Category Archives: AWS

AWS

Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances with up to 22.8 TB local NVMe storage are generally available

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Last year, we launched the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C8i instances, M8i instances, and R8i instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS with sustained all-core 3.9 GHz turbo frequency. They deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

Today we’re announcing new Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances backed by up to 22.8TB of NVMe-based SSD block-level instance storage physically connected to the host server. These instances offer 3 times more vCPUs, memory and local storage compared to previous sixth-generation instances.

These instances deliver up to 43% higher compute performance and 3.3 times more memory bandwidth compared to previous sixth-generation instances. They also deliver up to 46% higher performance for I/O intensive database workloads, and up to 30% faster query results for I/O intensive real-time data analytics compared to previous sixth generation instances.

  • C8id instances are ideal for compute-intensive workloads, including those that need access to high-speed, low-latency local storage like video encoding, image manipulation, and other forms of media processing.
  • M8id instances are best for workloads that require a balance of compute and memory resources along with high-speed, low-latency local block storage, including data logging, media processing, and medium-sized data stores.
  • R8id instances are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as large-scale SQL and NoSQL databases, in-memory databases, large-scale data analytics, and AI inference.

C8id, M8id, and R8id instances now scale up to 96xlarge (versus 32xlarge sizes in the sixth generation) with up to 384 vCPUs, 3TiB of memory, and 22.8TB of local storage that make it easier to scale up applications and drive greater efficiencies. These instances also offer two bare metal sizes (metal-48xl and metal-96xl), allowing you to right size your instances and deploy your most performance sensitive workloads that benefit from direct access to physical resources.

The instances are available in 11 sizes per family, as well as two bare metal configurations each:

Instance Name vCPUs Memory (GiB) (C/M/R) Local NVMe storage (GB) Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps)
large 2 4/8/16* 1 x 118 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
xlarge 4 8/16/32* 1 x 237 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
2xlarge 8 16/32/64* 1 x 474 Up to 15 Up to 10
4xlarge 16 32/64/128* 1 x 950 Up to 15 Up to 10
8xlarge 32 64/128/256* 1 x 1,900 15 10
12xlarge 48 96/192/384* 1 x 2,850 22.5 15
16xlarge 64 128/256/512* 1 x 3,800 30 20
24xlarge 96 192/384/768* 2 x 2,850 40 30
32xlarge 128 256/512/1024* 2 x 3,800 50 40
48xlarge 192 384/768/1536* 3 x 3,800 75 60
96xlarge 384 768/1536/3072* 6 x 3,800 100 80
metal-48xl 192 384/768/1536* 3 x 3,800 75 60
metal-96xl 384 768/1536/3072* 6 x 3,800 100 80

*Memory values are for C8id/M8id/R8id respectively.

These instances support the Instance Bandwidth Configuration (IBC) feature like other eighth-generation instance types, offering flexibility to allocate resources between network and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) bandwidth. You can scale network or EBS bandwidth by 25%, allocating resources optimally for each workload. These instances also use sixth-generation AWS Nitro cards offloading CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software, enhancing performance and security for your workloads.

You can use any Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that include drivers for the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) and NVMe to fully utilize the performance and capabilities. All current generation AWS Windows and Linux AMIs come with the AWS NVMe driver installed by default. If you use an AMI that does not have the AWS NVMe driver, you can manually install AWS NVMe drivers.

As I noted in my previous blog post, here are a couple of things to remind you about the local NVMe storage on these instances:

  • You don’t have to specify a block device mapping in your AMI or during the instance launch; the local storage will show up as one or more devices (/dev/nvme[0-26]n1 on Linux) after the guest operating system has booted.
  • Each local NVMe device is hardware encrypted using the XTS-AES-256 block cipher and a unique key. Each key is destroyed when the instance is stopped or terminated.
  • Local NVMe devices have the same lifetime as the instance they are attached to and do not persist after the instance has been stopped or terminated.

To learn more, visit Amazon EBS volumes and NVMe in the Amazon EBS User Guide.

Now available
Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id and R8id instances are available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions. R8id instances are additionally available in Europe (Frankfurt) Region. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, search the instance type in the CloudFormation resources tab of AWS Capabilities by Region.

You can purchase these instances as On-Demand Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot Instances. These instances are also available as Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.

Give C8id, M8id, and R8id instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the EC2 C8i instances, M8i instances, and R8i instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS

AWS IAM Identity Center now supports multi-Region replication for AWS account access and application use

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Today, we’re announcing the general availability of AWS IAM Identity Center multi-Region support to enable AWS account access and managed application use in additional AWS Regions.

