Amazon ECR now lets you push container images with layers up to 200 GB via Docker, making it easier to bundle large models, datasets, and dependencies without splitting across multiple layers. This eliminates the hassle of managing complex storage workarounds for demanding workloads like LLMs and genomics data. Note that AWS SDK and CLI uploads stay capped at 50 GB. The feature rolls out across all AWS regions except Middle East locations.
Amazon Aurora DSQL now supports multi-Region clusters in Stockholm, Spain, Mumbai, and Singapore. This serverless distributed SQL database offers active-active high availability with writable endpoints in both peered Regions, keeping your data available even if one Region goes down. You can try it free with AWS Free Tier.
AWS now offers 1 and 3-year Reserved Instances for R8i and M8i Oracle databases, saving you up to 53% on costs. These instances pack custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with 15% better price-performance and 2.5x faster memory bandwidth than previous generations. You get flexibility to switch between Multi-AZ and Single-AZ setups, plus size flexibility under BYOL licensing. Start purchasing through AWS Console, CLI, or SDK today.
AWS Lambda now supports Java 8, 11, and 17 on Amazon Linux 2023, letting you migrate from the older AL2 without upgrading your Java version. AL2 reaches end of life June 30, 2026, so you'll need to move your functions to stay supported. If you're ready to modernize, AWS recommends upgrading to Java 21 or 25 for better performance.
Amazon Location Service has added SearchNearby functionality using GrabMaps data across Singapore and Malaysia. Developers can now build local discovery and delivery apps that find nearby points of interest—like fuel stations or restaurants—filtered by category and ranked by distance. GrabMaps provides hyperlocal mapping validated by millions of daily Grab journeys across 500+ Southeast Asian cities.
Amazon CloudWatch now offers fully managed Prometheus collectors, eliminating the need to deploy and maintain your own agents. Simply provide a scrape configuration, and CloudWatch automatically handles provisioning and scaling across EKS, EC2, ECS, MSK, and OpenSearch workloads. Metrics arrive in OpenTelemetry format and integrate seamlessly with PromQL queries for unified dashboards and alarms.
AWS CodeDeploy is now live in five additional regions across Asia Pacific and Mexico, bringing the service to 34 commercial regions total. This expansion lets developers deploy to EC2, Lambda, ECS, and on-premises servers with lower latency and better data residency support. You'll get faster feature releases and zero-downtime deployments without manual errors.
AWS just released Context Ontology Accelerator, an open source tool that helps you build machine-readable models of your business to make AI agents more reliable and explainable. It connects to your data sources, uses AI to draft an ontology, and lets your experts review it before storing in a knowledge graph. This cuts months of manual work down to days, making it easier to move AI agents from testing to production with full auditability.
AWS just rolled out EC2 C7i-flex instances in Europe (Milan), powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. These deliver up to 15% better performance and 19% better price-performance than C6i, making them ideal for web servers, databases, and Kafka workloads that don't need maximum resources.
AWS just rolled out Amazon EC2 C7i instances in Milan and Calgary regions. Powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, they deliver 15% better performance and price-performance than C6i instances. Perfect for compute-heavy tasks like batch processing and video encoding, with bare-metal options featuring Intel accelerators.
Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now offers proper Git version control across all your project tools—Query Editor, Visual ETL, Workflows, and Notebooks. You can choose exactly which files to track on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, then commit everything in one go. Repositories work independently from projects, so you can add them whenever you need.
AWS Direct Connect now lets you see BGP routes exchanged between AWS and your on-premises network across all virtual interfaces. You can view which routes AWS accepts from your router and which it advertises back, complete with AS paths and BGP communities—perfect for troubleshooting routing issues and validating your hybrid network setup. Filter by prefix, AS path, or community to quickly spot routing problems.
Great news for stability-focused teams! Amazon Redshift's Graviton-powered RG instances (rg.large and rg.12xlarge) are now available on the trailing track for patch P202 and later. You'll get up to 2.4x faster queries than RA3 at 30% lower cost per vCPU. Start provisioning via AWS Console, CLI, or SDKs today.
AWS has upgraded IAM Policy Simulator with a major refresh—it's now built right into the IAM console instead of running separately. The tool can now test service control policies (SCPs) and lets you simulate "what if" scenarios by excluding specific policies. You'll get better insights into cross-account permissions and how conditions like regions and tags affect access decisions.
Great news for developers! Amazon Bedrock is cutting prices for OpenAI's GPT-5.6 models starting July 30, 2026. GPT-5.6 Luna gets an 80% discount, perfect for high-volume content processing and automation, while GPT-5.6 Terra drops 20% for balanced production workloads. Best part: pricing updates automatically with zero effort needed.
