All news with #product release tag

R2 SQL Deep Dive: Serverless Queries over R2 Data Platform

⚡ R2 SQL is Cloudflare’s serverless query engine that runs SQL directly against Iceberg tables stored in R2, eliminating the need for Spark or Trino clusters. The Query Planner uses R2 Data Catalog metadata and multi-level stats to prune manifests, files, and Parquet row groups so only necessary bytes are read. Execution is distributed across Cloudflare’s network using Workers and query workers running Apache DataFusion, with results serialized via Apache Arrow. An ordered, streaming planning pipeline enables early termination for ORDER BY ... LIMIT queries; R2 SQL is currently available in open beta.

Cloudflare Workers Now Directly Connect to PlanetScale

🚀 Cloudflare Workers can now connect directly to PlanetScale Postgres and MySQL databases through a dashboard integration that links accounts and provisions an optimal Hyperdrive configuration. Built on Hyperdrive, the integration keeps connections warm, places pooled connections near your database, and can cache frequent read queries to reduce latency and database load. Credentials are managed securely, including a one-click password rotation, and the integration is accessible from both Cloudflare and PlanetScale dashboards to simplify full-stack app development.

AWS Network Firewall Enhances Application-Layer Controls

🔐 AWS released enhanced default application-layer rules for AWS Network Firewall to better handle TLS client hellos and HTTP requests that are split across multiple packets. The update adds new default stateful actions — drop and alert established — enabling security teams to enforce controls without complex custom rules while supporting modern TLS implementations and large HTTP requests. Detailed logging preserves visibility. Available in all supported AWS Regions.

AWS Expands EC2 C8gn Graviton4 Instances to Regions

🚀 Amazon expanded availability of EC2 C8gn instances—powered by Graviton4—to Europe (Frankfurt, Stockholm) and Asia Pacific (Singapore), in addition to existing US Regions. C8gn delivers up to 30% better compute vs Graviton3-based C7gn, includes 6th-generation Nitro Cards, and offers up to 600 Gbps network bandwidth. Instances scale to 48xlarge with up to 384 GiB memory and 60 Gbps EBS bandwidth, and select sizes support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for lower-latency clusters optimized for network-intensive workloads.

Cloudflare Data Platform: R2 Pipelines, Catalog, SQL

🧭 Cloudflare announced the Cloudflare Data Platform, combining Cloudflare Pipelines, R2 Data Catalog, and R2 SQL to ingest, store, and query analytical tables directly on R2 object storage. Built on Apache Iceberg and open standards, the platform emphasizes engine interoperability and Cloudflare’s zero-cost egress. Pipelines offers exactly-once ingestion and SQL transforms today; stateful processing is planned. The products are open betas with usage-based pricing signals ahead of GA.

Cloudflare Workers: A Year of Node.js Compatibility

🔧 Over the past year Cloudflare has significantly expanded Node.js compatibility inside Workers, adding many core modules as native runtime features. The effort includes modules such as node:fs, node:crypto, node:http, node:net, and node:zlib, plus a virtual in-memory file system and native crypto via ncrypto. These changes reduce reliance on polyfills and tooling shims, improve performance and memory usage, and let popular npm packages and frameworks like Express run more seamlessly. Developers enable this with the nodejs_compat flag and can opt in or out of EOL-related APIs using granular compatibility flags.

AWS Billing: Consolidated Cost Views Across Organizations

🔔 AWS has announced general availability of new AWS Billing and Cost Management features that let customers create and share custom billing views across multiple AWS Organizations from a single account. Users can share views with accounts outside their organization and combine multiple custom views into consolidated perspectives. These consolidated views are accessible via AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets, enabling cross-organization cost analysis and budgeting.

Google Cloud Announces Flex-start VMs for GPU Access

🚀 Google Cloud has launched Flex-start VMs, a Compute Engine consumption option powered by Dynamic Workload Scheduler that lets single VM instances wait in a managed queue for scarce GPUs. By setting request-valid-for-duration (90 seconds–2 hours) users keep capacity requests in PENDING and avoid custom retry logic. Flex-start VMs offer significant discounts versus on‑demand SKUs, consume preemptible quota, run uninterrupted for up to seven days, and integrate directly via the instances.insert API, gcloud CLI, or the Cloud Console. Instances support stop/start to pause billing and an instanceTerminationAction = STOP to preserve configuration when the seven‑day runtime expires.

Amazon CloudWatch Adds Tag-Based Telemetry for Metrics

🔍 Amazon CloudWatch introduces tag-based telemetry so teams can monitor metrics and configure alarms using existing AWS resource tags. This lets DevOps and cloud administrators build dynamic monitoring views that follow organizational tagging, automatically adapting as resources change. Tag-based query filtering cuts manual dashboard and alarm updates, and can be enabled with one click or via the AWS CLI and SDKs.

Amazon RDS: PostgreSQL 18.0 Available in Public Preview

🆕 Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL 18.0 is now available in the RDS Database Preview Environment, enabling evaluation of new PostgreSQL capabilities within a fully managed sandbox. PostgreSQL 18.0 introduces multicolumn B-tree skip scan, improved WHERE handling for OR/IN conditions, parallel GIN builds, updated join behavior, and UUIDv7 support. The preview preserves instances for up to 60 days, restricts snapshots to the preview environment, and supports database import/export via dump/load; pricing follows the US East (Ohio) Region.