With this feature, you can replicate your workforce identities, permission sets, and other metadata in your organization instance of IAM Identity Center connected to an external identity provider (IdP), such as Microsoft Entra ID and Okta, from its current primary Region to additional Regions for improved resiliency of AWS account access.

You can also deploy AWS managed applications in your preferred Regions, close to application users and datasets for improved user experience or to meet data residency requirements. Your applications deployed in additional Regions access replicated workforce identities locally for optimal performance and reliability.

When you replicate your workforce identities to an additional Region, your workforce gets an active AWS access portal endpoint in that Region. This means that in the unlikely event of an IAM Identity Center service disruption in its primary Region, your workforce can still access their AWS accounts through the AWS access portal in an additional Region using already provisioned permissions. You can continue to manage IAM Identity Center configurations from the primary Region, maintaining centralized control.

Enable IAM Identity Center in multiple Regions
To get started, you should confirm that the AWS managed applications you’re currently using support customer managed AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key enabled in AWS Identity Center. When we introduced this feature in October 2025, Seb recommended using multi-Region AWS KMS keys unless your company policies restrict you to single-Region keys. Multi-Region keys provide consistent key material across Regions while maintaining independent key infrastructure in each Region.

Before replicating IAM Identity Center to an additional Region, you must first replicate the customer managed AWS KMS key to that Region and configure the replica key with the permissions required for IAM Identity Center operations. For instructions on creating multi-Region replica keys, refer to Create multi-Region replica keys in the AWS KMS Developer Guide.

Go to the IAM Identity Center console in the primary Region, for example, US East (N. Virginia), choose Settings in the left-navigation pane, and select the Management tab. Confirm that your configured encryption key is a multi-Region customer managed AWS KMS key. To add more Regions, choose Add Region.

You can choose additional Regions to replicate the IAM Identity Center in a list of the available Regions. When choosing an additional Region, consider your intended use cases, for example, data compliance or user experience.

If you want to run AWS managed applications that access datasets limited to a specific Region for compliance reasons, choose the Region where the datasets reside. If you plan to use the additional Region to deploy AWS applications, verify that the required applications support your chosen Region and deployment in additional Regions.

Choose Add Region. This starts the initial replication whose duration depends on the size of your Identity Center instance.

After the replication is completed, your users can access their AWS accounts and applications in this new Region. When you choose View ACS URLs, you can view SAML information, such as an Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL, about the primary and additional Regions.

How your workforce can use an additional Region
AWS Identity Center supports SAML single sign-on with external IdPs, such as Microsoft Entra ID and Okta. Upon authentication in the IdP, the user is redirected to the AWS access portal. To enable the user to be redirected to the AWS access portal in the newly added Region, you need to add the additional Region’s ACS URL to the IdP configuration.

The following screenshots show you how to do this in the Okta admin console:

Then, you can create a bookmark application in your identity provider for users to discover the additional Region. This bookmark app functions like a browser bookmark and contains only the URL to the AWS access portal in the additional Region.

You can also deploy AWS managed applications in additional Regions using your existing deployment workflows. Your users can access applications or accounts using the existing access methods, such as the AWS access portal, an application link, or through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

To learn more about which AWS managed applications support deployment in additional Regions, visit the IAM Identity Center User Guide.

Things to know
Here are key considerations to know about this feature:

  • Consideration – To take advantage of this feature at launch, you must be using an organization instance of IAM Identity Center connected to an external IdP. Also, the primary and additional Regions must be enabled by default in an AWS account. Account instances of IAM Identity Center, and the other two identity sources (Microsoft Active Directory and IAM Identity Center directory) are presently not supported.
  • Operation – The primary Region remains the central place for managing workforce identities, account access permissions, external IdP, and other configurations. You can use the IAM Identity Center console in additional Regions with a limited feature set. Most operations are read-only, except for application management and user session revocation.
  • Monitoring – All workforce actions are emitted in AWS CloudTrail in the Region where the action was performed. This feature enhances account access continuity. You can set up break-glass access for privileged users to access AWS if the external IdP has a service disruption.

Now available
AWS IAM Identity Center multi-Region support is now available in the 17 enabled-by-default commercial AWS Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, visit the AWS Capabilities by Region. You can use this feature at no additional cost. Standard AWS KMS charges apply for storing and using customer managed keys.

Give it a try in the AWS Identity Center console. To learn more, visit the IAM Identity Center User Guide and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Identity Center or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon Bedrock agent workflows, Amazon SageMaker private connectivity, and more (February 2, 2026)

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Over the past week, we passed Laba festival, a traditional marker in the Chinese calendar that signals the final stretch leading up to the Lunar New Year. For many in China, it’s a moment associated with reflection and preparation, wrapping up what the year has carried, and turning attention toward what lies ahead.

