8/28/2025, 12:00:00 AM ~ 8/29/2025, 12:00:00 AM (UTC)
Recent Announcements
Amazon Q Developer now supports MCP admin control
Administrators can now control the Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers installed in Amazon Q Developer client applications directly within the AWS console. This provides organizations with the granular control needed to manage external resources safely and effectively.\n With this launch an admin has the ability to enable or disable the MCP functionality for all the Q Developer clients in that organization. This means if an administrator disables the functionality, then users will not be allowed to add any MCP servers, nor will any previously defined servers be initialized. Q Developer checks and applies admin settings at the start of each session, and also every 24 hours while the client is running. MCP admin control support for Amazon Q Developer applies to the Amazon Q Developer CLI, and all Amazon Q Developer plugins: VSCode, JetBrains, Visual Studio, and Eclipse. Check out the documentation to learn more.
AWS HealthOmics now supports task level timeout controls for Nextflow workflows
AWS HealthOmics introduces support for the Nextflow time directive, which enables customers to set task level timeout controls to limit run duration for specific tasks. With this launch, customers can now set fine-grained controls for their Nextflow workflow tasks to enable automated run cancellation if specific tasks take longer than expected. AWS HealthOmics is a HIPAA-eligible service that helps healthcare and life sciences customers accelerate scientific breakthroughs with fully managed biological data stores and workflows.\n The Nextflow time directive is now supported in all regions where AWS HealthOmics is available: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Israel (Tel Aviv). To learn more about workflows and the Nextflow time directive support, see the AWS HealthOmics documentation.
Amazon EBS launches snapshot copy for AWS Local Zones
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), a high-performance block storage service, announces the general availability of snapshot copy for AWS Local Zones. This new feature helps you meet your business and compliance requirements by ensuring that your EBS Snapshots are copied to the AWS Region or AWS Local Zone.\n Snapshot copy copies a point-in-time local snapshot of an EBS volume and stores it in Amazon S3 in the Region or to another Local Zone. Customers use EBS Snapshots to back up their EBS volumes and copy them across multiple AWS Regions and Local Zones for disaster recovery, data migration, and compliance purposes. Amazon EBS snapshot copy is available in Local Zones that support local snapshots through the AWS Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS SDKs. To learn more, see the technical documentation for snapshot copy.
AWS IoT ExpressLink technical specification v1.3
Today, AWS IoT ExpressLink, a connectivity software that powers a range of hardware modules developed and offered by AWS Partners, announces the release of technical specification v1.3. The updated specification provides hardware manufacturers, who design and develop Internet of Things (IoT) devices, new features for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication and a new group of commands that give host processors control of the module I/O pins. \n Using the BLE expanded feature set, AWS IoT ExpressLink makes it easier to advertise the devices presence and its capabilities and pair securely with other devices in the local Personal Area Network (PAN). Moreover, the new I/O control commands allow the host processor to use an AWS IoT ExpressLink-powered module as an I/O expander, providing flexible digital and analog input/output capabilities. Combined, these features simplify the development and help reduce the cost of edge devices collecting wirelessly data from low power sensors and communicating with AWS cloud. The new specification has been adopted by AWS Partners, such as Espressif and u-blox towards their Wi-Fi and BLE qualified modules that developers can readily use to build connected products. For additional details, refer to the programmer’s guide and browse the AWS Partner Device Catalog for qualified modules from AWS Partners.
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Custom for SQL Server now supports new General Distribution Releases (GDR) for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (RDS Version 15.00.4435.7.v1) and Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (RDS version 16.00.4200.1.v1). The new GDRs address vulnerabilities described in CVE-2025-49717, CVE-2025-49718 and CVE-2025-49719. For additional information, review Microsoft release notes KB5058722 and KB5058721.\n We recommend that you upgrade your Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server instances to the latest GDRs using the Amazon RDS Management Console, or by using the AWS SDK or CLI. Learn more about upgrading your database instances through Amazon RDS Custom User Guide.
