Yesterday, I talked about NAPTR records and how they are related to RCS. But there is another "odd" record that shows up in my DNS logs. This one isn't new, but I don't think I ever covered it: NIMLOC. At least that is what Zeek calls it. But let's see what it is all about.
A couple of editions ago I wrote about what I find so energizing about working with startups. Last week I got a fresh dose of it: I spent a few days with the AWS Startups team, listening to stories of founders talking about the problems they’re actually solving. One story that stayed with me came from Marco Negreiros, founder of EyeCare Health, a Brazilian healthtech expanding access to eye care. He shared a striking fact: more than 70% of Brazilian municipalities don’t have a single ophthalmologist. His answer was to put a vision test on the one device almost everyone already carries, the smartphone, so a basic eye screening no longer depends on living near a clinic. Watching a founder turn a gap that big into something that concrete is exactly why I love this space.
This week, I’ll take a closer look at some key launches, and then cover the quarterly AWS Service Availability updates.
Last week’s launches
Here are some of the launches covered from this past week in the AWS News Blog:
Here are some launches and updates that caught my attention:
For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.
AWS Service Availability Updates
When the availability of an AWS service or feature changes, we provide customers guidance in AWS Product Lifecycle Changes on available alternatives and support for migration so that disruptions to your operations are minimized. The following lifecycle changes were updated on June 30, 2026.
Services moving to Maintenance (no longer accessible to new customers starting July 30, 2026):
Services entering Sunset:
Services reaching End of Support (as of June 30, 2026):
We understand that changes in availability can impact your operations. For specific guidance, consult the relevant service documentation or contact AWS Support.
Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:
Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.
That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!
– Daniel Abib
This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!
Over the last year, with recent updates to iOS and Android, RCS (Rich Communication Services) has become an increasingly used protocol [1]. RCS is supposed to eventually replace SMS, and in addition to richer formatting, provides added (but optional) security. RCS messages may be end-to-end encrypted and digitally signed. Unlike SMS, which was "bolted on" to existing voice-focused phone standards. The SMS standard was based on old-fashioned pagers and allowed for limited clear-text communications. RCS is built from the ground up around modern IP-based network infrastructure and behaves more like IP chat services (think iMessage, WhatsApp…). RCS defines the message format, while protocols like SIP are used to establish connections and transport messages.
Upgrading a Kubernetes control plane has long been a one way door. Open source Kubernetes doesn’t support control plane rollback, so once you upgrade, there’s no going back. The community is making real progress here, and KEP-4330 introduces emulated versions to ease rollback. But in practice this constraint has pushed organizations to build elaborate compensating mechanisms like bake periods, stagger groups, automated sign offs, and months long upgrade cycles. With Kubernetes releasing three minor versions per year, teams managing hundreds of clusters, especially in regulated environments, often delay upgrades entirely because they aren’t confident they can recover if something goes wrong. The result is clusters stuck on older versions, missing security patches, and eventually running up against extended support timelines.
Today, we’re announcing Kubernetes version rollbacks for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), a new feature that gives cluster administrators a safety net when performing cluster upgrades. With version rollbacks, you can reverse a Kubernetes version upgrade within seven days if you encounter issues after upgrading, returning your cluster to its previous working state.
Where approaches like emulated versions keep a cluster in a transitional holding state, EKS version rollback returns your cluster to a fully validated previous version that ran in production, not an emulation of it. Now, if you upgrade a cluster from, say, Kubernetes 1.34 to 1.35 and discover a compatibility issue, you can roll back to 1.34 within seven days. There’s no need to rebuild your cluster or scramble to troubleshoot under pressure. Think of it as an undo button for Kubernetes version upgrades.
The feature supports rolling back one minor version at a time, matching the same incremental approach EKS uses for upgrades. And to help you roll back safely, EKS automatically evaluates your cluster’s rollback readiness through cluster insights, flagging items like node version compatibility or add-on dependencies before you proceed. If you’ve already assessed the situation and want to move quickly, you can use the --force flag to bypass those checks. The above applies to all EKS clusters, whether you manage your own nodes or let AWS handle them. But for customers who have embraced fully managed infrastructure, rollback goes a step further.
Rollback for EKS Auto Mode
EKS Auto Mode gives you one click deployment of production ready Kubernetes clusters, automating compute, networking, and storage management so you can focus on your applications rather than infrastructure. EKS Auto Mode introduces additional considerations for version rollbacks because both the control plane and managed nodes need to be rolled back together. Since node rollbacks respect your pod disruption budgets, the process can take time depending on your configuration.
To give you control over this process, we’ve introduced a cancel API that lets you stop a node rollback at any point. If you decide the rollback is taking too long or you want to change your approach, you can cancel and adjust your disruption budgets to accelerate things, or choose a different path forward.
By default, EKS never bypasses your disruption budgets during a rollback because we prioritize workload stability. You can always choose to modify or remove disruption budgets yourself to speed up the process if needed.
Let’s try it out
To try version rollbacks, I navigated to the Amazon EKS console and selected one of my clusters that I had recently upgraded.
From the cluster’s configuration page, I can see the option to initiate a version rollback, along with information about my current rollback window.
Before initiating the rollback, I reviewed the rollback insights to check for any potential issues. The insights showed me the status of my nodes and flagged anything I should address before proceeding.
After confirming, the rollback began. My cluster remained functional throughout the process. The control plane rollback took about 20 minutes, similar to a standard upgrade. For my EKS Auto Mode cluster, the nodes rolled back gracefully according to my disruption budget settings.
Once complete, my cluster was back on the previous Kubernetes version, running as expected.
Now available
Kubernetes version rollbacks for Amazon EKS are available today at no additional cost in all commercial AWS Regions where Amazon EKS is available. You pay only for the standard EKS and compute costs you would normally incur. There are no extra charges for using the rollback capability.
Control plane rollbacks are available for all EKS clusters, and node rollbacks are available for clusters running EKS Auto Mode. Version rollbacks support clusters running Kubernetes versions available in EKS standard support and extended support.
To get started, visit the Amazon EKS documentation or try it out directly in the Amazon EKS console.
This morning, an interesting phishing email hit my mailbox. It targets Metamask[1], a cryptocurrency wallet, available as a browser extension and a mobile app, that lets users store, send, and receive crypto money. It’s pretty popular, so a juicy target for criminals. In February, I already mentioned a campaign against them[2].
