2025 - Week 7 (10 Feb - 16 Feb)

Amazon SES now offers tiered pricing for Virtual Deliverability Manager

Published Date: 2025-02-14 19:30:00

Today, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) launched a new pricing structure for Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM), giving customers reduced charges at higher levels of usage. Customers can benefit from lower total VDM charges without the need to change account configuration, sending practices, or billing setup. This can lower customer total cost of ownership for VDM as their usage increases. Previously, all customers using VDM paid a fixed price per message sent. Customers could turn VDM on or off whenever needed, and they paid only for what they used without any commitment or fixed monthly charges. Now, customers will see their charges per message for VDM decrease as their sending volume exceeds specific thresholds each month. After crossing each threshold in a given billing month, each subsequent message processed by VDM is charged at a lower rate. This reduces the total cost of using VDM for high volume senders. SES supports tiered pricing for VDM in all AWS regions where SES is available. For more information, see the documentation for the SES pricing page.

AWS Lambda adds application performance monitoring (APM) for Java and .NET runtimes via Application Signals

Published Date: 2025-02-14 18:00:00

AWS Lambda now supports Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals, an application performance monitoring (APM) solution, for Java and .NET managed runtimes, enabling developers and operators to easily monitor the health and performance of their serverless applications built using Lambda. We previously announced support for Application Signals for Lambda functions for Python and Node.js managed runtimes. With this launch, you can now enable Application Signals for Lambda functions using Java 11, Java 17, Java 21, and .NET 8 Lambda managed runtimes. Once enabled, Application Signals provides pre-built, standardized dashboards for critical application metrics (such as throughput, availability, latency, faults, and errors), correlated traces, and interactions between the Lambda function and its dependencies (such as other AWS services), without requiring any manual instrumentation or code changes from developers. This gives operators a single-pane-of-glass view of the health of the application and enables them to drill down to establish the root cause of performance anomalies. To get started, visit the Configuration tab in Lambda console and enable Application Signals for your function with just one click in the “Monitoring and operational tools” section. To learn more, visit the Lambda developer guide, Application Signals developer guide, and Application Signals for Lambda blog post. Application Signals for Lambda is available in all commercial AWS Regions where Lambda and CloudWatch Application Signals are available. To take advantage of the new, cost-effective pricing for Application Signals, opt-in to the Transaction Search capability of Application Signals. To learn more about Application Signals pricing, visit the CloudWatch pricing page. ?

AWS CloudTrail network activity events for VPC endpoints are now generally available

Published Date: 2025-02-14 18:00:00

With the launch of AWS CloudTrail network activity for VPC endpoints, you now have additional visibility into AWS API activity that traverses your VPC endpoints, enabling you to strengthen your data perimeter and implement better detective controls. You can enable network activity events for VPC endpoints for five AWS Services: Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Secrets Manager, and AWS CloudTrail. With network activity events for VPC endpoints, you can view details of who is accessing resources within your network giving you greater ability to identify and respond to malicious or unauthorized actions in your data perimeter. For example, as the VPC endpoint owner, you can view logs of actions that were denied due to VPC endpoint policies or determine if an actor outside of your data perimeter is trying to access the data in your S3 buckets. You can enable logging for network activity events logging for your VPC endpoints using the AWS CloudTrail console, AWS CLI, and SDKs. When creating a new trail or event data store or editing an existing one, you can select network activity events for supported services that you wish to monitor; you can configure to log all API calls, or log only the accessDenied calls, and you can use advanced event selectors for additional filtering controls. Network activity events for VPC endpoints are available in all commercial AWS Regions. Refer to CloudTrail pricing to learn more about network activity events pricing and the documentation to get started.

Amazon Inspector enhances the security engine for container images scanning

Published Date: 2025-02-14 18:00:00

Today, Amazon Inspector announced an upgrade to the engine powering its container image scanning for Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR). This upgrade will provide you with a more comprehensive view of the vulnerabilities in the third-party dependencies used in your container images. The enhancement to the engine will happen automatically without any action or disruption to your existing workflows. Existing customers can expect to see some findings closed as the new engine re-evaluates all the existing resources to better assess risks, while also surfacing new vulnerabilities as per the new engine’s dependency collection. Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability management service that continually scans AWS workloads including Amazon EC2 instances, container images, and AWS Lambda functions for software vulnerabilities, code vulnerabilities, and unintended network exposure across your entire AWS organization. This improved version of container image scanning within ECR is available in all commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions where Amazon Inspector is available.