Looking forward, next week also brings Lichun, the beginning of spring and the first of the 24 solar terms. In Chinese tradition, spring is often seen as the season when growth begins and new cycles take shape. There’s a common saying that “a year’s plans begin in spring,” capturing the idea that this is a time to set one’s direction and start fresh.

Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that got my attention this week:

  • Amazon Bedrock enhances support for agent workflows with server-side tools and extended prompt caching – Amazon Bedrock introduced two updates that improve how developers build and operate AI agents. The Responses API now supports server-side tool use, so agents can perform actions such as web search, code execution, and database updates within AWS security boundaries. Bedrock also adds a 1-hour time-to-live (TTL) option for prompt caching, which helps improve performance and reduce the cost for long-running, multi-turn agent workflows. Server-side tools are available with OpenAI GPT OSS 20B and 120B models, and the 1-hour prompt caching TTL is generally available for select Claude models by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock.
  • Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio adds private VPC connectivity with AWS PrivateLink – Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports AWS PrivateLink, providing private connectivity between your VPC and SageMaker Unified Studio without routing customer data over the public internet. With SageMaker service endpoints onboarded into a VPC, data traffic remains within the AWS network and is governed by IAM policies, supporting stricter security and compliance requirements.
  • Amazon S3 adds support for changing object encryption without data movement – Amazon S3 now supports changing the server-side encryption type of existing encrypted objects without moving or re-uploading data. Using the UpdateObjectEncryption API, you can switch from SSE-S3 to SSE-KMS, rotate customer -managed AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys, or standardize encryption across buckets at scale with S3 Batch Operations while preserving object properties and lifecycle eligibility.
  • Amazon Keyspaces introduces table pre-warming for predictable high-throughput workloads – Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) now supports table pre-warming, which helps you proactively set warm throughput levels so tables can handle high read and write traffic instantly without cold-start delays. Pre-warming helps reduce throttling during sudden traffic spikes, such as product launches or sales events, and works with both on-demand and provisioned capacity modes, including multi-Region tables. The feature supports consistent, low-latency performance while giving you more control over throughput readiness.
  • Amazon DynamoDB MRSC global tables integrate with AWS Fault Injection Service – Amazon DynamoDB multi-Region strong consistency (MRSC) global tables now integrate with AWS Fault Injection Service. With this integration, you can simulate Regional failures, test replication behavior, and validate application resiliency for strongly consistent, multi-Region workloads.

Additional updates
Here are some additional projects, blog posts, and news items that I found interesting:

  • Building zero-trust access across multi-account AWS environments with AWS Verified Access – This post walks through how to implement AWS Verified Access in a centralized, shared-services architecture. It shows how to integrate with AWS IAM Identity Center and AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) to apply zero trust access controls at the application layer and reduce operational overhead across multi-account AWS environments.
  • Amazon EventBridge increases event payload size to 1 MB – Amazon EventBridge now supports event payloads up to 1 MB, an increase from the previous 256 KB limit. This update helps event-driven architectures carry richer context in a single event, including complex JSON structures, telemetry data, and machine learning (ML) or generative AI outputs, without splitting payloads or relying on external storage.
  • AWS MCP Server adds deployment agent SOPs (preview) – AWS introduced deployment standard operating procedures (SOPs) that AI agents can deploy web applications to AWS from a single natural language prompt in MCP -compatible integrated development environments (IDEs) and command line interfaces (CLIs) such as Kiro, Cursor, and Claude Code. The agent generates AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) infrastructure, deploys AWS CloudFormation stacks, and sets up continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows following AWS best practices. The preview supports frameworks including React, Vue.js, Angular, and Next.js.
  • AWS Network Firewall adds generation AI traffic visibility with web category filtering – AWS Network Firewall now provides visibility into generative AI application traffic through predefined web categories. You can use these categories directly in firewall rules to govern access to generative AI tools and other web services. When combined with TLS inspection, category-based filtering can be applied at the full URL level.
  • AWS Lambda adds enhanced observability for Kafka event source mappings – AWS Lambda introduced enhanced observability for Kafka event source mappings, providing Amazon CloudWatch Logs and metrics to monitor event polling configuration, scaling behavior, and event processing state. The update improves visibility into Kafka-based Lambda workloads, helping teams diagnose configuration issues, permission errors, and function failures more efficiently. The capability supports both Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) and self-managed Apache Kafka event sources.
  • AWS CloudFormation 2025 year in review – This year-in-review post highlights CloudFormation updates delivered throughout 2025, with a focus on early validation, safer deployments, and improved developer workflows. It covers enhancements such as improved troubleshooting, drift-aware change sets, stack refactoring, StackSets updates, and new -IDE and AI -assisted tooling, including the CloudFormation language server and the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) MCP server.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendars so that you can sign up for this upcoming event:

AWS Community Day Romania (April 23–24, 2026) – This community-led AWS event brings together developers, architects, entrepreneurs, and students for more than 10 professional sessions delivered by AWS Heroes, Solutions Architects, and industry experts. Attendees can expect expert-led technical talks, insights from speakers with global conference experience, and opportunities to connect during dedicated networking breaks, all hosted at a premium venue designed to support collaboration and community engagement.