Amazon Connect now offers generative text-to-speech voices
Amazon Connect now offers new generative text-to-speech voices enabling you to deliver natural, human-like, and expressive conversations with your customers. With this launch, you now have access to 20 different generative-enhanced voices across languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. These voices can be used to deliver text-to-speech experiences like welcome messages, policy information, or even power your dynamic conversational AI experiences. These capabilities can be configured directly in the drag-and-drop flow designer using the “Set Voice” flow block or through public APIs.\n These new capabilities are included in unlimited AI Amazon Connect pricing or available individually priced. To learn more, see the Amazon Connect Administrator Guide or Amazon Connect pricing page. These features are available in US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Frankfurt), and US West (Oregon). To learn more about Amazon Connect, the AWS cloud-based contact center, please visit the Amazon Connect website or to learn more about unlimited AI in Amazon Connect read our blog post.
Amazon U7i instances now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) Region
Starting today, Amazon EC2 High Memory U7i instances with 12TB of memory (u7i-12tb.224xlarge) are now available in the US Asia Pacific (Seoul) region. U7i-12tb instances are part of AWS 7th generation and are powered by custom fourth generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Sapphire Rapids). U7i-12tb instances offer 12TiB of DDR5 memory enabling customers to scale transaction processing throughput in a fast-growing data environment.\n U7i-12tb instances offer 896 vCPUs, support up to 100Gbps Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for faster data loading and backups, deliver up to 100Gbps of network bandwidth, and support ENA Express. U7i instances are ideal for customers using mission-critical in-memory databases like SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server. To learn more about U7i instances, visit the High Memory instances page.
New General Purpose Amazon EC2 M8i and M8i-flex instances
AWS is announcing the general availability of new general-purpose Amazon EC2 M8i and M8i-flex instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors, available only on AWS, delivering the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud. The M8i and M8i-flex instances offer up to 15% better price-performance, and 2.5x more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation Intel-based instances. They deliver up to 20% better performance than M7i and M7i-flex instances, with even higher gains for specific workloads. The M8i and M8i-flex instances are up to 30% faster for PostgreSQL databases, up to 60% faster for NGINX web applications, and up to 40% faster for AI deep learning recommendation models compared to M7i and M7i-flex instances.\n M8i-flex are the easiest way to get price performance benefits for a majority of general-purpose workloads like web and application servers, microservices, small and medium data stores, virtual desktops, and enterprise applications. They offer the most common sizes, from large to 16xlarge, and are a great first choice for applications that don’t fully utilize all compute resources. M8i instances are a great choice for all general purpose workloads, especially for workloads that need the largest instance sizes or continuous high CPU usage. The SAP-certified M8i instances offer 13 sizes including 2 bare metal sizes and the new 96xlarge size for the largest applications. M8i and M8i-flex instances are available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Spain). To get started, sign in to the AWS Management Console. Customers can purchase these instances via Savings Plans, On-Demand instances, and Spot instances. For more information about the new M8i and M8i-flex instances visit the AWS News blog. Product Tag(s): Amazon EC2, Intel Xeon 6 processor, M8i instance, M8i-flex instance.
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports Attribute Based Access Control
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless has added support for attribute-based authorization (ABAC) for Data Plane APIs, making it easier to manage access control for data read and write operations. This feature is part of an AWS campaign to drive consistent adoption of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) features across all AWS services. Customers can use identity policies in IAM to define permissions and control who has access to the data on Amazon OpenSearch Serverless collections.\n Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now also supports resource control policy (RCP). RCP is a new type of authorization policy managed in AWS Organizations that will allow OpenSearch Serverless customers to enforce organization-wide preventative controls across resources in their organization centrally, without the need to update individual resource-based policies. You can refer to documentation for examples. Please refer to the AWS Regional Services List for more information about Amazon OpenSearch Service availability. To learn more about OpenSearch Serverless, see the documentation.
AWS extends Traffic Mirroring support on new instance types
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) Traffic Mirroring is now supported on additional instance types. Amazon VPC Traffic Mirroring allows you to replicate the network traffic from EC2 instances within your VPC to security and monitoring appliances for use cases such as content inspection, threat monitoring, and troubleshooting.\n With this release, VPC Traffic Mirroring can be enabled on all Nitro v4 instances. You can see the complete list of instances that support VPC Traffic Mirroring in our documentation. You can see the complete list of instances built on different Nitro system versions in our AWS Nitro Systems documentation. VPC Traffic Mirroring is supported on these additional instance types in all regions. To learn more about VPC Traffic Mirroring, please visit the VPC Traffic Mirroring documentation.