• Getting started with Amazon Inspector
• Amazon Inspector free trial

Amazon EC2 C7g instances are now available in the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region

Published Date: 2025-02-14 18:00:00

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C7g instances are available in the AWS Europe (Zurich) Region. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton3 processors that provide up to 25% better compute performance compared to AWS Graviton2 processors, and built on top of the the AWS Nitro System, a collection of AWS designed innovations that deliver efficient, flexible, and secure cloud services with isolated multi-tenancy, private networking, and fast local storage. Amazon EC2 Graviton3 instances also use up to 60% less energy to reduce your cloud carbon footprint for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances. For increased scalability, these instances are available in 9 different instance sizes, including bare metal, and offer up to 30 Gbps networking bandwidth and up to 20 Gbps of bandwidth to the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). To learn more, see Amazon EC2 C7g. To explore how to migrate your workloads to Graviton-based instances, see AWS Graviton Fast Start program and Porting Advisor for Graviton. To get started, see the AWS Management Console.

Amazon Q Developer now supports upgrade to Java 21

Published Date: 2025-02-14 18:00:00

Amazon Q Developer transformation capabilities that allow customers to upgrade Java applications using Maven to Java 21 are now available. Developers interested in leveraging the enhanced performance, security, interoperability, and modern features of Java 21 can use the generative AI capabilities of Amazon Q Developer to accelerate code upgrades to Java 21. With this added support for Java Development Kit (JDK) 21, customers can upgrade the Java version of their applications using Maven from source versions 8, 11, 17, or 21 to target versions 17 or 21. Customers can also continue to upgrade libraries and frameworks used in Java 17 or Java 21 compatible applications without upgrading JDK versions. The Java transformation capabilities are available both in IDE (Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA) and CLI (Linux and MacOS). To learn more, please visit Amazon Q Developer transformation capabilities webpage and documentation. ?

Amazon EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML is now available in several new regions

Published Date: 2025-02-13 22:15:00

Today, Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Capacity Blocks for ML is now available in several new regions as well as new instance types in existing locations. You can use EC2 Capacity Blocks to reserve highly sought-after GPU instances in Amazon EC2 UltraClusters for a future date for the amount of time that you need to run your machine learning (ML) workloads. EC2 Capacity Blocks enable you to reserve GPU capacity up to eight weeks in advance for durations up to 6 months in cluster sizes of one to 64 instances, giving you the flexibility to run a broad range of ML workloads. They are ideal for short duration pre-training and fine-tuning workloads, rapid prototyping, and for handling surges in inference demand. EC2 Capacity Blocks deliver low-latency, high-throughput connectivity through colocation in Amazon EC2 UltraClusters. With this expansion, EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML are available on P5, P5e, P5en in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (London), South America (Sao Paulo) Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Australia (Sydney), Australia (Melbourne) and P4d in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon). Capacity Blocks are also available on Trn2 in US East (Ohio) and Trn1 in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Australia (Sydney), Australia (Melbourne). Click here to learn more about EC2 Capacity Blocks.

AWS Deadline Cloud now supports Adobe After Effects in Service-Managed Fleets

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:30:00

AWS Deadline Cloud now includes support for Adobe After Effects in its Service-Managed Fleets. AWS Deadline Cloud is a fully managed service that simplifies render management for teams creating computer-generated graphics and visual effects, created in industry-standard graphics tools such as Adobe After Effects, for films, television and broadcasting, web content, and design. With this new feature, you can submit After Effects projects to Deadline Cloud without having to manage your own render farm infrastructure. The integration offers built-in support for custom fonts and an adjustable number of image sequence frames rendered per task, allowing you to submit jobs that are tailored to your workflow directly within After Effects. AWS Deadline Cloud automatically handles the provisioning and elastic scaling of compute resources required for rendering your After Effects projects. Service-Managed Fleets can be configured in minutes so you can begin rendering immediately. Deadline Cloud After Effects support is available in all AWS Regions where Deadline Cloud is offered. For more information, please visit the Deadline Cloud product page and our AWS Deadline Cloud documentation.