AWS Transit Gateway now supports Policy-Based Routing (PBR), letting you control traffic flow based on source/destination IPs, ports, and protocols—not just destination addresses. This eliminates the need for complex multi-VPC setups, making it easier to route sensitive workloads through firewalls or isolate environments. Available now across all AWS regions with no extra charges.
Amazon MSK Express brokers can now continuously deliver Apache Kafka topics as Apache Iceberg tables on Amazon S3 Tables, cutting ingestion costs by up to 60% and query costs by 30%. The feature handles inline compaction and concurrent writes automatically, supporting throughput up to 10 GB/s without extra broker costs. You can enable it in the MSK console with just a few clicks and query results using Spark, Trino, or Flink.
Amazon MSK Express brokers can now deliver Apache Kafka data straight to S3 buckets with zero manual connector management. This fully managed feature automatically scales to 10 GB/s throughput, handles retries and backpressure on its own, and cuts costs by up to 60% compared to self-managed solutions. Perfect for log archival, compliance, and ML training pipelines.
xAI's Grok 4.3 is now live on Amazon Bedrock in AWS GovCloud (US-West). This reasoning-first model offers configurable reasoning effort and strong tool use, making it perfect for enterprise tasks like customer support and financial document analysis. Built on Mantle, the new inference engine, it delivers token efficiency and consistent results across conversational AI and multi-turn workflows.
Google DeepMind's Gemma 4 models are now live on Amazon Bedrock in AWS GovCloud (US-West). Choose from three variants—Gemma 4 31B for heavy reasoning tasks, 26B-A4B for cost-sensitive workloads, or E2B for low-latency apps. All support 35+ languages, multimodal inputs, and native function calling to help you build reliable AI applications.
AWS Directory Service now lets you upgrade AWS Managed Microsoft AD from Standard to Enterprise Edition directly in the console without migrating or rejoining workloads. Enterprise Edition handles up to 500,000 objects compared to Standard's 5,000-user limit, perfect for growing organizations. Your DNS settings, trust relationships, and group policies stay intact during the upgrade. Head to the AWS Directory Service console to get started.
Amazon OpenSearch Service now supports version 3.7, bringing faster vector search and better performance. The update includes 1-bit scalar quantization to compress vectors while keeping accuracy intact, plus new Search Relevance Workbench features and Query Insights tools to help you spot expensive queries and optimize your workloads.
AWS now lets you use Instance Refresh directly in CloudFormation templates. When you update properties requiring instance replacement, CloudFormation automatically handles the refresh with zero-downtime deployments. You get features like launch-before-terminate, alarm monitoring, and controlled rollouts—all while keeping your scaling policies and health checks active.
Amazon Redshift Data API now features long polling to cut API calls, session management for tracking active queries, and flexible batch execution with AUTO_COMMIT mode. Each SQL statement in a batch runs independently, so one failure won't roll back everything—perfect for ETL pipelines. You can also reuse parameters across statements, making queries cleaner and more efficient.
AWS Glue's REST API connector now supports VPC connections, filter pushdown, and partition support. You can securely access private data sources, transfer only needed data, and parallelize reads without custom code. These features reduce costs and speed up ETL pipelines across all AWS regions.
AWS Interconnect is now generally available, making it easier to link your workloads across AWS and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This purpose-built service eliminates the complexity of managing multicloud networks manually, letting you provision secure private connections quickly. Google Cloud support is already available, while Microsoft Azure joins in 2026.
AWS WAF now includes pre-parse text transformations and ten new text transformations to help you normalize requests before inspection. These tools—like URL decode, Uppercase, and SHA256—work together to close security gaps from HTTP parameter pollution and parser evasion. You can chain up to ten transformations in a single rule, and each costs just 10 WCUs with no extra charge.
Amazon Connect Customer now automatically surfaces relevant agent evaluation examples when managers prepare coaching feedback. Managers get specific call recordings and AI insights showing where agents excelled or struggled on topics like de-escalation, helping deliver targeted coaching faster. This feature saves time searching for examples while boosting agent performance improvement across all regions.
Amazon EFS just rolled out cross-account Replication support in AWS GovCloud (US), making it easier to replicate file systems between your AWS accounts. This feature helps you meet disaster recovery and compliance needs by automatically syncing data replicas across separate accounts—no custom scripts needed. Set it up in minutes using the EFS Console, AWS CLI, or CloudFormation.
AWS IAM Identity Center now lets you replicate your identity setup across multiple regions when using Identity Center directory. This boosts resilience—if your primary region goes down, users keep accessing their AWS accounts from backup regions. Your identities and permissions sync automatically, so admins manage everything from one place while apps deploy globally.