If you’re looking for more ways to stay connected beyond this event, join the AWS Builder Center to learn, build, and connect with builders in the AWS community.

Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup.

–betty

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon EC2 G7e instances with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs (January 26, 2026)

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Hey! It’s my first post for 2026, and I’m writing to you while watching our driveway getting dug out. I hope wherever you are you are safe and warm and your data is still flowing!

Our driveway getting snow plowed

This week brings exciting news for customers running GPU-intensive workloads, with the launch of our newest graphics and AI inference instances powered by NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell architecture. Along with several service enhancements and regional expansions, this week’s updates continue to expand the capabilities available to AWS customers.

Last week’s launches

Amazon EC2 G7e instances are now generally available — The new G7e instances accelerated by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs deliver up to 2.3 times better inference performance compared to G6e instances. With two times the GPU memory and support for up to 8 GPUs providing 768 GB of total GPU memory, these instances enable running medium-sized models of up to 70B parameters with FP8 precision on a single GPU. G7e instances are ideal for generative AI inference, spatial computing, and scientific computing workloads. Available now in US East (N. Virginia) and US East (Ohio).

Additional updates

I thought these projects, blog posts, and news items were also interesting:

Amazon Corretto January 2026 Quarterly Updates — AWS released quarterly security and critical updates for Amazon Corretto Long-Term Supported (LTS) versions of OpenJDK. Corretto 25.0.2, 21.0.10, 17.0.18, 11.0.30, and 8u482 are now available, ensuring Java developers have access to the latest security patches and performance improvements.

Amazon ECR now supports cross-repository layer sharing — Amazon Elastic Container Registry now enables you to share common image layers across repositories through blob mounting. This feature helps you achieve faster image pushes by reusing existing layers and reduce storage costs by storing common layers once and referencing them across repositories.

Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights expands to four additional regions — CloudWatch Database Insights on-demand analysis is now available in Asia Pacific (New Zealand), Asia Pacific (Taipei), Asia Pacific (Thailand), and Mexico (Central). This feature uses machine learning to help identify performance bottlenecks and provides specific remediation advice.

Amazon Connect adds conditional logic and real-time updates to Step-by-Step Guides — Amazon Connect Step-by-Step Guides now enables managers to build dynamic guided experiences that adapt based on user interactions. Managers can configure conditional user interfaces with dropdown menus that show or hide fields, change default values, or adjust required fields based on prior inputs. The feature also supports automatic data refresh from Connect resources, ensuring agents always work with current information.

Upcoming AWS events

Keep a look out and be sure to sign up for these upcoming events:

Best of AWS re:Invent (January 28-29, Virtual) — Join us for this free virtual event bringing you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. AWS VP and Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr will share highlights during the opening session. Sessions run January 28 at 9:00 AM PT for AMER, and January 29 at 9:00 AM SGT for APJ and 9:00 AM CET for EMEA. Register to access curated technical learning, strategic insights from AWS leaders, and live Q&A with AWS experts.

AWS Community Day Ahmedabad (February 28, 2026, Ahmedabad, India) — The 11th edition of this community-driven AWS conference brings together cloud professionals, developers, architects, and students for expert-led technical sessions, real-world use cases, tech expo booths with live demos, and networking opportunities. This free event includes breakfast, lunch, and exclusive swag.

Join the AWS Builder Center to learn, build, and connect with builders in the AWS community. Browse for upcoming in-person and virtual developer-focused events in your area.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

~ micah

AWS

Announcing Amazon EC2 G7e instances accelerated by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs

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Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G7e instances that deliver cost-effective performance for generative AI inference workloads and the highest performance for graphics workloads.

G7e instances are accelerated by the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs and are well suited for a broad range of GPU-enabled workloads including spatial computing and scientific computing workloads. G7e instances deliver up to 2.3 times inference performance compared to G6e instances.

