BYTE the Cloud

Chris 0:00
All right, cloud engineers ready to take a deep dive. Let's

Kelly 0:02
do it

Chris 0:03
awesome this time. We're tackling Amazon Kinesis Video Streams. Oh,

Kelly 0:07
this is a fun one. Yeah,

Chris 0:08
I've been looking forward to this, yeah, especially for those of you working with real time video data. This is a game changer. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Or if you're prepping for those AWS certs, you're gonna wanna pay attention to this one. This will definitely pop up. So much to unpack here, yeah, but real quick, what is Kinesis, video streams in a nutshell.

Kelly 0:27
So think of it as like a managed service, right? Okay, designed specifically for video, got it, ingesting it, okay, processing it, storing it all in real time, real

Chris 0:40
time, okay, which is huge. I mean, video data is exploding, right? Oh, it's massive. So traditional methods just aren't really cutting it anymore. No, they can't keep up. Okay, so Kinesis Video Streams comes in to save the day. It's built for this. Give me a real world example. Okay, sure, let's say I'm building a system that analyzes footage from a network of security cameras. Oh,

Kelly 1:02
yeah, that's a perfect use case. Think about it. You could have hundreds of cameras. You're all sending high definition video constantly, 24/7, exactly. That's a ton of data, it is. And Kinesis Video Streams is built to handle that, that deluge, okay?

Chris 1:17
So it can manage that massive inflow, absolutely. Can it do anything else with that data? Yeah.

Kelly 1:23
So not only can it manage it, you can actually set up real time processing. Ooh, okay, so you could do things like facial Rekognition, wow, right within the pipeline, right there. That's incredible, object detection, all sorts of stuff. Okay,

Chris 1:35
so security and surveillance, check, big one, yep. What about live streaming? Oh, that's

Kelly 1:41
another great example. Okay, think about platforms like Twitch,

Chris 1:44
right? Yeah, they're dealing with huge volumes, massive

Kelly 1:47
and it's all real time.

Chris 1:49
Okay, so Kinesis Video Streams is behind the scenes there, powering those streams, yep, makes sense. Scalability and reliability.

Kelly 1:57
Absolutely gotta have those. Now,

Chris 1:59
this next one is really interesting to me. Okay, machine learning, oh, yeah, huge area we keep hearing. Video is data. Video is data. It is it's a gold mine. But how does Kinesis Video Streams fit into that world?

Kelly 2:12
So for machine learning, you need these massive data sets to train your models, right? And video, tons of it, but it can be kind of unwieldy. Yeah. How do you even work

Chris 2:22
with that much video data? That's

Kelly 2:24
where Kinesis comes in. It ingests those streams and then feeds that data directly into services like Amazon, SageMaker, oh, which is built for model training, so

Chris 2:36
it's like a crucial pre processing step, exactly. It

Kelly 2:38
takes that raw video data and makes it something that SageMaker can actually use.

Chris 2:43
That's pretty cool. Yeah, so Kinesis Video Streams isn't just a standalone service, no, it's like this bedrock for an entire video data ecosystem. It

Kelly 2:53
ties it all together. I like that. Yeah,

Chris 2:55
all right, let's get it more technical. What are some of the core components that make this service tick,

Kelly 3:00
okay, so one of the most important things to understand is shaRDS. ShaRDS, yeah, you can think of them like lanes on a highway, a data highway, exactly. Okay, I like that. So Kinesis Video Streams divides the data into these shaRDS, and that allows for parallel processing. Okay, that makes sense. So as your data grows, Kinesis can just keep adding more lanes. Okay, so it scales horizontally, exactly, more lanes, less congestion,

Chris 3:26
no traffic jams on the data highway. No way I like it. But what about all that data? Okay, good question. Does it just keep piling up forever? Well, no, that's where data retention comes in. Okay, so we can control how long we keep the data, absolutely.

Kelly 3:39
You can customize it. Okay, that's good to know, few hours, a couple of days, even longer. And

Chris 3:43
this is important for managing costs, right? Huge,

Kelly 3:45
especially if you only need recent footage.

Chris 3:49
Okay, so data retention check. What about security? Oh, super important. That's always top of mind for me as a cloud engineer. It should be.

