10/23/2024, 12:00:00 AM ~ 10/24/2024, 12:00:00 AM (UTC)

Recent Announcements

AWS WAF Bot and Fraud Control RuleGroup is now available in 6 additional AWS Regions

Starting today, you can use AWS WAF Bot and Fraud Control RuleGroup in 6 additional AWS regions: Middle East (UAE), Europe (Spain), Europe (Zurich), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne), and Israel (Tel Aviv). With this launch, AWS WAF Bot and Fraud Control is available in all AWS Regions, except Canada West (Calgary), AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and the China Regions.\n AWS WAF Bot Control and Fraud Control deliver comprehensive security for web applications, APIs, and mobile apps. Bot Control protects against automated bot traffic with easy deployment and configurable actions, ensuring scalable management. Fraud Control focuses on preventing account takeovers and fraudulent account creation, leveraging machine learning to reduce financial losses and enhance user trust. Both solutions integrate seamlessly with AWS WAF, providing real-time visibility and detailed metrics for effective protection and operational efficiency. For more information, visit the AWS WAF page. For more information about pricing, visit the AWS WAF Pricing page.

Amazon Connect now offers screen sharing

The Amazon Connect screen sharing capability enables agents to quickly gain an understanding of issues and help guide the customer, accelerating resolution and sales, and reducing customer frustration. Agents and end users can leverage screen sharing with Amazon Connect Web and Video calls and pass contextual information to Amazon Connect to personalize the customer experience. Additionally, you can ensure a safe and secure customer experience by restricting screen share to specific web pages. Using the fully managed communication widget, you can add screen sharing to voice and video calling with as little as a single line of code. You can also create a fully custom experience for your customers by leveraging the SDK.\n Amazon Connect’s screen sharing capabilities are available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Africa (Cape Town), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt) and Europe (London). To learn more and get started, please refer to the help documentation or visit the Amazon Connect website. To learn more about pricing, please visit the Amazon Connect pricing page.

Research and Engineering Studio on AWS Version 2024.10 now available

Today we’re excited to announce Research and Engineering Studio (RES) on AWS Version 2024.10. This release adds new features such as virtual desktop instance auto-stop, project level home file systems, file browser availability control, and customizable DCV permissions.\n Instance auto-stop gives administrators the ability to automatically stop or terminate idle sessions to save costs. Admins can set their own thresholds for how long the session must remain below a certain CPU utilization to be considered idle. Stopped sessions are placed into a Stopped-Idle state where they can be resumed by either a user, admin, or the session’s daily schedule. This release also includes the ability to assign projects their own home file system. Linux virtual desktops can now utilize a project specific file system for their default home directory. Any Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), Amazon FSx for Lustre, or Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP onboarded to RES can be used. 2024.10 introduces two new user permissions. First, admins can now toggle file browser access on or off for the entire environment. Second, admins can customize DCV permissions for session owners to allow or disallow functions such as copying and pasting from a virtual session. A subset of these permissions can be used to create profiles to share sessions among users. Find these features in the RES UI under Permission policy. See the regional availability page for the list of regions where RES is available. Check out additional release notes on Github to get started and deploy RES 2024.10.

AWS IAM Identity Center simplifies calls to AWS services with single identity context

AWS IAM Identity Center now enables the use of a single identity context to propagate the identity of users requesting access to AWS services, simplifying the experience of application developers.\n Previously, application developers that wanted to enable their applications to use trusted identity propagation, had to call AWS services using two different IAM role sessions – one for services that can authorize access by user; and another for services that only log the user identity for audits. With this release, application developers can call any AWS service using a single IAM role session with sts:identity_context. When an application is configured in a trusted identity propagation use case, AWS services use the identity context to authorize user access. If an AWS service is not part of a trusted identity propagation use case, access to resources continues to be authorized by IAM roles. All AWS services using CloudTrail event version 1.09 and above log IAM Identity Center userId in their service logs and in the OnBehalfOf element of the Amazon CloudTrail logs. IAM Identity Center enables you to connect your existing source of workforce identities to AWS once and access the personalized experiences offered by AWS applications, such as Amazon Q; define and audit user-aware access to data in AWS services, such as Amazon Redshift; and manage access to multiple AWS accounts from a central place. Learn more about IAM Identity Center identity-enhanced role sessions here. The feature is available at no additional cost in all AWS Regions with IAM Identity Center.

Amazon MWAA now simplifies interaction with the Airflow REST API

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) now supports a simplified mechanism for interacting with the Apache Airflow REST API using AWS credentials. This feature enables customers to programmatically manage and automate workflows, enhancing ease of use and integration capabilities across their Apache Airflow environments.\n Amazon MWAA is a managed orchestration service for Apache Airflow that makes it easier to set up and operate end-to-end data pipelines in the cloud. With AWS Signature Version 4 (SigV4) support, customers can now integrate MWAA with other AWS and third-party services, and securely interact with the Airflow REST API using their existing AWS credentials. This feature eliminates the complexity of managing login tokens or cookies, enhancing interactions for automation tools and service integrations. You can launch or upgrade an Apache Airflow environment to start using simplified Airflow REST API with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console in all currently supported Amazon MWAA regions. To learn more about simplified Airflow REST API, visit the Launch Blog. To learn more about Amazon MWAA visit the Amazon MWAA documentation. Apache, Apache Airflow, and Airflow are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.

Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink now supports per second billing

Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink is now billed in one-second increments. There is a ten-minute minimum charge per application. Per-second billing is applicable to applications that are newly launched or already running.\n Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink makes it easier to transform and analyze streaming data in real time with Apache Flink. Apache Flink is an open source framework and engine for processing data streams. Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink reduces the complexity of building and managing Apache Flink applications and integrates with Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon DynamoDB streams, Amazon S3, custom integrations, and more using built-in connectors. Create or update an Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink application in the Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink console. This capability is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink is currently available, excluding China Regions and GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, see our documentation.

Amazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics introduces Query Insights

Today, Amazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics announces the launch of Query Insights, a feature that provides details of your query execution, enabling you to identify areas for improvement to optimize your queries, resulting in improved query performance and lower query costs.\n Amazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics is a serverless time-series database that automatically scales to ingest and analyze large volumes of time-series data, allowing you to store and process massive amounts of data without worrying about provisioning or managing infrastructure. To maximize the value of your time-series data and enable real-time analytics, optimizing query performance is essential. Query Insights provides detailed information of the pruning efficiency of the query, tables with inefficient pruning, and other query metrics. You can leverage these insights to refine your queries to effectively prune the relevant data, and optimize your data model for your desired query patterns, improving query performance and reducing your query costs. You can enable this feature for your queries in the Timestream console, AWS SDK or CLI and receive insights in the query response, all without requiring additional infrastructure or incurring additional costs. To get started with Query Insights, navigate to the Amazon Timestream console, AWS SDK, or CLI, and start analyzing your query performance today, at no additional cost. The feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions where Amazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics is available. For more information, visit the Amazon Timestream documentation.

AWS Billing Conductor now supports RI and Savings Plans coverage and utilization reports

Starting today, AWS Billing Conductor (ABC) customers can view pro forma data in Reservation and Saving Plan coverage and utilization reports. This release allows ABC customers to analyze Reservation and Saving Plans utilization and coverage metrics scoped at the billing group level and reflecting the pro forma pricing rules. AWS Partners can use the feature to enable their customers to view commitment discount application on cost data that reflect the customer’s specific pricing agreement.\n For billing groups that contain accounts with Reservations or Saving Plan commitments, the billing group primary account can view pro forma coverage and utilization data for all accounts in the billing group. Non-primary accounts in an ABC billing group can view pro forma coverage and utilization for their own account. Organizations should use non-pro forma cost data to drive cost optimization initiatives. Pro forma Reservation and Saving Plans coverage and utilization reports are available in all commercial AWS Regions, excluding the Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.

To learn more about this feature integration, visit the AWS Billing Conductor product page, or review the User Guide and API Reference.

EC2 Image Builder now supports Apple macOS

EC2 Image Builder now supports Apple macOS operating system, allowing customers to use macOS as base images for their image pipelines. This capability enables customers to create and manage custom macOS images with the same ease as they do today for supported Windows and Linux distributions.\n Previously, customers had to manually build their up-to-date macOS images or rely on separate tools, leading to a fragmented image management experience. Now, customers can simply use a macOS image in EC2 Image Builder, customize the image, and easily distribute it to required AWS accounts and regions. EC2 Image Builder supports latest x86 and ARM64 macOS images available for EC2 Mac instances. It provides automatic updates to the latest macOS versions, allowing customers to stay up-to-date and easily move to the latest version of macOS. This addition of macOS operating system enables customers to consolidate their image management processes within EC2 Image Builder. EC2 Image Builder provides these managed images at no additional cost to the customers. Apple macOS managed images are available in all AWS regions that supports EC2 Mac instances. To view the EC2 instance type availability by region, customers can visit the documentation here. For more information on the supported operating systems in EC2 Image Builder, customers can visit EC2 Image Builder documentation. Customers can get started from the EC2 Image Builder Console, CLI, API, CloudFormation, or CDK, and learn more in the EC2 Image Builder documentation.

Amazon Connect launches iOS and Android Chat SDKs to support in-app chat experiences

Amazon Connect Chat now offers SDKs for iOS and Android, allowing you to deliver native in-app chat experiences that improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. These SDKs provide pre-built components for network and session management, along with a sample UX application, streamlining integration and ensuring seamless, resilient in-app chat experiences.\n Amazon Connect Chat SDK capabilities leverage the same generative AI-powered chatbots, routing, configuration, analytics, and agent experience as calls, tasks, SMS, and web calling in Amazon Connect, making it easier for you to deliver omnichannel experiences. For example, you can offer customers waiting in a call queue the option to switch to in-app chat, reducing wait times and increasing both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. The Amazon Connect Chat SDKs for iOS and Android are available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect Chat is available. To get started, see the following resources:

Admin Documentation

Amazon Connect Chat SDK for iOS

Amazon Connect Chat SDK for Android

Sample App Examples

NVIDIA GPU Time-slicing Now Available for Bottlerocket to Enhance AI/ML Workload Efficiency

Today, AWS has announced the introduction of NVIDIA GPU Time-slicing support for Bottlerocket, the Linux-based operating system purpose-built for hosting containers, with a focus on security, minimal footprint, and safe updates. This new feature addresses the challenge of maximizing GPU utilization in multi-tenant and resource-constrained environments by enabling more efficient GPU resource sharing for Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) workloads running on containers.\n By dividing the GPU’s processing time into smaller intervals or “slices,” Bottlerocket’s support of Time-slicing allows multiple tasks to access a single GPU concurrently. This enables Bottlerocket customers to run multiple AI/ML models on a single GPU, improving GPU utilization and allowing them to scale their workloads more effectively. GPU Time-slicing on Bottlerocket is now available in all commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more about Bottlerocket’s GPU Time-slicing feature, please visit the Bottlerocket developer website.

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AWS News Blog

AWS Cloud Operations Blog

AWS Big Data Blog

AWS Contact Center

AWS Database Blog

AWS for Industries

The Internet of Things on AWS – Official Blog

AWS Machine Learning Blog

AWS for M&E Blog

AWS Quantum Technologies Blog

Open Source Project

AWS CLI

Amazon EKS Anywhere