Amazon ECS now enables you to update services from short to long ARNs

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

You can now update your existing Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) services that use a short Amazon Resource Name (ARN) to use a long ARN without needing to re-create the service. This enables you to tag your long-running Amazon ECS services, letting you better allocate cost, improve visibility, and define fine-grained resource-level permissions for these services. Since 2018, customers have been able to tag Amazon ECS services that use the long ARN format (which includes the cluster name in the ARN) but if they wanted to tag services that were created with the old short ARN format, they had to delete and re-create the service. Now, ECS enables you to tag services that were created with the old short ARN format without needing to re-create the service. To enable this, you need to complete 2 steps: 1/opt-in your account to the long Amazon Resource Names (ARN) format for tasks and services and 2/tag the service you want to migrate to the long ARN format using the TagResource API action. Once you complete these steps, ECS updates the ARN of the service to the long ARN format and tags the service. Updating the service to use the long ARN format allows you to define resource-based access policies in IAM and granularly monitor the cost of your services in the Cost & Usage Report and Cost Explorer. You can update your services with short ARNs to long ARNs in all AWS regions using the AWS Console, CLI, and API. To learn more, please read our documentation.

Amazon RDS for MySQL announces Extended Support minor 5.7.44-RDS.20250103

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for MySQL announces Amazon RDS Extended Support minor version 5.7.44-RDS.20250103. We recommend that you upgrade to this version to fix known security vulnerabilities and bugs in prior versions of MySQL. Learn more about the bug fixes and patches in this version in the Amazon RDS User Guide. Amazon RDS Extended Support provides you more time, up to three years, to upgrade to a new major version to help you meet your business requirements. During Extended Support, Amazon RDS will provide critical security and bug fixes for your RDS for MySQL databases after the community ends support for a major version. You can run your MySQL databases on Amazon RDS with Extended Support for up to three years beyond a major version’s end of standard support date. Learn more about Extended Support in the Amazon RDS User Guide and the Pricing FAQs. Amazon RDS for MySQL makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale MySQL deployments in the cloud. See Amazon RDS for MySQL Pricing for pricing details and regional availability. Create or update a fully managed Amazon RDS database in the Amazon RDS Management Console.

Amazon OpenSearch Serverless expands support for time-series workloads up to 100TB

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

We are excited to announce that Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports workloads up to 100TB of data for time-series collections. OpenSearch Serverless is a serverless deployment option for Amazon OpenSearch Service that makes it simple for you to run search and analytics workloads without having to think about infrastructure management. With the support for larger datasets, OpenSearch Serverless now enables more data-intensive use cases such as log analytics, security analytics, real-time application monitoring, and more. OpenSearch Serverless’ compute capacity used for indexing and search are measured in OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs). To accommodate for larger datasets, OpenSearch Serverless now allows customers to independently scale indexing and search operations to use up to 1700 OCUs. You configure the maximum OCU limits on search and indexing independently to manage costs. You can also monitor real-time OCU usage with CloudWatch metrics to gain a better perspective on your workload's resource consumption. Please refer to the AWS Regional Services List for more information about Amazon OpenSearch Service availability. To learn more about OpenSearch Serverless, see the documentation.

Introducing Amazon EC2 C6in instances in Chicago and New York City Local Zones

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C6in instances are now available in the Chicago and New York City Local Zones. C6in instances are powered by 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors with an all-core turbo frequency of up to 3.5 GHz. They are x86-based Amazon EC2 compute-optimized instances offering up to 200 Gbps of network bandwidth. The instances are built on AWS Nitro System, which is a dedicated and lightweight hypervisor that delivers the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance and security. You can take advantage of the higher network bandwidth to scale the performance for a broad range of workloads running in AWS Local Zones. Local Zones are an AWS infrastructure deployment that place compute, storage, database, and other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers where no AWS Region exists. You can use Local Zones to run applications that require single-digit millisecond latency for use cases such as real-time gaming, hybrid migrations, media and entertainment content creation, live video streaming, engineering simulations, financial services payment processing, capital market operations, and AR/VR. To get started, you can enable Chicago Local Zone us-east-1-chi-2a and New York City Local Zone us-east-1-nyc-2a , in the Amazon EC2 Console or the ModifyAvailabilityZoneGroup API, and deploy C6in instances. To learn more, visit AWS Local Zones overview page and see Amazon EC2 Instance types.

Amazon EC2 M7g instances are now available in additional regions

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M7g instances are available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta, Melbourne, Osaka) and AWS GovCloud (US-East) regions. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton3 processors that provide up to 25% better compute performance compared to AWS Graviton2 processors, and built on top of the the AWS Nitro System, a collection of AWS designed innovations that deliver efficient, flexible, and secure cloud services with isolated multi-tenancy, private networking, and fast local storage. Amazon EC2 Graviton3 instances also use up to 60% less energy to reduce your cloud carbon footprint for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances. For increased scalability, these instances are available in 9 different instance sizes, including bare metal, and offer up to 30 Gbps networking bandwidth and up to 20 Gbps of bandwidth to the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). To learn more, see Amazon EC2 M7g. To explore how to migrate your workloads to Graviton-based instances, see AWS Graviton Fast Start program and Porting Advisor for Graviton. To get started, see the AWS Management Console. ?

