All news with #aws tag

Choosing the Right AWS Service for Secrets and Configs

🔐 AWS outlines when to use Secrets Manager, Systems Manager Parameter Store, and AWS AppConfig to manage credentials, configuration values, and feature flags. The guidance recommends Secrets Manager for sensitive credentials that need rotation and multi‑Region replication, Parameter Store for simple or high‑volume key/value data, and AppConfig for validated, controlled deployments. The post compares encryption, access controls, replication, monitoring, and pricing to help architects select the best fit.

AWS Launches Second Secret Region: AWS Secret-West

🔒 AWS announced the launch of AWS Secret-West, its second Secret U.S. region for handling mission-critical workloads at the Secret classification. The region offers multiple Availability Zones, an ICD-accredited security architecture, and authorized services under ICD 503 and DoD SRG IL6. It provides lower latency for western U.S. operations, multi-region resiliency, and geographic separation to support government mission requirements.

Amazon CloudWatch adds interactive incident reporting

📝 Amazon CloudWatch now offers interactive incident report generation, enabling customers to produce comprehensive post-incident analysis in minutes. The capability, available within CloudWatch investigations, automatically gathers and correlates telemetry data, user inputs, and investigation actions to produce streamlined reports. Reports include executive summaries, timelines, impact assessments, and actionable recommendations to help teams identify patterns and implement preventive measures. The feature is available in multiple AWS regions.

Amazon U7i High Memory Instances Reach US East (Ohio)

🚀 Amazon EC2 High Memory U7i instances (u7i-6tb.112xlarge) are now available in the AWS US East (Ohio) Region. These 7th-generation instances deliver 6TB of DDR5 memory and 448 vCPUs powered by custom 4th-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Sapphire Rapids). They support up to 100 Gbps for EBS throughput and networking, include ENA Express, and are designed for mission-critical in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server.

CloudWatch Synthetics: Bundled Multi-Check Canaries

🔧 Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics now offers bundled multi-check blueprints that let teams define comprehensive synthetic tests using a single JSON configuration file. A single canary can include up to 10 steps covering HTTP (with varied authentication), DNS, SSL certificate checks and TCP ports, and supports complex assertions on status, latency, headers and response body. Integration with AWS Secrets Manager secures credentials, while step-by-step results and console debugging simplify implementation compared with writing multiple custom canaries.

Amazon Redshift Auto-Copy Expands to Four AWS Regions

📥 Amazon Redshift Auto-Copy is now available in Asia Pacific (Malaysia), Asia Pacific (Thailand), Mexico (Central), and Asia Pacific (Taipei). The feature lets you configure an integration to continuously detect and load new files from a specified Amazon S3 prefix into Redshift tables without requiring custom COPY pipelines or external tooling. Auto-Copy records previously loaded files to prevent duplicate ingestion and exposes job status and metrics via Redshift system tables for monitoring and troubleshooting.

Amazon EKS Auto Mode Adds FIPS Support in GovCloud

🔐 Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Auto Mode is now available in AWS GovCloud (US-East) and (US-West), automating compute, storage, and networking management for Kubernetes clusters. Its AMIs include FIPS-validated cryptographic modules to help meet FedRAMP-style requirements. EKS Auto Mode handles OS patching, leverages ephemeral compute to reduce persistent attack surface, and dynamically scales EC2 instances to optimize costs while maintaining availability; it supports clusters running Kubernetes 1.29 and later with no upfront fees.

Amazon DCV 2025.0 Adds WebAuthn, ARM, and Keyboard Support

🔒 Amazon DCV 2025.0 is the latest release of the high-performance remote display protocol, delivering enhanced security and productivity for virtual desktop and application sessions. The update adds WebAuthn redirection on Windows and browser-based WebAuthn on Linux to enable security-key authentication in native and SaaS apps, plus server-side keyboard layout handling and alignment for Windows clients to improve input consistency. Other improvements include Linux client support for ARM, Windows Server 2025 host compatibility, and scroll wheel optimizations for smoother navigation. See AWS documentation and the DCV product page for full release notes.

Amazon CloudWatch Agent Gains Windows Event Log Filtering

🔎 Amazon CloudWatch Agent now supports configurable Windows Event Log filters for Windows hosts running on Amazon EC2 or on‑premises. You can define per-stream filter criteria in the agent configuration file — including event levels, specific event IDs, and regular expressions set to include or exclude — and the agent evaluates each event to determine whether it should be sent to CloudWatch. This reduces noisy ingestion and helps focus monitoring, troubleshooting, and cost control; the feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions and AWS GovCloud (US).

