All news in category “Vendor and Hyperscaler Watch”

🚀 Amazon has added Aurora PostgreSQL serverless to the AWS Free Tier for new accounts. New customers receive $100 in AWS credits at sign-up and can earn an additional $100 by using qualifying services including Amazon RDS. With the Free Plan you can create an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless cluster from the RDS Console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs using an express configuration to create and query a database in seconds. The Free Tier is available in Regions that support Aurora PostgreSQL serverless.

🚀 Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL introduces an express configuration that creates serverless clusters and enables query execution in seconds. These clusters are provisioned outside a VPC with an internet access gateway that supports the full PostgreSQL wire protocol and multi‑AZ availability. IAM-based passwordless admin authentication is enabled by default, and the tier is available under the AWS Free Tier. Use the RDS Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to deploy.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker AI now offers serverless model customization and reinforcement fine-tuning for 12 additional open‑weight models, enabling SFT, DPO, and advanced RFT techniques such as RLVR and RLAIF without infrastructure management. You can fine‑tune and evaluate these models on a pay‑per‑use basis across multiple regions. This simplifies alignment for complex, domain‑specific tasks and improves accuracy on verifiable tasks like code generation and structured extraction. No cluster setup, capacity planning, or distributed training expertise is required.

⚡ DRA (Dynamic Resource Allocation) modernizes Kubernetes device management by replacing static Device Plugins with a request-based model built on ResourceSlice and ResourceClaim. It enables granular, attribute-based requests such as minimum VRAM, specific hardware models, or PCIe locality, and abstracts hardware via DeviceClass so the scheduler can match workloads to suitable devices. NVIDIA contributed a GPU driver and Google donated a TPU driver, and DRA is generally available in GKE. This reduces manual node pinning and improves utilization for LLM and AI workloads.

🔐 Microsoft argues that identity is the primary pressure point for modern cyberattacks as organizations manage proliferating human, non-human, and agentic identities across disparate systems. The post highlights that fragmentation—duplicative solutions and too many vendors—creates visibility gaps that enable lateral movement. It outlines a unified model built on Microsoft Entra, a real-time identity control plane including Conditional Access, and integrated threat protection, and describes AI-driven triage with Security Copilot to accelerate response and reduce analyst fatigue.

🚀 AWS has expanded availability of I7ie Amazon EC2 instances to seven additional regions, targeting large storage I/O–intensive workloads. I7ie instances are powered by 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors (3.2 GHz all-core turbo), provide up to 120 TB local NVMe storage density and up to twice the vCPUs and memory of prior generations. Using 3rd-generation AWS Nitro SSDs, they deliver lower latency and improved real-time storage performance and are offered in nine sizes with up to 100 Gbps networking and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth.

⚛️ Microsoft announces an AI for nuclear collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver an end-to-end, AI-powered foundation for nuclear project delivery. The initiative pairs Microsoft Azure, generative AI for permitting, and NVIDIA simulation and AI stacks to speed design, streamline licensing, and improve operations via Digital Twins. Early adopters — including Aalo Atomics, Southern Nuclear, and Idaho National Laboratory — report major time and cost reductions while preserving regulatory traceability and security.

🔒 Google is introducing post-quantum cryptography support in Android 17, integrating NIST’s lattice-based standards into boot, keystore, and app signing to establish a quantum-resistant chain of trust. The release adds ML-DSA to Android Verified Boot and migrates KeyMint certificate chains and Remote Attestation toward PQC compliance. Developers gain native support for ML-DSA-65 and ML-DSA-87 via the KeyPairGenerator API, and Google Play will offer hybrid APK signing with keys managed by Google Cloud KMS to preserve compatibility during migration.

🔐 Google announces a company-wide timeline targeting 2029 for migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to protect against future quantum threats. The timeline reflects advances in quantum hardware, error correction, and factoring estimates, and prioritizes PQC for authentication services to guard digital signatures. Google cites ongoing integrations — including Android 17 using ML-DSA, Chrome support, and Cloud offerings — as concrete commitments and urges other teams and organizations to accelerate their own migrations.

🛡️ Kali Linux 2026.1 is now available, introducing eight new tools, a refreshed visual theme, and a BackTrack mode for Kali-Undercover. The update adds 25 new packages, updates 183 others, and upgrades the kernel to 6.18, while polishing the installer, boot, and login experiences. New network-repository tools include AdaptixC2, Atomic-Operator, Fluxion, GEF, MetasploitMCP, SSTImap, WPProbe, and XSStrike. The release also delivers Kali NetHunter fixes and recommends WSL 2 for GUI support.