Kelly 3:58
And the good news is, security is built into Kinesis Video Streams. Okay, good to hear. You've got encryption at rest, meaning when the data is stored, okay, and encryption in transit, so while it's moving, so it's protected on both ends. Absolutely. It uses strong encryption standards and integrates with services like AWS, KMS, so that's for key management exactly makes it super secure, which is essential, especially for things like surveillance, right,

Chris 4:23
where data protection is paramount. You got it all right? So we've talked about all these amazing features, yeah,

Kelly 4:29
it's a pretty powerful service. Any downsides, things we should watch out for? Well, like any tool, there are things to consider. Okay, cost can be a factor, especially with long retention periods, right? Those storage costs can add up definitely, and if your application has super high throughput, even more. So, yep, it's not set it and forget it when it comes to the budget,

Chris 4:50
so monitor your usage closely, absolutely, plan accordingly. Okay, cost got it. Anything else.

Kelly 4:59
The other thing is. Is Kinesis Video Streams can be a bit complex to set up and manage.

Chris 5:04
Okay, so you need a solid understanding of how it

Kelly 5:06
works. Definitely, the documentation is great, though, good to know,

Chris 5:10
and this deep dive is a good starting point too.

Kelly 5:13
Oh, absolutely awesome.

Chris 5:14
All right, I think we've covered the service basics pretty well. Yeah,

Kelly 5:17
we've hit the main points.

Chris 5:18
How about we see how Kinesis Video Streams plays with other AWS services. Okay, sure, so. How does it fit into the broader ecosystem? It's

Kelly 5:26
actually super well integrated. For example, it works directly with AWS Lambda functions. Oh, interesting.

Chris 5:32
What kind of possibilities does that open up a whole

Unknown Speaker 5:35
world? Okay, give

Chris 5:36
me an example.

Kelly 5:37
So as those video streams are coming in, you can have Lambda functions analyzing them in real time. Okay, that's pretty powerful, yeah, extracting metadata, even triggering alert,

Chris 5:48
okay, so like, if something specific is detected in the video exactly, it's incredibly versatile. All right, so Kinesis, video streams and Lambda a powerful combo. What about storage? We talked about retention, but what if we need to keep the data for longer? Ah, then

Kelly 6:04
you'd want to look at integrating with Amazon S3

Chris 6:06
Oh, yeah, S3 the classic storage service, exactly.

Kelly 6:09
You can easily archive your video data from Kinesis to S3 for long term storage. So we've

Chris 6:15
got the real time side covered with Kinesis and the long term storage with S3

Kelly 6:19
it creates this really robust pipeline. Awesome.

Chris 6:23
Anything else we should have on our radar in terms of integrations?

Kelly 6:27
Don't forget about Kinesis, data analytics, all right, for digging deep into the data, yep, you can analyze those video streams and uncover all sorts of insights.

Chris 6:35
That's incredible. I'm already feeling like I've learned so much just from this overview. It's a

Kelly 6:39
powerful service, for sure, but we're just getting started, right? Oh yeah, there's a lot more to explore. Next

Chris 6:44
time, we'll dive into those exam prep questions you mentioned. Get ready to put your knowledge to the test. I'm excited for the challenge. This has been fantastic so far. Yeah,

Kelly 6:54
it's great to see so much interest in Kinesis Video Streams. I

Chris 6:57
think it's only gonna get more important as video data continues to grow

Kelly 7:01
absolutely

Chris 7:03
so thanks for joining us for this deep dive. My pleasure. Always happy to talk about Kinesis and be sure to tune in for part two, where we'll tackle those exam questions head on. Can't wait until then. Keep those cloud skills sharp.

Unknown Speaker 7:15
Definitely see you next time.

Unknown Speaker 7:18
Save it. Welcome

Kelly 7:19
back to our deep dive on Amazon, Kinesis, video streams.

Chris 7:23
We're ready to go deeper.

Kelly 7:25
All right, I'm excited for this last time we laid a solid foundation we did. Now I'm curious about those advanced features you mentioned. Okay, let's What else can this service do? Well,

Chris 7:35
we talked about data retention,

Kelly 7:36
right? Yeah, how long we keep that video data,

Chris 7:39
but what if you need to search through it efficiently. Hmm, yeah, that could be a challenge, except for time code indexing comes in time code indexing, okay,

Kelly 7:46
tell me more.

