ratharanjan – Indiana University Matthew Rich – Northwestern University Alan Walsh – Indiana University	Jeffrey Benenati– Georgia Institute of Technology Jeb Brines – Washington University in Saint Louis Timothy Champ – University of Maryland - Baltimore County Hallah Hussien – University of Wisconsin - Madison
Action Shots

GameDay Details:

When	Friday, May 12, 2023, 8 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Where	The Westin Peachtree Plaza
Cost	Free of charge, thanks to our sponsors TD Synnex Public Sector/DLT and Cloud Academy
The Game	We are running the Infinidash Ride-Hailing GameDay: The Infinidash Ride-Hailing GameDay requires participants to make technical and (light) business decisions to win. This means while teams need technical skills to complete, fix and improve Infinidash’s infrastructure, some business acumen will come in handy to decide on how to set up and assign their unicorn fleet. Teams of 3-4 will run an imaginary company that rents mythical creatures. Your task will be to manage the company’s infrastructure as the market reacts to your exciting new business.
The Players	Bring your whole team, or a partial team, or come prepared to join a team at the event. Registration information is below.
What’s Included	Breakfast and lunch, as well as beverages and snacks throughout the day, will be served close at hand so that you can keep an eye on your virtual company at all times. AWS Solutions Architects will be onsite to facilitate the game and cheer you on. A month of access to the Cloud Academy training library with a learning path specifically crafted to help participants shore up skills you’ll be using to run your company’s AWS infrastructure on the day of the event. In the month prior to the GameDay event, we will hold kick-off sessions to walk you through the materials. The event will be recorded for those who are unable to attend live. AWS swag and prizes
Skills Used (all included in the Cloud Academy learning path)	Amazon Fraud Detector Amazon DynamoDB AWS IoT Core AWS Step Functions AWS Lambda AWS AppConfig AWS CodePipeline Amazon Route 53 Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Load Balancer Familiarity with the AWS Well-Architected Framework advised

GameDay Registration & Preparation:

Step 1 Register	Step 2 Complete Team Roster	Step 3 Access Prep Work
Register for GameDay through the Community Exchange Registration or the Cloud Forum Registration. All registrants will receive two email messages from the Internet2 registration system. The first will be a receipt for your event registration.  The second will be a request to confirm your registration via our identity and access management system. Please read and follow the instructions in both emails.	Once we have confirmed your registration, we will send you to a form where you can enter your team roster. You will indicate whether you have a full or partial team or if you will be looking to pick up with a team on-site.	You will receive an email invitation from Cloud Academy to set up an account to access GameDay preparation materials. Cloud Academy orientation sessions will take place on Thursday, April 6 at 2pm EDT. This will be recorded for those who cannot attend during the times provided.

Questions or Concerns:

Please contact Bob Flynn, Internet2 Program Manager, Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Services, at bflynn@internet2.edu.

GameDay Sponsors:

Internet2 and the higher education cloud community are grateful to our sponsors AWS, TD Synnex Public Sector/DLT, and Cloud Academy for their generous support of this event.

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