AWS CodePipeline adds CloudWatch Metrics support

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

AWS CodePipeline now provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics integration for V2 pipelines, enabling you to monitor both pipeline-level and account-level metrics directly in your AWS account. The integration introduces a pipeline duration metric that tracks the total execution time of your pipeline completions, and pipeline failure metric that monitors the frequency of pipeline execution failures. You can now track these metrics through both the CodePipeline console and the CloudWatch Metrics console to actively monitor your pipeline health. To learn more about this feature, please visit our documentation. For more information about AWS CodePipeline, visit our product page. This feature is available in all regions where AWS CodePipeline is supported, except the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and the China Regions. ?

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL supports minor versions 17.3, 16.7, 15.11, 14.16, 13.19

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for PostgreSQL now supports the latest minor versions 17.3, 16.7, 15.11, 14.16, and 13.19. We recommend that you upgrade to the latest minor versions to fix known security vulnerabilities in prior versions of PostgreSQL, and to benefit from the bug fixes added by the PostgreSQL community. This release also includes updates for PostgreSQL extensions such as pg_active 2.1.4, pg_cron 1.6.5, pg_partman 5.2.4, and others. You can use automatic minor version upgrades to automatically upgrade your databases to more recent minor versions during scheduled maintenance windows. You can also use Amazon RDS Blue/Green deployments for RDS for PostgreSQL using physical replication for your minor version upgrades. Learn more about upgrading your database instances, including automatic minor version upgrades and Blue/Green Deployments in the Amazon RDS User Guide. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale PostgreSQL deployments in the cloud. See Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Pricing for pricing details and regional availability. Create or update a fully managed Amazon RDS database in the Amazon RDS Management Console. ?

AWS Network Load Balancer now supports removing availability zones

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Today, we are launching the ability to remove Availability Zones (AZ) of an existing Network Load Balancer (NLB). Prior to this launch, customers could add AZs to an existing NLB, but could not remove AZs. With this capability, customers can now change their application stack locations and move them between availability zones quickly. Changing business needs such as mergers & acquisitions, divestitures, data residency compliance requirements, and capacity considerations in a given region are some of the use cases that necessitate removing AZs of existing NLBs. Using this capability, customers can remove one or more availability zones from their NLB by simply updating the list of enabled subnets using ELB API, CLI or Console. Similar to any delete operation, removing a zone can be a potentially disruptive operation. When you remove a zone, the NLB zonal Elastic Network Interface (ENI) is deleted. All active connections to backend targets in that zone (including clients connecting through other zones) are terminated, the zonal IPs (and EIPs) are released and zonal DNS names deleted, and any backend target in the removed zone becomes “unused”. Refer to product documentation and AWS blog post for prescriptive guidance on how to use this capability in a safe manner. This capability is available in all AWS commercial and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

Amazon Q generative SQL is now available in additional regions

Published Date: 2025-02-13 18:00:00

Amazon Q generative SQL is now available in Amazon Redshift Query Editor for US East (Ohio) and Asia Pacific (Seoul) regions. This feature enhances SQL query authoring in the web-based Query Editor for Amazon Redshift, enabling you to write SQL queries using natural language and receive intelligent SQL code recommendations. Amazon Q generative SQL makes Amazon Redshift database querying more accessible and efficient for users, regardless of their SQL expertise. Using generative AI, Amazon Q generative SQL analyzes user intent, SQL query patterns, and schema metadata to identify common query patterns within Amazon Redshift. The conversational interface allows users to submit SQL queries in natural language while maintaining their existing data permissions. For example, when asking "Find total revenue by region," the system automatically suggests appropriate SQL code by joining relevant Amazon Redshift tables, reducing development time and potential errors. Users can accept suggested queries directly or iterate with follow-up questions to refine their results. To learn more about pricing, visit the Amazon Q Developer pricing page. See the documentation to get started. ?

Amazon FSx for Lustre now supports Lustre version upgrades

Published Date: 2025-02-12 21:00:00

Amazon FSx for Lustre, a service that provides high-performance, cost-effective, and scalable file storage for compute workloads, now enables you to upgrade the Lustre version of your FSx for Lustre file systems. This feature allows you to benefit from the enhancements available in newer Lustre versions on your existing file systems. FSx for Lustre provides fully-managed file systems built on Lustre, the world's most popular open-source high performance file system. FSx for Lustre supports multiple long-term support Lustre versions released by the Lustre community. Newer Lustre versions provide benefits such as performance enhancements, new features, and support for the latest Linux kernel versions for your client instances. Starting today, you can upgrade your file systems to newer Lustre versions within minutes using the AWS management console or the AWS CLI/SDK . The feature is now available on all file systems at no additional cost in all AWS Regions where FSx for Lustre is available. For more information, see Amazon FSx for Lustre documentation.