Chris 7:47
So it lets you embed timestamps directly into your video streams. Oh, interesting. So you can search by time code,

Kelly 7:53
ah, see like chapters in a book, but for video. So instead

Chris 7:58
of scrubbing through hours of footage, you can just jump to the exact moment you need. That's a huge time saver. Oh yeah, especially

Kelly 8:04
for things like security investigations, right? Or even just

Chris 8:07
reviewing a long recording absolutely so time code indexing check. What other advanced tricks do you have up your sleeve? Let's

Kelly 8:14
talk about on demand, fragment retrieval.

Chris 8:17
On Demand, fragment retrieval, okay, that's a mouthful, it is,

Kelly 8:20
but it's a really cool feature. All right? Break it down for me. So remember how time code indexing lets you Pinpoint specific moments, yeah,

Chris 8:29
like finding the exact time something happened, right? Well, fragment retrieval

Kelly 8:32
takes it further. It lets you actually download just that specific chunk of video.

Chris 8:37
Oh, wow. So you don't have to download the whole stream Exactly. That's amazing. So if I just need a few seconds of footage, you can grab just that portion that saves a ton of bandwidth and storage. Oh, yeah, especially for high resolution video. Makes sense. This reminds me of our machine learning discussion, okay, how? So if we're training a model to recognize certain events, wouldn't

Kelly 8:57
it be much more efficient to just train on the relevant fragments

Chris 9:01
exactly, instead of feeding it hours of irrelevant footage, you

Kelly 9:05
got it. It's all about being targeted and efficient. This is

Chris 9:08
all great stuff. Really helpful. Glad

Kelly 9:10
to hear it.

Chris 9:11
But let's shift gears back to the AWS certification exams for a moment. Okay, sure, you mentioned they like to throw some curve balls.

Kelly 9:17
Oh yeah. They want to see if you can apply what you know. All right, give

Chris 9:21
me an example of a real exam style scenario. All right, imagine

Kelly 9:24
you're presented with this A company needs to build a security system that captures and analyzes video feeds from hundreds of cameras. Okay, sounds familiar? They need real time detection of specific events like unauthorized access, okay? Classic security use case, and they need to be able to trigger alerts based on those events,

Chris 9:46
so real time processing and alerts Exactly.

Kelly 9:49
Now the question is, what AWS services would you recommend for this system? Okay,

Chris 9:54
so we need to put all the pieces together exactly. Think about what we've learned. All right. Well, obviously, Kinesis videos. Streams is the core.

Kelly 10:01
It has to be that's your foundation for ingesting all those video feeds. But

Chris 10:04
we also need to process that data, analyze it and trigger those alerts.

Kelly 10:08
That's where other services come in. What do we know about real time processing with Kinesis Video Streams?

Chris 10:14
We talked about how it integrates with AWS Lambda functions, right?

Kelly 10:18
That's a key piece here. We can set up Lambda functions to analyze the video streams in real time, but they're constantly

Chris 10:24
looking for those specific security events, exactly,

Kelly 10:26
unauthorized access, suspicious activity,

Chris 10:30
anything we define like a team of digital security guaRDS, perfect

Kelly 10:33
analogy. But detecting the events isn't enough. We also need to send alerts right

Chris 10:38
so the security team can respond quickly. What would we use for that? Think about

Kelly 10:41
AWS services for sending notifications,

Chris 10:44
Amazon. SNS comes to mind this simple notification service. You

Kelly 10:49
got it. SNS is perfect for this. We can have our Lambda functions trigger SNS notifications whenever they detect a security event, so the

Chris 10:57
security team gets real time alerts via email, SMS, whatever they need. Exactly.

Kelly 11:03
It's a complete end to end system. But there's one more challenge. The question mentioned multiple buildings.

Chris 11:09
Oh, right. So we need to think about scale

Kelly 11:12
Exactly. How do we handle video feeds from cameras spread across different locations?

Chris 11:17
Well, Kinesis Video Streams is built for scale, right? It is, remember those shaRDS we talked about, yeah,

Kelly 11:22
those lanes on the data highway. As the company adds more cameras and buildings, they can simply add more shaRDS

Chris 11:29
so the system can grow horizontally

Kelly 11:32
Exactly. And to make it even more resilient, we need to think about availability zones, right? We want those cameras and streams distributed across multiple AZs. So

Chris 11:42
if one AZ goes down, the system keeps running. That's high

Kelly 11:45
availability, in a nutshell. But we're not done yet. What's the one thing we always need to prioritize when dealing with sensitive data? Security? Of course, absolutely. We need to protect those video feeds from unauthorized access. We've

Chris 11:58
already talked about encryption. But what else can we do? Well, remember, I am, yeah, identity and access management, we can use

Kelly 12:05
IAM policies to define very specific permissions for who can access the Kinesis Video Streams resources.

