AWS News Blog

Top announcements of the What’s Next with AWS, 2026

AWS News Blog Team — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:11:39 +0000

Today at the What’s Next with AWS, Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, Colleen Aubrey, SVP Amazon Applied AI Solutions, Julia White, CMO of AWS, and OpenAI leaders discussed how they and their customers are changing how businesses operate with agents.

Here’s our roundup of the biggest announcements from the event:

Amazon Quick is an AI assistant for work that connects to all of them, learns what matters to you, and takes action on your behalf. Starting today, you can use the new desktop app, sign up for Free and Plus pricing plans, generate visual assets in the chat, and easily connect Quick to even more apps.

Quick’s new desktop app (Preview): You can create a personalized experience by staying connected to your local files, calendar, and communications without opening a browser.
New Free and Plus pricing plans for Quick: You can sign up within minutes using your personal email address or existing Google, Apple, Github, or Amazon credentials—no AWS account required.
Generate visual assets on the fly: Available today, Quick now lets you create polished documents, presentations, infographics, and images directly from the chat interface, no design skills or hours of formatting required.
Easily connect Quick to even more apps: Also available today, Quick is expanding its native integrations to include Google Workspace, Zoom, Airtable, Dropbox, and Microsoft Teams.

To learn more, visit the About Amazon News post.

Amazon Connect is expanding from a single product into a set of four agentic AI solutions designed to work within your existing workflows: Amazon Connect Decisions (supply chains), Talent (hiring), Customer (customer experience), and Health (health care).

Amazon Connect Decisions is a supply chain planning and intelligence solution that shifts teams from crisis management to proactive planning and decisioning. AI teammates, combining 30 years of Amazon operational science and 25+ specialized supply chain tools, adapt to your business, learn from your team, and continuously improve your operations.
Amazon Connect Talent (Preview) is an agentic AI hiring solution built for talent acquisition leaders managing scaled hiring. It delivers AI-led interviews, science-backed assessments, and consistent evaluation, helping recruiters hire high quality candidates faster while providing applicants with a flexible interview experience that reduces human preconceptions.
Amazon Connect Customer, previously known as Amazon Connect, delivers intelligent, personalized customer experiences across voice, chat, and digital channels. Amazon Connect Customer now offers new configuration capabilities that enable organizations to set up conversational AI in weeks, not months, and configure experiences without technical expertise.
Amazon Connect Health delivers agentic patient verification, appointment management, patient insights, ambient documentation, and medical coding — giving patients faster access to care, clinicians more time for care, and staff capacity for specialized work.

To learn more, visit the About Amazon News post.

AWS and OpenAI extended partnership
AWS and OpenAI are bringing the latest OpenAI models to Amazon Bedrock, launching Codex on Amazon Bedrock, and launching Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI (all in limited preview), giving enterprises the frontier intelligence they want on the infrastructure they trust.

OpenAI models on Amazon Bedrock (Limited preview): The latest OpenAI models, including GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4, will be available in preview on Amazon Bedrock. Use OpenAI’s frontier models through the same Bedrock APIs you already rely on, with unified security, governance, and cost controls. No additional infrastructure to configure, no new security model to learn.
Codex on Amazon Bedrock (Limited preview): You can access the OpenAI coding agent within the AWS environments where they already operate at scale. You can authenticate using their AWS credentials, process inference through Amazon Bedrock infrastructure, and apply Codex usage toward their AWS cloud commitments. Codex on Bedrock is available through the Bedrock API, starting with the Codex CLI, the Codex desktop app, and Visual Studio Code extension.
Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents, powered by OpenAI (Limited preview): Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents combines frontier AI models with trusted AWS infrastructure, enabling customers to quickly and easily build production-ready OpenAI-powered agents in the cloud. It is built with the OpenAI harness, which is engineered to unlock the full potential of OpenAI frontier models, delivering faster execution, sharper reasoning, and reliable steering of long-running tasks.