Improvements made compared to predecessors:

  • NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs — NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs offer two times the GPU memory and 1.85 times the GPU memory bandwidth compared to G6e instances. By using the higher GPU memory offered by G7e instances, you can run medium-sized models of up to 70B parameters with FP8 precision on a single GPU.
  • NVIDIA GPUDirect P2P — For models that are too large to fit into the memory of a single GPU, you can split the model or computations across multiple GPUs. G7e instances reduce the latency of your multi-GPU workloads with support for NVIDIA GPUDirect P2P, which enables direct communication between GPUs over PCIe interconnect. These instances offer the lowest peer to peer latency for GPUs on the same PCIe switch. Additionally, G7e instances offer up to four times the inter-GPU bandwidth compared to L40s GPUs featured in G6e instances, boosting the performance of multi-GPU workloads. These improvements mean you can run inference for larger models across multiple GPUs offering up to 768 GB of GPU memory in a single node.
  • Networking — G7e instances offer four times the networking bandwidth compared to G6e instances, which means you can use the instance for small-scale multi-node workloads. Additionally, multi-GPU G7e instances support NVIDIA GPUDirect Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) with Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), which reduces the latency of remote GPU-to-GPU communication for multi-node workloads. These instance sizes also support NVIDIA GPUDirectStorage with Amazon FSx for Lustre, which increases throughput by up to 1.2 Tbps to the instances compared to G6e instances, which means you can quickly load your models.

EC2 G7e specifications
G7e instances feature up to 8 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs with up to 768 GB of total GPU memory (96 GB of memory per GPU) and Intel Emerald Rapids processors. They also support up to 192 vCPUs, up to 1,600 Gbps of network bandwidth, up to 2,048 GiB of system memory, and up to 15.2 TB of local NVMe SSD storage.

Here are the specs:

Instance name
  GPUs GPU memory (GB) vCPUs Memory (GiB) Storage (TB) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Network bandwidth (Gbps)
g7e.2xlarge 1 96 8 64 1.9 x 1 Up to 5 50
g7e.4xlarge 1 96 16 128 1.9 x 1 8 50
g7e.8xlarge 1 96 32 256 1.9 x 1 16 100
g7e.12xlarge 2 192 48 512 3.8 x 1 25 400
g7e.24xlarge 4 384 96 1024 3.8 x 2 50 800
g7e.48xlarge 8 768 192 2048 3.8 x 4 100 1600

To get started with G7e instances, you can use the AWS Deep Learning AMIs (DLAMI) for your machine learning (ML) workloads. To run instances, you can use AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs. For a managed experience, you can use G7e instances with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Support for Amazon SageMaker AI is also coming soon.

Now available
Amazon EC2 G7e instances are available today in the US East (N. Virginia) and US East (Ohio) AWS Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, search the instance type in the CloudFormation resources tab of AWS Capabilities by Region.

The instances can be purchased as On-Demand Instances, Savings Plan, and Spot Instances. G7e instances are also available in Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.

Give G7e instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 G7e instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: Kiro CLI latest features, AWS European Sovereign Cloud, EC2 X8i instances, and more (January 19, 2026)

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At the end of 2025 I was happy to take a long break to enjoy the incredible summers that the southern hemisphere provides. I’m back and writing my first post in 2026 which also happens to be my last post for the AWS News Blog (more on this later).

The AWS community is starting the year strong with various AWS re:invent re:Caps being hosted around the globe, with some communities already hosting their AWS Community Day events, the AWS Community Day Tel Aviv 2026 was hosted last week.

Last week’s launches
Here are last week’s launches that caught my attention:

  • Kiro CLI latest features – Kiro CLI now has granular controls for web fetch URLs, keyboard shortcuts for your custom agents, enhanced diff views, and much more. With these enhancements, you can now use allowlists or blocklists to restrict which URLs the agent can access, ensure a frictionless experience when working with multiple specialized agents in a single session, to name a few.
  • AWS European Sovereign Cloud – Following an announcement in 2023 of plans to build a new, independent cloud infrastructure, last week we announced the general availability of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to all customers. The cloud is ready to meet the most stringent sovereignty requirements of European customers with a comprehensive set of AWS services.
  • Amazon EC2 X8i instances – Previously launched in preview at AWS re:Invent 2025, last week we announced the general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz, available only on AWS. These SAP certified instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

Additional updates
These projects, blog posts, and news articles also caught my attention:

  • 5 core features in Amazon Quick Suite – AWS VP Agentic AI Swami Sivasubramanian talks about how he uses Amazon Quick Suite for just about everything. In October 2025 we announced Amazon Quick Suite, a new agentic teammate that quickly answers your questions at work and turns insights into actions for you. Amazon Quick Suite has become one of my favorite productivity tools, helping me with my research on various topics in addition to providing me with multiple perspectives on a topic.
  • Deploy AI agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore using GitHub Actions – Last year we announced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, a flexible service that helps you seamlessly create and manage AI agents across different frameworks and models, whether hosted on Amazon Bedrock or other environments. Learn how to use a GitHub Actions workflow to automate the deployment of AI agents on AgentCore Runtime. This approach delivers a scalable solution with enterprise-level security controls, providing complete continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) automation.