Chris 12:13
So we can control who can read the data, who can write to the stream and so on, exactly.

Kelly 12:18
And we can use IAM conditions to make it even more granular, like

Chris 12:22
restricting access to certain IP addresses or time ranges. You

Kelly 12:26
got it. It's all about layers of security. And with that, I think we've covered a lot of ground today. This

Chris 12:31
has been amazing. Really eye opening. It's

Kelly 12:34
great to see how all these services come together to solve real world problems. I'm

Chris 12:38
starting to feel a lot more confident about those AWS certification exams.

Kelly 12:42
That's what we want to hear. But we're not quite done yet. Oh, there's more in our final segment, we'll dive even deeper into exam preparation.

Chris 12:50
I'm ready for the challenge. Bring it on.

Kelly 12:52
We'll tackle even more complex scenarios and make sure you're fully prepared to ace those exams. Can't

Chris 12:57
wait. This has been an incredible journey. So far, it's

Kelly 13:00
been a pleasure exploring Kinesis Video Streams with you, and

Chris 13:03
I'm sure our listeners are finding it just as valuable. Hopefully they're learning a ton. So stay tuned for the final part of our Kinesis Video Streams Deep Dive. We'll see you there. Until then, keep those cloud skills sharp. Welcome back for the final round of our Kinesis Video Streams Deep Dive.

Kelly 13:19
Ready for the exam challenge. You

Chris 13:21
bet, after those last two sessions, I'm feeling pretty confident,

Kelly 13:24
awesome. So what kind of exam level questions should we be prepping for?

Chris 13:29
Yeah, give us the inside scoop. What are those tricky AWS examiners gonna throw at us? Well, remember,

Kelly 13:35
those exams aren't just about memorizing facts, right? It's

Chris 13:38
about applying the knowledge Exactly.

Kelly 13:40
They want to see if you can actually use Kinesis Video Streams to solve problems.

Chris 13:44
Okay, makes sense any specific areas they tend to focus on. One

Kelly 13:49
thing that often comes up is choosing the right Kinesis service for the job. Oh, right,

Chris 13:53
because Kinesis Video Streams isn't the only Kinesis out there. No,

Kelly 13:57
there's also Kinesis data streams and Kinesis Firehose. So we need to know the differences between them. Absolutely. The exam might give you a scenario and ask you to pick the best Kinesis service. Okay, give me

Chris 14:08
an example. What kind of scenario are we talking about? All right, let's

Kelly 14:11
say you get this question. A company needs to process real time data from 1000s of IoT sensors. Okay, so lots of sensors. They want to detect anomalies and trigger alerts real time analysis, but they also need to archive the data for long term storage and analysis, so

Chris 14:29
both real time and long term needs. That's tricky, right?

Kelly 14:33
So which Kinesis service would you choose? All right, let's break

Chris 14:36
it down. We need real time processing, so that rules out Kinesis Firehose. Good

Kelly 14:41
Firehose is more for near real time delivery, but we

Chris 14:45
still have video streams and data streams. How do we pick between those? Well, what

Kelly 14:48
kind of data are we dealing with? Sensor

Chris 14:50
data, right?

Kelly 14:51
Not video exactly. So Kinesis data streams is the better fit here.

Chris 14:55
It's the general purpose real time data processing service

Kelly 14:58
makes sense. But. What about the archiving requirement, right?

Chris 15:02
They need to store the data for the long haul.

Kelly 15:04
Well, Kinesis data streams integrates nicely with other AWS services. Oh, so we can pipe the data into S3 for storage. Perfect. S3 is great for durable, cost effective storage. So

Chris 15:15
our solution would be Kinesis data streams for real time stuff, and S3

Kelly 15:20
for archiving. You nailed it. That's how you'd tackle that kind of question, right? That

Chris 15:24
makes sense any other Kinesis Video Streams topics they might grill us on.

Kelly 15:27
Oh, they love to test your troubleshooting skills. Okay? So

Chris 15:30
like, what if something goes wrong with our Kinesis Video Streams application?