To learn more, visit the AWS What’s New post and About Amazon News post.

AWS Weekly Roundup: Anthropic & Meta partnership, AWS Lambda S3 Files, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore CLI, and more (April 27, 2026)

Daniel Abib — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:01:28 +0000

Late March took me to Seattle for the Specialist Tech Conference, one of the most energizing gatherings of AWS specialists from around the world. It was an incredible opportunity to connect with peers, exchange experiences, and go deep on the latest advancements in Generative AI and Amazon Bedrock — and a powerful reminder of something I truly believe in: when specialists come together to challenge each other, explore edge cases, and co-create solutions, the impact goes far beyond the meeting room. In a fast-moving space like AI, having a strong internal community isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a competitive advantage.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Headlines

Anthropic partnership: Claude on AWS Trainium and Graviton, and Claude Cowork in Amazon Bedrock – This week, AWS and Anthropic deepened their product collaboration in meaningful ways for builders. Anthropic is now training its most advanced foundation models on AWS Trainium and Graviton infrastructure, co-engineering directly at the silicon level with Annapurna Labs to maximize computational efficiency from the hardware up through the full stack.

Claude Cowork is now available in Amazon Bedrock — Claude Cowork brings Anthropic’s collaborative AI capabilities directly to enterprise builders within the AWS ecosystem, enabling teams to work alongside Claude as a true collaborator, not just a tool. You can now deploy Claude Cowork within your existing Amazon Bedrock environment, keeping your data secure within AWS while leveraging the full power of Claude for team-based AI workflows.

Claude Platform on AWS (Coming soon) — A unified developer experience to build, deploy, and scale Claude-powered applications without leaving AWS. If you’re building with Generative AI on AWS, this is a significant step forward in what you’ll be able to do with Claude directly through Amazon Bedrock.

Meta signs agreement with AWS to power agentic AI on Amazon’s Graviton chips — Meta has signed an agreement to deploy AWS Graviton processors at scale, starting with tens of millions of Graviton cores to power CPU-intensive agentic AI workloads — including real-time reasoning, code generation, search, and multi-step task orchestration.

Last week’s launches

Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

AWS Lambda functions can now mount Amazon S3 buckets as file systems with S3 Files — You can now mount Amazon S3 buckets as file systems in AWS Lambda using S3 Files, enabling your functions to perform standard file operations without downloading data for processing. Built on Amazon EFS, S3 Files provides the simplicity of a file system with the scalability, durability, and cost-effectiveness of S3 — and multiple Lambda functions can connect to the same file system simultaneously, sharing data through a common workspace. This is particularly valuable for AI and machine learning workloads where agents need to persist memory and share state across pipeline steps.
Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes gateway for hybrid Kubernetes networking — Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service now offers the Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes gateway, which automates networking between your EKS cluster VPC and Kubernetes Pods running on EKS Hybrid Nodes. You can now eliminate the need to make on-premises pod networks routable or coordinate network infrastructure changes, greatly simplifying hybrid Kubernetes environments. The gateway automatically enables pod-to-pod traffic across cloud and on-premises environments, control plane-to-webhook communication, and connectivity for AWS services like Application Load Balancers, and is available at no additional charge.
Amazon Aurora Serverless: Up to 30% better performance, smarter scaling, and still scales to zero — Amazon Aurora Serverless just got faster and smarter, with up to 30% better performance than the previous version and an enhanced scaling algorithm designed to handle workloads where multiple tasks compete for resources — like busy APIs and agentic AI applications with bursts of activity and long idle windows. You can now run even more demanding workloads serverlessly, paying only for what you use, and automatically scaling to zero when not in use. All improvements are available in platform version 4 at no additional cost.
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore adds new features to help developers build agents faster — Amazon Bedrock AgentCore introduces a managed harness (preview), the AgentCore CLI, and AgentCore skills for coding assistants, helping developers go from idea to working agent prototype faster. The managed harness lets you define an agent by specifying a model, system prompt, and tools and run it immediately with no orchestration code required — and when you’re ready for full control, you can export the harness orchestration as Strands-based code. The AgentCore CLI deploys your agents with the governance and auditability of infrastructure-as-code (AWS CDK today, Terraform coming soon), and is available in 14 AWS Regions at no additional charge.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news

Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

Introducing granular cost attribution for Amazon Bedrock — This post walks through how Amazon Bedrock’s granular cost attribution works and covers practical example cost tracking scenarios. You can now tag and track Bedrock usage costs at a finer level of detail — useful for organizations running multiple teams or projects on Bedrock who need precise cost visibility and chargeback capabilities.
Automating Incident Investigation with AWS DevOps Agent and Salesforce MCP Server — This post (co-written with Salesforce) shows how AWS DevOps Agent, integrated with the Salesforce MCP Server, automates the full lifecycle of infrastructure incident investigation — from identifying issues and diagnosing root causes to notifying customers through Salesforce Service Cloud. It’s a compelling real-world example of how AI agents and MCP-based tool connectivity are reshaping DevOps workflows in production, dramatically reducing mean time to resolution.
Microcredentials from AWS are now free — Here’s why that matters — You can now access AWS microcredentials at no cost through AWS Skill Builder in all countries where the platform is offered. Unlike traditional multiple-choice certifications, microcredentials are hands-on assessments that place builders in simulated business scenarios where they configure, troubleshoot, and optimize directly in a live AWS environment — the same way they would on the job. A great opportunity to validate real cloud skills without a cost barrier.
Amazon SageMaker AI now supports optimized generative AI inference recommendations — You can now use Amazon SageMaker AI to automatically identify optimized deployment configurations for your generative AI models, including instance type, container, and inference parameters. This new capability takes the guesswork out of tuning inference infrastructure, helping you reduce costs and improve latency for your AI applications in production.

Upcoming AWS events

Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

What’s Next with AWS — Tune in on April 28 for What’s Next with AWS, a virtual event featuring the latest announcements and product updates directly from AWS teams. A great opportunity to get up to speed on what’s new before diving into the week’s launches.
AWS Summits — AWS Summits are free in-person events where you can explore the latest in cloud and AI innovation, learn best practices, and network with builders and experts. Coming up in May: Singapore (May 6), Tel Aviv (May 6), Warsaw (May 6), Stockholm (May 7), Sydney (May 13–14), Hamburg (May 20), Seoul (May 20), Amsterdam (May 27), Bangkok (May 28), Milan (May 28), and Mumbai (May 28). And in June, join us in Los Angeles (June 10). Check the full schedule and register at the link above.
AWS Community Days — Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include Athens, Greece (April 28), Vancouver, Canada (May 1), İstanbul, Türkiye (May 9), and Panama City, Panama (May 23). If you’re in Latin America, mark your calendar for the AWS Community Day Belo Horizonte (August 22) — registration is open at awscommunityday.com.br.

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

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

— Daniel Abib

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Opus 4.7 in Amazon Bedrock, AWS Interconnect GA, and more (April 20, 2026)

Sébastien Stormacq — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:53:21 +0000

Last week I had the honor of delivering a commencement speech at the University of Namur (uNamur) for their 2025 graduation ceremony.

Standing in front of freshly minted computer science graduates, I talked about the future of software development in the age of AI. My message to them was simple: AI will not make you obsolete. We’ve seen tools evolve over the decades, from punch cards to IDEs to AI-assisted coding, but the work remains yours, not the tool’s. The developers who will thrive are those who stay curious, think in systems, communicate with precision, and take ownership of what they build. The world needs more people with coding skills, not fewer. AI raises the bar on what we can accomplish, and that’s a good thing.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news.