Upcoming AWS events
Join us January 28 or 29 (depending on your time zone) for Best of AWS re:Invent, a free virtual event where we bring you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. Jeff Barr, AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, will share his highlights during the opening session.

There is still time until January 21 to compete for $250,000 in prizes and AWS credits in the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition (yes, the second letter is an I as in Idea, not an L as in like). No code required yet: simply submit your idea, and if you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app using Kiro within AWS Free Tier limits. Beyond the cash prizes and potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026, you’ll gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI tools and connect with innovators globally.

Earlier this month, the 2026 application for the Community Builders program launched. The application is open until January 21st, midnight PST so here’s your last chance to ensure that you don’t miss out.

If you’re interested in these opportunities, join the AWS Builder Center to learn with builders in the AWS community.

With that, I close one of my most meaningful chapters here at AWS. It’s been an absolute pleasure to write for you and I thank you for taking the time to read the work that my team and I pour our absolute hearts into. I’ve grown from the close collaborations with the launch teams and the feedback from all of you. The Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) community has grown significantly, and I want to dedicate more time focused on this community, I’m still at AWS and I look forward to meeting at an event near you!

Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Veliswa Boya

AWS

Amazon EC2 X8i instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors are generally available for memory-intensive workloads

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Since a preview launch at AWS re:Invent 2025, we’re announcing the general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz, available only on AWS. These SAP certified instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

X8i instances are ideal for memory-intensive workloads including in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, traditional large-scale databases, data analytics, and electronic design automation (EDA), which require high compute performance and a large memory footprint.

These instances provide 1.5 times more memory capacity (up to 6 TB), and 3.4 times more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation X2i instances. These instances offer up to 43% higher performance compared to X2i instances, with higher gains on some of the real-world workloads. They deliver up to 50% higher SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) performance, up to 47% faster PostgreSQL performance, up to 88% faster Memcached performance, and up to 46% faster AI inference performance.

During the preview, customers like RISE with SAP utilized up to 6 TB of memory capacity with 50% higher compute performance compared to X2i instances. This enabled faster transaction processing and improved query response times for SAP HANA workloads. Orion reduced the number of active cores on X8i instances compared to X2idn instances while maintaining performance thresholds, cutting SQL Server licensing costs by 50%.

X8i instances
X8i instances are available in 14 sizes including three larger instance sizes (48xlarge, 64xlarge, and 96xlarge), so you can choose the right size for your application to scale up, and two bare metal sizes (metal-48xl and metal-96xl) to deploy workloads that benefit from direct access to physical resources. X8i instances feature up to 100 Gbps of network bandwidth with support for the Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) and up to 80 Gbps of throughput to Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).

Here are the specs for X8i instances:

Instance name vCPUs Memory
(GiB)		 Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps)
x8i.large 2 32 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
x8i.xlarge 4 64 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
x8i.2xlarge 8 128 Up to 15 Up to 10
x8i.4xlarge 16 256 Up to 15 Up to 10
x8i.8xlarge 32 512 15 10
x8i.12xlarge 48 768 22.5 15
x8i.16xlarge 64 1,024 30 20
x8i.24xlarge 96 1,536 40 30
x8i.32xlarge 128 2,048 50 40
x8i.48xlarge 192 3,072 75 60
x8i.64xlarge 256 4,096 80 70
x8i.96xlarge 384 6,144 100 80
x8i.metal-48xl 192 3,072 75 60
x8i.metal-96xl 384 6,144 100 80

X8i instances support the instance bandwidth configuration (IBC) feature like other eighth-generation instance types, offering flexibility to allocate resources between network and EBS bandwidth. You can scale network or EBS bandwidth by up to 25%, improving database performance, query processing speeds, and logging efficiency. These instances also use sixth-generation AWS Nitro cards, which offload CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software, enhancing performance and security for your workloads.

Now available
Amazon EC2 X8i instances are now available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Frankfurt) AWS Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, search the instance type in the CloudFormation resources tab of AWS Capabilities by Region.

You can purchase these instances as On-Demand Instances, Savings Plan, and Spot Instances. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.

Give X8i instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 X8i instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS Lambda for .NET 10, AWS Client VPN quickstart, Best of AWS re:Invent, and more (January 12, 2026)

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At the beginning of January, I tend to set my top resolutions for the year, a way to focus on what I want to achieve. If AI and cloud computing are on your resolution list, consider creating an AWS Free Tier account to receive up to $200 in credits and have 6 months of risk-free experimentation with AWS services.