Kelly 15:35
Exactly. You might get a scenario where the application isn't performing well, like

Chris 15:39
the video is delayed or choppy, yep, something like that.

Kelly 15:42
And they'll ask you to figure out why and how to fix it. Okay? That sounds challenging. It can be, but it's all about using a systematic approach. All right. Walk me through it. What's

Chris 15:52
the first step? First you gotta gather information. Okay? So like, understand the systems configuration,

Kelly 15:57
exactly. How many shaRDS are they using? What's the data retention policy? Any other AWS services involved?

Chris 16:04
So get the full picture before jumping to conclusions,

Kelly 16:08
right? It's like being a detective.

Chris 16:09
I like that. Okay, so we've gathered the clues. What's next? Then

Kelly 16:13
you got to start looking for bottlenecks.

Chris 16:15
Bottlenecks? What do you mean by that?

Kelly 16:17
Anything that's slowing down the data flow? Oh, oh, I

Chris 16:20
see. So like, are the producers sending too much data?

Kelly 16:24
Could be or maybe the shaRDS aren't configured optimally,

Chris 16:27
or the consumers are struggling to keep up exactly. It could be any of those things. So how do we find the culprit? One helpful way

Kelly 16:34
is to trace the data flow. Okay, so

Chris 16:37
follow the data from the producers to the stream and then to the consumers,

Kelly 16:41
Yep, see if you can spot any issues along the way. All right, that

Chris 16:44
makes sense, yeah. And what if we do find a bottleneck? What are some common fixes?

Kelly 16:49
Well, if the producers are sending too much data, you might need to increase the number of shaRDS, so more lanes on the highway, exactly. Or if the consumers are struggling, you could increase their instance size, give them more processing power. You got it. It's all about finding the right balance. And of course, we can't forget about monitoring. Oh, absolutely. Monitoring is crucial for catching issues early

Chris 17:10
on, so like using CloudWatch metrics and alarms exactly,

Kelly 17:14
keep an eye on things like ingestion rate, shard utilization, consumer latency.

Chris 17:20
So if something starts to go wrong, we'll know right away. That's

Kelly 17:23
the goal, catch it before it becomes a big problem. Okay, so

Chris 17:27
we've talked about choosing the right Kinesis service, troubleshooting performance and the importance of monitoring anything else we should be ready for. Oh, they

Kelly 17:34
almost always ask about security, right? Got to protect that data exactly. You might get a question about how to secure a Kinesis Video Streams application, like

Chris 17:43
how to make sure only authorized users and services can access the video streams. You

Kelly 17:48
got it. So what would you do in that situation?

Chris 17:52
Well, I am is the foundation right identity and access management. Absolutely

Kelly 17:57
we can use I am policies to control who can do

Chris 18:00
what? So, like, who can read the data, who can write to the stream, all that stuff,

Kelly 18:04
exactly? And we can get super specific with IAM conditions, oh, right,

Chris 18:09
like limiting access to certain IP addresses or times of day.

Kelly 18:13
Yep, it's all about creating those layers of security. And

Chris 18:16
don't forget about encryption. Kinesis Video Streams has both at rest and in transit encryption, right?

Kelly 18:23
We talked about using KMS to manage our own encryption keys if we need even more control.

Chris 18:29
So by combining IAM encryption and other best practices, we can make sure our Kinesis Video Streams applications are super secure.

Kelly 18:38
That's exactly the kind of thinking those AWS examiners are looking for this has

Chris 18:41
been an amazing, Deep Dive. I feel like I've learned so much about Kinesis Video Streams. It's a

Kelly 18:47
powerful service, for sure, and it's only getting more important as video data

Chris 18:51
grows Absolutely. I'm definitely gonna be using this service in my own projects. Awesome. That's what we love to hear. Thanks so much for guiding us through this. It's been incredibly helpful. My pleasure.

Kelly 18:59
I always enjoy talking about Kinesis Video Streams.

Chris 19:02
I bet you do. And to all our listeners out there, thanks for tuning in.

Kelly 19:06
We hope you learned a ton about Kinesis Video Streams and

Chris 19:08
that you're feeling confident to take on those AWS certification exams. Best

Kelly 19:12
of luck on your cloud journey.

Chris 19:14
See you next time on The Deep Dive.