Amazon RDS for SQL Server: KMS Encryption for Native Backups

🔐 Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports encrypting native backup files (.bak) stored in Amazon S3 using server-side encryption with AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS). By default, native backups remain encrypted with Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3), and customers can opt to apply their own KMS key for additional protection and key control. To enable the feature, update the KMS key policy to grant the RDS backup service access and specify the parameter @enable_bucket_default_encryption in the native backup stored procedure. This capability is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon RDS for SQL Server is offered.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server: Preserve CDC on Restore

🛡️ Amazon RDS for SQL Server now preserves Change Data Capture (CDC) settings and metadata when restoring native database backups. By specifying the KEEP_CDC option during a restore, customers retain CDC configuration and any captured change data, preventing gaps in ongoing data-capture workflows. This capability is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon RDS for SQL Server is offered and is documented in the RDS for SQL Server User Guide.

AWS PCS Adds Slurm Cluster Secret Rotation Support

🔐 AWS Parallel Computing Service (PCS) now supports rotation of Slurm cluster secret keys using AWS Secrets Manager. Administrators can update the credentials used for authentication between the Slurm controller and compute nodes without recreating a cluster, preserving running workloads and configuration. Regular rotation reduces the risk of credential compromise and helps meet security best practices and compliance requirements. The capability is available in all Regions where PCS operates and can be initiated from the Secrets Manager console or via API after preparing the cluster for rotation.

Amazon EC2 C7i-flex Instances Launch in Jakarta Region

🚀 Amazon Web Services has launched C7i-flex instances in the Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. The new instances deliver up to 19% better price-performance versus C6i and use custom 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) processors available only on AWS, while offering roughly 5% lower prices than standard C7i. C7i-flex covers common sizes from large to 16xlarge and is intended for compute-intensive workloads that don’t fully utilize all vCPUs; customers with continuous high CPU usage or needs for very large sizes (up to 192 vCPUs and 384 GiB) should consider full-size C7i instances.

Amazon MQ Launches in AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand)

🚀 Amazon MQ is now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region (API name ap-southeast-6) with three Availability Zones. The managed message broker supports Apache ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, reducing operational overhead by managing provisioning, setup, and maintenance. Because it uses industry-standard APIs and protocols, customers can migrate applications to AWS without rewriting code. With this launch, Amazon MQ is now offered in 38 AWS regions globally.

Amazon DocumentDB Adds Graviton4-based R8g Instances

🚀 Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) now supports Graviton4-based R8g instances, delivering DDR5 memory and Nitro System improvements for memory‑intensive workloads. R8g is available for Amazon DocumentDB 5.0 on both Standard and IO‑Optimized cluster storage. Customers can modify existing clusters or create new ones via the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDK; check documentation for regional availability and pricing.

AWS Adds Scope 3 and Scope 1 to Carbon Footprint Tool

🌍 The AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool now reports Scope 3 emissions alongside Scope 1 natural gas and refrigerant data, giving customers more complete visibility into cloud-related carbon impacts. Historical Scope 3 data is available back to January 2022 and can be accessed through the CCFT dashboard and AWS Billing and Cost Management data exports. These updates extend CCFT coverage to all three scopes defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and help customers integrate carbon insights into operational workflows, sustainability planning, and reporting.

Amazon S3 Metadata Expands to Frankfurt, Ireland, Tokyo

🆕 Amazon has expanded S3 Metadata to three additional AWS Regions — Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). The service provides automated, near-real-time, queryable metadata for S3 objects, covering system-defined attributes (size, source, timestamps) and custom metadata via tags. Metadata is automatically populated for both new and existing objects, enabling faster discovery, curation, and use for analytics and real-time inference. With this release, S3 Metadata is generally available in six AWS Regions.

AWS Nitro Enclaves Now Available in All Regions Worldwide

🔒 AWS has made Nitro Enclaves available in every AWS Region, expanding regional support to include new locations across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Nitro Enclaves enables customers to create isolated compute environments inside EC2 instances to protect and process sensitive data and reduce attack surface. There is no additional charge beyond the EC2 and associated service usage.

Deploying AWS Secrets Manager Agent as an EKS Sidecar

🔒 This post demonstrates deploying the AWS Secrets Manager Agent as a sidecar container in Amazon EKS to provide a language-agnostic local HTTP interface (localhost:2773) for secrets retrieval. The agent pulls and caches secret values, reducing direct API calls to Secrets Manager and improving application availability. It enforces SSRF protection via a generated token at /var/run/awssmatoken and implements ML‑KEM post‑quantum key exchange by default. Authentication uses Amazon EKS Pod Identity and IAM permissions (secretsmanager:GetSecretValue and secretsmanager:DescribeSecret), and the post includes build, containerization, and deployment steps.

Digital Sovereignty Sessions at AWS re:Invent 2025 Guide

📘 The AWS re:Invent 2025 attendee guide highlights the conference's digital sovereignty program, detailing sessions, workshops, and code talks focused on data residency, hybrid and edge deployments, and sovereign infrastructure. Key topics include the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, AWS Outposts, Local Zones, and security features such as the Nitro System. Practical workshops and chalk talks demonstrate RAG, agentic AI, and low-latency SLM deployments with operational controls and compliance patterns. Reserve seating via the attendee portal or access sessions with the free virtual pass.