Amazon EC2 Allowed AMIs: New Parameters for Governance

🔒 Amazon EC2’s account-wide Allowed AMIs setting now supports four new parameters — marketplace codes, deprecation time, creation date, and AMI names — to tighten AMI discovery and usage controls. Previously limited to account IDs and owner aliases, administrators can now define additional criteria to block Marketplace images, filter out outdated AMIs, and enforce naming patterns. These parameters integrate with Declarative Policies and are available in all regions, including AWS China and AWS GovCloud (US), enabling centralized AMI governance across your organization.

AWS X-Ray Adds Adaptive Sampling for Error and Cost Control

🔍 AWS X-Ray now supports adaptive sampling to automatically adjust trace sampling within user-defined limits. This feature offers two modes—Sampling Boost to temporarily raise sampling when anomalies are detected and Anomaly Span Capture to retain spans tied to anomalies even if the full trace isn't sampled. Adaptive sampling aims to reduce MTTR by capturing critical traces during incidents while keeping observability costs low. It is available in all commercial regions where X‑Ray is offered.

Preview Amazon S3 Tables Directly in the S3 Console

🔍 You can now preview Amazon S3 Tables directly in the S3 console without writing SQL. The console preview displays table schema, column types, and sample rows so you can quickly inspect structure and key data points without additional setup. Previews are available in all AWS Regions where S3 Tables are offered. You are charged only for the S3 requests used to read the sampled rows; consult S3 pricing and the S3 User Guide for details.

CrowdStrike Named Frost Radar Leader in CNAPP Innovation

🔒 CrowdStrike has been named an innovation and growth leader in the 2025 Frost Radar: Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, ranking highest on the Innovation Index. Falcon Cloud Security provides unified, AI-native protection across pre-runtime and runtime, combining agent-based and agentless coverage, shift-left CI/CD policy enforcement, continuous posture management, and runtime defenses. Integration with the Falcon platform’s XDR and MDR and a single sensor for hybrid environments enables faster cross-domain detection and response.

AWS Lambda Code Signing Now Available in GovCloud Regions

🔐 AWS Lambda now supports code signing in AWS GovCloud (US-West and US-East) through the managed AWS Signer service. Lambda validates signatures at deployment to ensure code has not been altered and that it originates from trusted signers. Administrators can create Signing Profiles, bind allowed profiles to functions, and configure whether failed signature checks produce warnings or reject deployments. Access and permissions are controlled via IAM, and there is no additional charge to use this capability.

Kali Linux 2025.3: 10 New Tools, Nexmon & NetHunter

🔧 Kali Linux 2025.3 delivers ten new tools and expanded Wi-Fi and NetHunter capabilities. Notable additions include Caido (client and server), Detect It Easy, Gemini CLI, krbrelayx, ligolo-mp, and vwifi-dkms for dummy Wi‑Fi networks. Nexmon support is restored for Broadcom/Cypress chips and Raspberry Pi devices, while NetHunter gains Samsung S10 support and CARsenal updates. Users can upgrade via the Kali rolling repository or download the new ISOs.

GKE Autopilot Features Now Available to Qualified Clusters

🚀 Google Cloud has extended core Autopilot capabilities to qualified Standard GKE clusters, enabling access to the new container-optimized compute platform via built-in compute classes. Available initially to clusters in the Rapid release channel running 1.33.1-gke.1107000 or later, these features include the autopilot and autopilot-spot compute classes and a provisioning mode that supports gradual adoption. Benefits include rapid horizontal and vertical scaling, pay-for-request billing, efficient bin-packing, and support for GPUs and TPUs for AI workloads.

AWS ARC Region Switch Now Available in New Zealand

🔁 Amazon Web Services has made the Application Recovery Controller Region switch feature available in the Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region. Region switch lets teams orchestrate and execute cross-account and cross-Region recovery steps while providing real-time dashboards and consolidated data collection to support regulator and compliance reporting. The feature supports failover/failback for active/passive designs and shift-away/return for active/active architectures, and automatically replicates plans to all Regions where the application runs.

Automatic SSL/TLS: Upgrading 6M Domains for Quantum Safety

🔐 Cloudflare's Automatic SSL/TLS now upgrades origin-facing encryption by default, having strengthened over 6 million domains without operator intervention. The system scans origins, verifies content and certificates, then gradually ramps stronger SSL/TLS modes from 1% to 100% of traffic, aborting safely on failures. This prepares sites for the post-quantum era by favoring hybrid key agreements (X25519 + ML-KEM) and will soon automate post-quantum handshakes and ad-hoc rescans.

Amazon Route 53 Resolver Query Logging Now in NZ Region

🛰️ Amazon Route 53 Resolver Query Logging is now available in Asia Pacific (New Zealand). You can log DNS queries originating in VPCs to capture queried domain names, the AWS resources that issued the queries (including source IP and instance ID), and the responses received. Logs can be delivered to Amazon S3, CloudWatch Logs, or Amazon Data Firehose, and query logging configurations may be shared across accounts via AWS RAM. There is no additional Route 53 charge for enabling query logging, though storage and ingestion on the chosen destination may incur costs.