During this period, you can explore essential services across compute, storage, databases, and AI/ML, plus access to over 30 always-free services with monthly usage limits. After 6 months, you can decide whether to upgrade to a standard AWS account.

Whether you’re a student exploring career options, a developer expanding your skill set, or a professional building with cloud technologies, this hands-on approach lets you focus on what matters most: developing real expertise in the areas you’re passionate about.

Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that got my attention this week:

Additional updates
Here are some additional projects, blog posts, and news items that I found interesting:

Crossmodal search with Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings Architecture

Upcoming AWS events
Join us January 28 or 29 (depending on your time zone) for Best of AWS re:Invent, a free virtual event where we bring you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. Jeff Barr, AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, will share his highlights during the opening session.

There is still time until January 21 to compete for $250,000 in prizes and AWS credits in the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition (yes, the second letter is an I as in Idea, not an L as in like). No code required yet: simply submit your idea, and if you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app using Kiro within AWS Free Tier limits. Beyond the cash prizes and potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026, you’ll gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI tools and connect with innovators globally.

If you’re interested in these opportunities, join the AWS Builder Center to learn with builders in the AWS community.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Danilo

AWS

Happy New Year! AWS Weekly Roundup: 10,000 AIdeas Competition, Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS Managed Instances and more (January 5, 2026)

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Happy New Year! I hope the holidays gave you time to recharge and spend time with your loved ones.

Like every year, I took a few weeks off after AWS re:Invent to rest and plan ahead. I used some of that downtime to plan the next cohort for Become a Solutions Architect (BeSA). BeSA is a free mentoring program that I, along with a few other Amazon Web Services (AWS) employees, volunteer to host as a way to help people excel in their cloud and AI careers. We’re kicking off a 6-week cohort on “Agentic AI on AWS” starting February 21, 2026. Visit the BeSA website to learn more.

There is still time to submit your idea for the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition and compete for $250,000 in cash prizes, AWS credits, and recognition, including potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026 and across AWS channels.

You will gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI development tools, connect with innovators globally, and access technical enablement through biweekly workshops, AWS User Groups, and AWS Builder Center resources.

The deadline is January 21, 2026, and no code is required yet. If you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app then. Your finished app needs to use Kiro for at least part of development, stay within AWS Free Tier limits, and be completely original and not yet published.

If you haven’t yet caught up with all the new releases and announcements from AWS re:Invent 2025, check out our top announcements post or watch the keynotes, innovation talks, and breakout sessions on-demand.

Launches from the last few weeks
I’d like to highlight some launches that got my attention since our last Week in Review on December 15, 2025:

  • Amazon EC2 M8gn and M8gb instances – New M8gn and M8gb instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors to deliver up to 30% better compute performance than AWS Graviton3 processors. M8gn instances feature the latest 6th generation AWS Nitro Cards, and offer up to 600 Gbps network bandwidth, the highest network bandwidth among network-optimized EC2 instances. M8gb offer up to 150 Gbps of Amazon EBS bandwidth to provide higher EBS performance compared to same-sized equivalent Graviton4-based instances.
  • AWS Direct Connect supports resilience testing with AWS Fault Injection Service – You can now use AWS Fault Injection Service to test how your applications handle Direct Connect Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) failover in a controlled environment. For example, you can validate that traffic routes to redundant virtual interfaces when a primary virtual interface’s BGP session is disrupted and your applications continue to function as expected.
  • New AWS Security Hub controls in AWS Control Tower – AWS Control Tower now supports 176 additional Security Hub controls in the Control Catalog, covering use cases including security, cost, durability, and operations. With this launch, you can search, discover, enable, and manage these controls directly from AWS Control Tower to govern additional use cases across your multi-account environment.
  • AWS Transform supports network conversion for hybrid data center migrations – You can now use AWS Transform for VMware to automatically convert networks from hybrid data centers. This removes manual network mapping for environments running both VMware and other workloads. The service analyzes VLANs and IP ranges across all exported source networks and maps them to AWS constructs such as virtual private clouds (VPCs), subnets, and security groups.
  • NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano available on Amazon Bedrock – Amazon Bedrock now supports NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B model, NVIDIA’s latest breakthrough in efficient language modeling that delivers high reasoning performance, built-in tool calling support, and extended context processing with 256K token context window.
  • Amazon EC2 supports Availability Zone ID across its APIs – You can specify the Availability Zone ID (AZ ID) parameter directly in your Amazon EC2 APIs to guarantee consistent placement of resources. AZ IDs are consistent and static identifiers that represent the same physical location across all AWS accounts, helping you optimize resource placement. Prior to this launch, you had to use an AZ name while creating a resource, but these names could map to different physical locations. This mapping made it difficult to ensure resources were always co-located, especially when operating with multiple accounts.
  • Amazon ECS Managed Instances supports Amazon EC2 Spot Instances – Amazon ECS Managed Instances now supports Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, extending the range of capabilities available with AWS managed infrastructure. You can use spare EC2 capacity at up to 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices for fault-tolerant workloads in Amazon ECS Managed Instances.