AWS AppSync enhances resolver testing with comprehensive context object mocking

Published Date: 2025-02-12 19:12:00

AWS AppSync, a fully managed GraphQL service that helps customers build scalable APIs, announces improvements to its EvaluateCode and EvaluateMappingTemplate APIs. This update enables developers to comprehensively mock all properties of the context object during resolver and function unit testing, including identity information, stash variables, and error handling. The enhancement also introduces improved JSON input validation with clear, actionable error messages, making it easier for developers to identify and fix issues in their context setup. These improvements simplify the setup and configuration requirements. Developers can now efficiently test functions and resolvers by accessing and validating resolver stash (ctx.stash) and error tracking (ctx.outErrors) in their test environments. The update also simplifies identity mocking by allowing developers to include only the relevant caller information in ctx.identity. The updated console experience provides better visibility into the resolver test results, helping developers troubleshoot and optimize their resolver implementations more effectively. This enhancement is available in all AWS Regions where AWS AppSync is currently supported.

To learn more about these new features, visit the AWS AppSync?documentation?and explore the context object?reference. You can also explore examples and best practices in the AWS AppSync Developer Guide or get started by visiting the AWS AppSync console.

AWS HealthScribe now supports GIRPP note template for behavioral health

Published Date: 2025-02-12 18:00:00

AWS HealthScribe is a generative AI-powered service that automatically generates summarized clinical notes and transcripts from patient-clinician conversations. Documentation for behavioral health related encounters follows a goal centric format based on GIRPP (Goal, Intervention, Response, Progress, Plan) format. With this launch, AWS HealthScribe customers can directly convert a behavioral health related patient-clinician conversation to a GIRPP format note. This can potentially save clinicians hours daily in manually documenting behavioral health related encounters. Customers using the HealthScribe StartMedicalScribeJob and StartMedicalScribeStream API can simply set note template type parameter as “GIRPP” in the ClinicalNoteGenerationSettings for both async and streaming jobs and will share the output note in GIRPP format as the conversation ends. This feature is available in US East (N.Virginia) Region. To learn more refer to our documentation.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) now adds full snapshot size information in Console and API

Published Date: 2025-02-12 18:00:00

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) now displays the full snapshot size for EBS Snapshots. With this enhancement, customers can now retrieve full snapshot sizes programmatically through the DescribeSnapshots API using the new field, full-snapshot-size-in-bytes. The full snapshot size is also displayed in the EBS Snapshots console under the new 'Full snapshot size' column. Since EBS Snapshots are incremental in nature, if you take multiple snapshots of a volume over time, each snapshot only stores the new or modified blocks while maintaining references to unchanged blocks from previous snapshots. The ‘full snapshot size’ field shows you the total size of all blocks that make up a snapshot, including both the blocks stored directly in that snapshot and all blocks referenced from previous snapshots. For instance, if you have a 100 GB volume with 50 GB of data, the ‘full snapshot size’ would show 50 GB regardless of whether it's the first snapshot or a subsequent one. The ‘full snapshot size’ field provides crucial information about your EBS snapshot storage, such as the total size of the snapshot in the archived tier or the amount of data written to the source volume at the time the snapshot was created. Please note that this is different from the incremental snapshot size, which only refers to the size of newly changed blocks stored in that specific snapshot. This feature is now generally available in all commercial AWS regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To get started, see the EBS Snapshots user guide and API specification.

Amazon Polly launches a new voice in Singaporean English

Published Date: 2025-02-11 22:43:00

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Jasmine - new Singaporean English Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) female voice for Amazon Polly. Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk and to build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Jasmine is our first voice for the Singaporean variant of English. Even though Singaporean English is reported to be close to British English, there are some unique pronunciation patterns that we captured while training this voice, such as pronunciation of telephone numbers or postal codes, to make sure that Jasmine sounds like a local speaker. With this launch, we continue building a variety of voice and language options for Amazon Polly customers. Jasmine and all the other NTTS voices are available in AWS regions supporting Neural TTS. For more details, please read the Amazon Polly documentation and visit our pricing page.

