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Amazon Web Services debuts management console app for Android

Amazon Web Services is freshening up its management console for mobile users with a new tablet-optimized interface as well as an Android smartphone app.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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Amazon Web Services has rolled out some updates to its management console intended to please its mobile user base.

That goes double for Android users as AWS is introducing a new Console App for Android devices, which is intended to serve as a "companion to the full web experience."

Essentially, AWS clients can view and manage Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and CloudWatch alarms from Android smartphones.

Some of the more specific features consist of stopping/rebooting EC2 instances, organizing CloudWatch alarms by state or time, and getting detailed AWS service health status updates -- including recent AWS service events and notifications. (The last one should prove especially helpful in the case of outages.)

Beyond the Android-only app, the tablet-based console improvements center around optimization.

The AWS team explained further in a blog post on Friday that the "focus is to make AWS easier to use by increasing customizability and improving information display on your screen of choice."

Here's a rundown on some of the new features we can look for there:

  • Users can customize the console navigation with shortcuts to the AWS services that they use the most.
  • AWS added inline resource summaries for quicker access to key resource attributes.
  • The new Monitoring View can be filtered to view statistics and stacked graphs on resources. Users can change this view to see all the graphs or individual large graphs on one screen.
  • AWS opened up more space for table-organized data with a collapse option to the side navigation pane to let the table fill the screen.
  • The console now supports endless scrolling within the current page.
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Although AWS didn't provide an exact timetable, these updates are going to be rolled out across the customer base "on slightly different schedules."

Images via The Amazon Web Services Blog

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