Headlines
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 is now available in Amazon Bedrock – Anthropic’s most intelligent Opus model is now available in Amazon Bedrock, with improved performance across coding, long-running agents, and professional knowledge work. Claude Opus 4.7 scores 64.3% on SWE-bench Pro and 87.6% on SWE-bench Verified, extending its lead in agentic coding with stronger long-horizon autonomy and complex code reasoning. It also does better on knowledge work tasks like document creation, financial analysis, and multi-step research.

The model runs on Bedrock’s next-generation inference engine with dynamic capacity allocation, adaptive thinking (letting Claude allocate thinking token budgets based on request complexity), and the full 1M token context window. It also adds high-resolution image support for better accuracy on charts, dense documents, and screen UIs. Claude Opus 4.7 is available at launch in US East (N. Virginia), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland), and Europe (Stockholm), with up to 10,000 requests per minute per account per Region.

AWS Interconnect is now generally available with a new option to simplify last-mile connectivity – AWS Interconnect brings two managed private connectivity capabilities to general availability. The first, AWS Interconnect – Multicloud, provides Layer 3 private connections between AWS VPCs and other cloud providers (Google Cloud available now, Azure and OCI coming later in 2026). Traffic flows over the AWS global backbone and the partner cloud’s private network, never over the public internet, with built-in MACsec encryption, multi-facility resiliency, and CloudWatch monitoring. AWS published the underlying specification on GitHub under Apache 2.0 so any cloud provider can become an Interconnect partner.

The second capability, AWS Interconnect – Last Mile, simplifies high-speed private connections from branch offices, data centers, and remote locations to AWS through existing network providers. It provisions 4 redundant connections across 2 physical locations automatically, configures BGP routing, activates MACsec encryption and Jumbo Frames by default, and offers bandwidth from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps adjustable from the console without reprovisioning. Last Mile launches in US East (N. Virginia) with Lumen as the initial partner.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

Amazon ECR pull through cache now supports referrer discovery and sync — ECR’s pull through cache now automatically discovers and syncs OCI referrers (image signatures, SBOMs, attestations) from upstream registries into your private repositories. This means end-to-end image signature verification and SBOM discovery workflows work without client-side workarounds.
AWS Transform is now available in Kiro and VS Code — AWS Transform, the agentic migration and modernization factory, is now accessible via Kiro (as a Power) and VS Code (as an extension). You can run custom transformations for common patterns like Java/Python/Node.js version upgrades and AWS SDK migrations directly from your IDE, with job state shared across the web console, CLI, and IDE.
Aurora DSQL launches connector for PHP — A new Aurora DSQL Connector for PHP (PDO_PGSQL) simplifies building PHP applications on Aurora DSQL by automatically generating IAM tokens, handling SSL configuration, managing connection pooling, and providing opt-in optimistic concurrency control retry with exponential backoff.
Amazon Q supports document-level access controls for Google Drive — Amazon Q now enforces document-level access controls for Google Drive knowledge bases, combining indexed ACL replication for fast pre-retrieval filtering with real-time permission checks against Google Drive at query time.
AWS Secrets Manager now supports hybrid post-quantum TLS — Secrets Manager now supports hybrid post-quantum key exchange using ML-KEM to protect secrets against both current and future quantum computing threats. This is automatically enabled in Secrets Manager Agent 2.0.0+, Lambda Extension v19+, and the CSI Driver 2.0.0+.
Amazon EC2 C8in and C8ib instances are now generally available — Powered by custom 6th-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 6th-gen AWS Nitro cards, these instances deliver up to 43% higher performance over C6in. C8in offers 600 Gbps network bandwidth (highest among enhanced networking EC2 instances), while C8ib delivers up to 300 Gbps EBS bandwidth (highest among non-accelerated compute instances), scaling up to 384 vCPUs.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