AWS AppSync GraphQL introduces operation-level caching for faster GraphQL API responses

Published Date: 2025-02-11 22:00:00

AWS AppSync GraphQL now offers operation-level caching, a new feature that allows customers to cache entire GraphQL query operation responses. This enhancement enables developers to optimize read-heavy GraphQL APIs, delivering faster response times and improved application performance. Operation-level caching in AWS AppSync GraphQL streamlines the caching process by storing complete query responses. This approach is particularly beneficial for complex queries or high-traffic scenarios, where it can significantly reduce latency and enhance the overall user experience. By caching at the operation level, developers can easily boost API efficiency and create more responsive applications without additional code changes. Operation-level caching is now available in all AWS Regions where AWS AppSync is offered. To learn more about operation-level caching in AWS AppSync GraphQL, visit the AWS AppSync documentation. You can start using this feature today by configuring caching settings in the AWS AppSync GraphQL console or through the AWS CLI. ?

Amazon Connect Contact Lens can now take automated actions based on hold times and agent interaction time

Published Date: 2025-02-11 18:00:00

Amazon Connect Contact Lens now enables managers to create rules based on patterns of customer hold time and agent interaction duration, to take automated actions such as categorizing contacts, evaluating agent performance and notifying supervisors. With this launch, managers can create rules to check how well agents comply with guidelines on placing customers on hold. For example, did the agent set expectations on hold duration, before placing the customer on hold for more than 5 minutes? In addition, managers can check if the agent interaction lasted long enough to warrant assessment of complex agent behaviors such as building customer rapport, customer issue root cause analysis, etc. By excluding contacts that were too short, such as less than 30 seconds, managers can get more meaningful insights from automated contact categorization and agent performance evaluations. This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations are already available. To learn more, please visit our documentation and our webpage. For information about Contact Lens pricing, please visit our pricing page.

Amazon Connect Contact Lens now provides a dashboard with aggregated insights on agent performance evaluations

Published Date: 2025-02-11 18:00:00

Contact Lens now provides managers with an agent performance evaluation dashboard, to view aggregations of agent performance, and insights across cohorts of agents over time. With this launch, managers can access a unified dashboard on agent performance across evaluation scores, productivity (e.g., contacts handled, average handle time, etc.) and operational metrics. Through detailed performance scorecards at both team and individual levels, managers can dive deep into specific performance criteria, and compare performance with similar cohorts and over time, to identify agent strengths and improvement opportunities. The dashboard also provides managers with insights into agent time allocation and contact handling efficiency, so they can drive improvements in agent productivity. This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations are already available. To learn more, please visit our documentation and our webpage. For information about Contact Lens pricing, please visit our pricing page. ?

Amazon DynamoDB now supports auto-approval of quota adjustments

Published Date: 2025-02-11 18:00:00

You can now request for Amazon DynamoDB account-level and table-level throughput quota adjustments using AWS Service Quotas in all AWS Commercial Regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, and get auto-approved within minutes.

Previously, when requesting a quota adjustment, Service Quotas allowed you to indicate the Amazon DynamoDB quota and desired value to be adjusted to. AWS Support would then review your request, approve, and make the adjustments. With this launch, when you make updates to your DynamoDB account-level and table-level throughput quotas using AWS Service Quotas, your adjustments will get automatically approved and adjusted with just a few clicks. AWS Service Quotas is available at no additional charge. To learn more about Amazon DynamoDB, the Serverless, NoSQL, fully managed database with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale, please visit the Amazon DynamoDB website.

AWS Secrets and Configuration Provider now integrates with Pod Identity for Amazon EKS

Published Date: 2025-02-11 18:00:00

Today, AWS Secrets Manager announces that AWS Secrets and Configuration Provider (ASCP) now integrates with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Pod Identity. This integration simplifies IAM authentication for Amazon EKS when retrieving secrets from AWS Secrets Manager or parameters from AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store. With this new capability, you can manage IAM permissions for Kubernetes applications more efficiently and securely, enabling granular access control through role session tags on secrets. ASCP is a plugin for the industry-standard Kubernetes Secrets Store CSI Driver. It enables applications running in Kubernetes pods to retrieve secrets from AWS Secrets Manager easily, without the need for custom code or restarting containers when secrets are rotated. The AWS EKS Pod Identity, streamlines the process of configuring IAM permissions for Kubernetes applications in a more efficient and secure way. This integration combines the strengths of both components, enhancing secret management in Amazon EKS environments. Previously, ASCP relied on IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) for authentication. Now, you can choose between IRSA and Pod Identity for IAM authentication using the new optional parameter "usePodIdentity". This flexibility allows you to adopt the authentication method that best suits your security requirements and operational needs. The integration of ASCP with Pod Identity is available in all AWS Regions where AWS Secrets Manager and Amazon EKS Pod Identity are supported. To get started with this new feature, see the following resources AWS Secrets Manager documentation, Amazon EKS Pod Identity documentation and launch blog post. ?