See AWS What’s New for more launch news that I haven’t covered here. That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

Here’s to a fantastic start to 2026. Happy building!

– Prasad

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon ECS, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Cognito and more (December 15, 2025)

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Can you believe it? We’re nearly at the end of 2025. And what a year it’s been! From re:Invent recap events, to AWS Summits, AWS Innovate, AWS re:Inforce, Community Days, and DevDays and, recently, adding that cherry on the cake, re:Invent 2025, we have lived through a year filled with exciting moments and technology advancements which continue to shape our new modern world.

Speaking of re:Invent, if you haven’t caught up yet on all the new releases and announcements (and there were plenty of exciting launches across every area), be sure to check out our curated post highlighting the top announcements from AWS re:Invent 2025. We’ve organized all the key releases into easy-to-navigate categories and included links so you can dive deeper into anything that sparks your interest.

While the year may be wrapping up, our teams are still busy working on things that you have either asked for as customers or that we pro-actively create to make your lives easier. Last week had quite a few interesting releases as usual, so let’s look at a few that I think could be useful for many of you out there.

Last week’s launches

Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser introduces Web Content Filtering – Organizations can now control web access through category-based filtering across 25+ predefined categories, granular URL policies, and integrated compliance logging. The feature works alongside existing Chrome policies and integrates with Session Logger for enhanced monitoring and is available at no additional cost in 10 AWS Regions with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Amazon Aurora DSQL now supports cluster creation in seconds – Developers can now instantly provision Aurora DSQL databases with setup time reduced from minutes to seconds, enabling rapid prototyping through the integrated AWS console query editor or AI-powered development via the Aurora DSQL Model Context Protocol server. Available at no additional cost in all AWS Regions where Aurora DSQL is offered, with AWS Free Tier access available.

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports integration with Kiro powers – Developers can now accelerate Aurora PostgreSQL application development using AI-assisted coding through Kiro powers, a repository of pre-packaged Model Context Protocol servers. The Aurora PostgreSQL integration provides direct database connectivity for queries, schema management, and cluster operations, dynamically loading relevant context as developers work. Available for one-click installation in Kiro IDE across all AWS Regions.

Amazon ECS now supports custom container stop signals on AWS Fargate – Fargate tasks now honor the stop signal configured in container images, enabling graceful shutdowns for containers that rely on signals like SIGQUIT or SIGINT instead of the default SIGTERM. The ECS container agent reads the STOPSIGNAL instruction from OCI-compliant images and sends the appropriate signal during task termination. Available at no additional cost across all AWS Regions.

Amazon CloudWatch SDK supports optimized JSON, CBOR protocols – CloudWatch SDK now defaults to JSON and CBOR protocols, delivering lower latency, reduced payload sizes, and decreased client-side CPU and memory usage compared to the traditional AWS Query protocol. Available at no additional cost across all AWS Regions and SDK language variants.

Amazon Cognito identity pools now support private connectivity with AWS PrivateLink – Organizations can now securely exchange federated identities for temporary AWS credentials through private VPC connections, eliminating the need to route authentication traffic over the public internet. Available in all AWS Regions where Cognito identity pools are supported, except AWS China (Beijing) and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

AWS Application Migration Service supports IPv6 – Organizations can now migrate applications using IPv6 addressing through dual-stack service endpoints that support both IPv4 and IPv6 communications. During replication, testing, and cutover phases, you can use IPv4, IPv6, or dual-stack configurations to launch servers in your target environment. Available at no additional cost in all AWS Regions that support MGN and EC2 dual-stack endpoints.

And that’s it for the AWS News Blog Weekly Roundup…not just for this week, but for 2025! We’ll be taking a break and returning in January to continue bringing you the latest AWS releases and updates.

As we close out 2025, it’s remarkable to look back at just how much has changed since the beginning of year. From groundbreaking AI capabilities to transformative infrastructure innovations, AWS has delivered an incredible year of releases that have reshaped what’s possible in the cloud. Throughout it all, the AWS News Blog has been right here with you every week with our Weekly Roundup series, helping you stay informed and ready to take advantage of each new opportunity as it arrived. We’re grateful you’ve joined us on this journey, and we can’t wait to continue bringing you the latest AWS innovations when we return in January 2026.

Until then, happy building, and here’s to an even more exciting year ahead!

Matheus Guimaraes | @codingmatheus