📨 AWS Transfer Family now supports receiving Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) asynchronously for messages exchanged over AS2. You can request MDNs over a separate TLS connection so partner systems with extended processing times or high latency can return dispositions independently. Transfer Family continues to support synchronous MDNs, enabling seamless migration of AS2 workflows to AWS while preserving interoperability with existing trading partners. This capability is available in the majority of AWS regions where Transfer Family is offered.

📦 AWS Backup now supports Amazon DocumentDB in 12 additional AWS Regions, bringing policy-based data protection and recovery to DocumentDB clusters in those locations. Newly supported Regions include Asia Pacific (Malaysia, Thailand, Osaka, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Melbourne), Europe (Stockholm, Spain, Zurich), Africa (Cape Town), Israel (Tel Aviv), and Mexico (Central). To start protecting clusters, add them to existing backup plans or create a new backup plan and attach clusters via the AWS Backup console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs.

🚀 AWS ParallelCluster 3.15 is now generally available, adding support for P6-B300 instances and upgrading Slurm to 25.11 with expedited job requeue. The release improves EFA network configuration defaults and introduces network interface customization, plus more reliable cluster updates and better performance for tightly coupled workloads at scale. It also enables non-disruptive cluster tag updates. ParallelCluster remains open-source for provisioning HPC and AI/ML clusters on AWS.

🚀 Amazon SageMaker HyperPod now supports continuous provisioning for clusters using the Slurm orchestrator, allowing training jobs to start immediately on available instances while remaining capacity is provisioned in the background. Priority-based provisioning brings up the Slurm controller first, then login and worker nodes in parallel, with asynchronous retries for failed launches. The feature reduces time-to-training, improves utilization, and removes the need for manual scaling interventions.

📦 Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime now offers managed session storage in public preview. When configured, each session receives a persistent directory at your specified mount path so agents can read and write files as usual while the runtime transparently replicates data to durable storage. On stop, data is flushed during graceful shutdown and, when you resume with the same session ID, a new microVM mounts the same storage so source files, installed packages, build artifacts, and git history are preserved. The feature supports standard Linux filesystem operations, provides up to 1 GB per session, retains data for 14 days of idle time, and confines storage communication to a single session for isolation.

🔄 AWS reports it is actively testing an LTS upgrade in production. The brief notice, posted Mar 24, 2026 and attributed to aws@amazon.com, confirms ongoing activity but does not disclose targeted components or version details. Customers should validate compatibility in staging, confirm third-party support, and prepare rollback and monitoring procedures. Monitor official channels for formal release notes and status updates.

🚀 Amazon has expanded Timestream for InfluxDB to the Mexico (Central), Japan (Osaka), and Brazil (Sao Paulo) regions, enabling locally hosted, fully managed InfluxDB databases for real-time time-series applications. The service supports Multi-AZ high availability, read replicas, enhanced durability, and multi-node scaling from single-node setups up to 15-node Enterprise clusters. You can create and manage databases via the console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs, giving developers and DevOps teams flexible deployment and scaling options.

🛡️ Firefox 149 introduces a free built-in VPN that provides signed-in users with up to 50 GB of browser-only monthly traffic via a secure proxy. The feature can be toggled globally or enabled on up to five specific sites to save data, while certain sites and services are excluded to avoid sign-in and reconnection issues. Mozilla says it will collect only limited technical and interaction data to monitor performance, and routing servers are U.S.-based. Rollout begins in the US, UK, Germany and France; the update also adds Split View and fixes 46 security vulnerabilities.

🔧 Microsoft has resolved a known issue that caused Classic Outlook to stop syncing Gmail and Yahoo accounts and to show 0x800CCC0F and 0x80070057 error codes. Affected accounts reportedly stopped syncing on February 26, 2026; Microsoft says the fix was applied in the Microsoft 365 service, but some users may still see issues until their OAuth token expires. As a temporary workaround, Microsoft recommends deleting the affected email address entries under the Identities key at Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity\Identities to force a sign-in prompt.

🔒 The perimeter model has broken down as workforces go hybrid, and many Zero Trust deployments miss a key link between identity and session authorization. Specops Device Trust argues that authentication must be contextualized with real-time device posture checks to prevent token theft and session hijacking. Binding identity to a verified device and continuous monitoring lets organizations enforce dynamic, low-friction policies that reduce risk.