Amazon EC2 M8g instances now available in AWS Europe (London)

Published Date: 2025-02-10 22:05:00

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M8g instances are available in AWS Europe (London) region. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors and deliver up to 30% better performance compared to AWS Graviton3-based instances. Amazon EC2 M8g instances are built for general-purpose workloads, such as application servers, microservices, gaming servers, midsize data stores, and caching fleets. These instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, which o?oads CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software to enhance the performance and security of your workloads. AWS Graviton4-based Amazon EC2 instances deliver the best performance and energy efficiency for a broad range of workloads running on Amazon EC2. These instances offer larger instance sizes with up to 3x more vCPUs and memory compared to Graviton3-based Amazon M7g instances. AWS Graviton4 processors are up to 40% faster for databases, 30% faster for web applications, and 45% faster for large Java applications than AWS Graviton3 processors. M8g instances are available in 12 different instance sizes, including two bare metal sizes. They offer up to 50 Gbps enhanced networking bandwidth and up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth to the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). To learn more, see Amazon EC2 M8g Instances. To explore how to migrate your workloads to Graviton-based instances, see AWS Graviton Fast Start program and Porting Advisor for Graviton. To get started, see the AWS Management Console.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports new minor version in January 2025

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:45:00

A new minor version of Microsoft SQL Server is now available on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, providing performance enhancements and security fixes. Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports this latest minor version of SQL Server 2022 across the Express, Web, Standard, and Enterprise editions. We encourage you to upgrade your Amazon RDS for SQL Server database instances at your convenience. You can upgrade with just a few clicks in the Amazon RDS Management Console or by using the AWS CLI. Learn more about upgrading your database instances from the Amazon RDS User Guide. The new minor version is SQL Server 2022 CU17 - 16.0.4175.1. This minor version is available in all AWS commercial regions where Amazon RDS for SQL Server databases are available, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. Amazon RDS for SQL Server makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in the cloud. See Amazon RDS for SQL Server Pricing for pricing details and regional availability.

Amazon CloudWatch now provides lock contention diagnostics for Aurora PostgreSQL

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights now provides lock contention diagnostics for Aurora PostgreSQL instances. This feature helps you identify the root cause behind both ongoing and historical lock contention issues within minutes. The lock contention diagnostics feature is available exclusively in the Advanced mode of CloudWatch Database Insights. With this launch, you can visualize a locking condition in the Database Insights console, which shows the relationship between blocking and waiting sessions. The visualization helps you quickly identify the dominating sessions, queries, or objects causing lock contention. Additionally, this feature persists historical locking data for 15 months, allowing you to analyze and investigate historical locking conditions. You no longer need to manually run custom queries or rely on application logs to diagnose lock contention issues, streamlining the troubleshooting process. You can get started with this feature by enabling the Advanced mode of CloudWatch Database Insights on your Aurora PostgreSQL clusters using the Aurora service console, AWS APIs, or the AWS SDK. CloudWatch Database Insights delivers database health monitoring aggregated at the fleet level, as well as instance-level dashboards for detailed database and SQL query analysis. CloudWatch Database Insights is available in all public AWS Regions and offers vCPU-based pricing – see the pricing page for details. For further information, visit the Database Insights documentation.

Amazon Redshift Serverless announces reduction in IP Address Requirements to 3 per Subnet

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

Amazon Redshift Serverless announces reduction in IP Address Requirements to 3 per Subnet. When using Amazon Redshift Serverless without Enhanced VPC Routing (EVR) enabled, you only need 3 free IP addresses in each subnet in your Amazon VPC. The new enhancement makes starting with Amazon Redshift Serverless easier, and you do not have to worry about free IP addresses in your Amazon VPC subnet network. Before this announcement, you must have at least 9 free IP addresses in your subnet when creating an Amazon Redshift Serverless workgroup (workgroup) or when updating your workgroup for the Redshift Processing Units (RPUs), you must have at least 10 free IP addresses in your subnets. With this announcement, you only need 3 free IP addresses in your subnets when creating or updating the workgroup without EVR regardless of the size of the base RPU (8 to 1024 RPUs) or the RPU usage of your workgroup or workgroups enabled with AI-driven scaling and optimizations. Any existing workgroup will also benefit from the decreased IP address needs, regardless of the base RPU size or RPU usage, and including workgroups enabled with AI-driven scaling and optimizations. Your administrative overhead is reduced when RPUs for your workgroup increase as the free IP address requirements are reduced significantly, and you do not need to take steps to free up IP addresses. The need for 3 free IP addresses in Amazon Redshift Serverless applies to all commercial AWS regions and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions where Amazon Redshift Serverless is available. Refer to this documentation to learn more about the free IP address in Amazon Redshift Serverless.