Amazon S3 improves AWS CloudFormation and AWS CDK support for S3 Tables
In addition to table buckets, you can now create tables and namespaces using AWS CloudFormation and AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK). This simplifies the way developers create, update, and manage S3 Tables resources using infrastructure as code. With improved CloudFormation and CDK support, teams can now consistently deploy any S3 Tables resource across multiple AWS accounts while maintaining version control of their configurations.\n AWS CloudFormation and AWS CDK support for S3 Tables is available in all AWS Regions where S3 Tables are available. To get started with the new S3 Tables infrastructure as code capabilities, visit the CloudFormation documentation for S3 Tables, CDK documentation, or the S3 Tables user guide.
Amazon CloudWatch RUM is now generally available in the two GovCloud regions
Amazon CloudWatch RUM, which enables customers to monitor their web applications by collecting client side performance and error data in real time, is additionally available in the following AWS Regions starting today: AWS GovCloud (US-East), and AWS GovCloud (US-West).\n CloudWatch RUM provides curated dashboards for web application performance experienced by real end users including anomalies in page load steps, core web vitals, and JavaScript and HTTP errors across different geolocations, browsers, and devices. Custom events and metrics sent to CloudWatch RUM can be easily configured to monitor specific parts of the application for real user interactions, troubleshoot issues, and get alerted for anomalies. CloudWatch RUM comes integrated with the application performance monitoring (APM) capability, CloudWatch Application Signals. As a result, client-side data from your application can easily be correlated with performance metrics such as errors, faults, and latency observed in your APIs (service operations) and dependencies to address the root cause. To get started, see the RUM User Guide. Usage of CloudWatch RUM is charged on the number of collected RUM events, which refers to each data item collected by the RUM web client, as detailed here.
Amazon EC2 Mac Dedicated hosts now support Host Recovery and Reboot-based host maintenance
Starting today, customers can enable two new capabilities for their EC2 Mac Dedicated Hosts: Host Recovery and Reboot-based Host Maintenance. Host Recovery automatically detects potential hardware issues on Mac Dedicated Hosts and seamlessly migrates Mac instances to a new replacement host, minimizing disruption to workloads. Reboot-based Host Maintenance automatically stops and restarts instances on replacement hosts when scheduled maintenance events occur, eliminating the need for manual intervention during planned maintenance windows. Together, these features significantly enhance the reliability and manageability of EC2 Mac instances, delivering improved uptime for macOS workloads in the cloud while reducing operational overhead and the need for continuous monitoring.\n These features are available across all EC2 Mac instance families, including both Intel (x86) and Apple silicon platforms. Customers can access this feature in all AWS regions where EC2 Mac instances are currently supported. To learn more about Host recovery, please visit the documentation here. To learn more about Host maintenance, please visit the documentation here. To learn more about EC2 Mac instances, click here.
Amazon EC2 C8gn instances are now available in US West (N. California)
Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C8gn instances, powered by the latest-generation AWS Graviton4 processors, are available in the AWS Region US West (N. California) . The new instances provide up to 30% better compute performance than Graviton3-based Amazon EC2 C7gn instances. Amazon EC2 C8gn 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.\n Take advantage of the enhanced networking capabilities of C8gn to scale performance and throughput, while optimizing the cost of running network-intensive workloads such as network virtual appliances, data analytics, CPU-based artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) inference. For increased scalability, C8gn instances offer instance sizes up to 48xlarge, up to 384 GiB of memory, and up to 60 Gbps of bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). C8gn instances support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) networking on the 16xlarge, 24xlarge, 48xlarge, metal-24xl, and metal-48xl sizes, which enables lower latency and improved cluster performance for workloads deployed on tightly coupled clusters. C8gn instances are available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon, N. .California). To learn more, see Amazon C8gn Instances. To begin your Graviton journey, visit the Level up your compute with AWS Graviton page. To get started, see AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and AWS SDKs.
AWS Blogs
AWS Japan Blog (Japanese)
- Introducing proven migration patterns to accelerate Amazon Connect adoption
- [Free for a limited time] Start learning AWS with AWS Skill Builder’s new Builder Labs study plan
AWS News Blog
AWS Contact Center
AWS DevOps & Developer Productivity Blog
Artificial Intelligence
- Meet Boti: The AI assistant transforming how the citizens of Buenos Aires access government information with Amazon Bedrock
- Empowering air quality research with secure, ML-driven predictive analytics
- How Amazon Finance built an AI assistant using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Kendra to support analysts for data discovery and business insights