Anthropic’s upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet now available in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

Anthropic’s upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet model is now available in Amazon Bedrock in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) AWS Region. According to Anthropic, the model delivers across-the-board improvements over its predecessor, with significant gains in coding—an area where it already led the field. The upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet model shows wide-ranging improvements on industry benchmarks. On coding the model improves performance on SWE-bench Verified from 33% to 49%. It also improves performance on TAU-bench, an agentic tool use task, from 62.6% to 69.2% in the retail domain, and from 36.0% to 46.0% in the airline domain. The model offers these advancements at the same price of its predecessor. Additionally, Claude 3.5 Sonnet now offers computer use capabilities in Amazon Bedrock in public beta, allowing Claude to perceive and interact with computer interfaces. Developers can direct Claude to use computers the way people do—by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text. Given this technology is early stage, developers are encouraged to explore lower-risk tasks.

To learn more, read the AWS News launch blog, Claude in Amazon Bedrock product page, and documentation. To get started with Claude, visit the Amazon Bedrock console. ?

Amazon EFS now supports up to 10,000 access points per EFS file system

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) has now increased the access points limit from 1,000 to 10,000 per file system, a 10x increase. This launch makes it even easier for customers to manage application-specific access to shared datasets, enabling them to seamlessly scale access management to thousands of users, on a single EFS file system. Amazon EFS is a fully elastic file storage service that makes it simple to set up and run file workloads in the AWS cloud. Access points are application-specific entry points that enforce a user identity and root directory, and logically isolate data between applications. The new EFS access point limits automatically apply to all file systems and require no action from customers. The new access point limits are immediately available in all commercial AWS regions, except in AWS China Regions. To learn more, see the Amazon EFS Documentation or create a file system using the Amazon EFS Console, API, or AWS CLI. ?

CloudWatch Application Signals now supports Runtime Metrics for .NET Applications

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

Today, AWS is announcing the general availability of runtime metrics for .NET applications in Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals, an OpenTelemetry (OTel)-compatible application performance monitoring (APM) feature in CloudWatch. Without requiring any source code changes, you can now collect runtime metrics such as Garbage Collection and Heap usage from .NET applications and correlate with application metrics, traces, and logs for applications running across EKS, EC2, ECS and on-premise servers. Runtime metrics enable real-time monitoring of your application’s resource consumption, such as memory and CPU usage. Now, for .NET applications, developers and SREs can determine whether anomalies in runtime metrics affect key application metrics—such as errors, latency, and throughput. For example, they can identify if a service latency spike is a result of an increase in garbage collection pauses by viewing these metric graphs side by side. Additionally you will be able to identify thread contention, track memory allocation patterns, and pinpoint memory or CPU spikes that may lead to application slowdown, impacting end-user experience. Runtime metrics support is available for Java, Python and now .NET applications across all regions Application Signals is available in. See documentation to learn more about the standard and runtime metrics collected by Application Signals. Don’t forget to opt in to the new, cost-effective pricing for Application Signals. For more details, visit the Amazon CloudWatch pricing page and look for the “Application Signals (including complete visibility into application transaction spans)” section. ?

Announcing AWS CloudFormation support for AWS Transfer Family web apps

Published Date: 2025-02-10 18:00:00

You can now use AWS CloudFormation templates to create and manage your AWS Transfer Family web apps. This enables you to define and deploy Transfer Family web apps via infrastructure-as-code so you can automate centralized management at scale. With CloudFormation templates, you can programmatically provision and configure your Transfer Family web app, associated customizations, and S3 access grants in a single deployment. This eliminates time-consuming manual configurations and ensures you maintain consistent, secure implementations across departments. You can rapidly scale your file transfer interfaces from hundreds to thousands of users while maintaining strict security and compliance standards through version-controlled infrastructure templates. AWS CloudFormation support is available in all regions where Transfer Family web apps are available. To learn more about Transfer Family web apps, visit the Transfer Family User Guide and read our blog. For sample templates and detailed documentation, visit the AWS CloudFormation documentation.