Navigating enterprise networking challenges with Amazon EKS Auto Mode — This post explains how EKS Auto Mode automates Kubernetes networking infrastructure including VPC CNI configuration, load balancer provisioning, and DNS management, reducing operational overhead while preserving enterprise security controls.
Introducing granular cost attribution for Amazon Bedrock — My colleague Micah talked about this feature last week already, but the blog post came out after last week’s roundup. Amazon Bedrock now automatically attributes inference costs to the specific IAM principal that made each API call, with results flowing into AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR 2.0). You can aggregate costs by team, project, or cost center using IAM principal tags and session tags.
Accelerate development workflows with Amazon EBS Volume Clones — EBS Volume Clones let you create instant, point-in-time copies of EBS volumes that are immediately usable without waiting for data transfer. The post highlights use cases including dev/test environment refreshes, disaster recovery testing, and CI/CD pipeline acceleration.
Modernize VB6 applications at scale with AWS Transform Custom — A walkthrough of using AWS Transform Custom’s agentic AI capabilities to convert legacy Visual Basic 6.0 applications to modern C# ASP.NET Core web applications, addressing challenges like COM dependencies, ADO-to-Entity Framework migration, and VB6 forms-to-Blazor UI conversion.
Migrating and decomposing APIs with zero-downtime using CloudFront — A zero-downtime API migration strategy using CloudFront Functions with CloudFront KeyValueStore for intelligent, user-aware traffic routing based on the Strangler Fig pattern. This is similar to what AWS Migration Hub Refactor Spaces offers, but implemented with just CloudFront and edge functions.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Events — Browse upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events near you.
AWS Power Hour — Weekly live training sessions on Twitch covering various AWS topics.
Community.aws — Find community-led events, meetups, and user groups in your area.

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

— seb

Introducing Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 model in Amazon Bedrock

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:49:33 +0000

Today, we’re announcing Claude Opus 4.7 in Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic’s most intelligent Opus model for advancing performance across coding, long-running agents, and professional work.

Claude Opus 4.7 is powered by Amazon Bedrock’s next generation inference engine, delivering enterprise-grade infrastructure for production workloads. Bedrock’s new inference engine has brand-new scheduling and scaling logic which dynamically allocates capacity to requests, improving availability particularly for steady-state workloads while making room for rapidly scaling services. It provides zero operator access—meaning customer prompts and responses are never visible to Anthropic or AWS operators—keeping sensitive data private.

According to Anthropic, Claude Opus 4.7 model provides improvements across the workflows that teams run in production such as agentic coding, knowledge work, visual understanding,long-running tasks. Opus 4.7 works better through ambiguity, is more thorough in its problem solving, and follows instructions more precisely.

Agentic coding: The model extends Opus 4.6’s lead in agentic coding, with stronger performance on long-horizon autonomy, systems engineering, and complex code reasoning tasks. According to Anthropic, the model records high-performance scores with 64.3% on SWE-bench Pro, 87.6% on SWE-bench Verified, and 69.4% on Terminal-Bench 2.0.
Knowledge work: The model advances professional knowledge work, with stronger performance on document creation, financial analysis, and multi-step research workflows. The model reasons through underspecified requests, making sensible assumptions and stating them clearly, and self-verifies its output to improve quality on the first step. According to Anthropic, the model reaches 64.4% on Finance Agent v1.1.
Long-running tasks: The model stays on track over longer horizons, with stronger performance over its full 1M token context window as it reasons through ambiguity and self-verifies its output.
Vision: the model adds high-resolution image support, improving accuracy on charts, dense documents, and screen UIs where fine detail matters.

The model is an upgrade from Opus 4.6 but may require prompting changes and harness tweaks to get the most out of the model. To learn more, visit Anthropic’s prompting guide.

Claude Opus 4.7 model in action
You can get started with Claude Opus 4.7 model in Amazon Bedrock console. Choose Playground under Test menu and choose Claude Opus 4.7 when you select model. Now, you can test your complex coding prompt with the model.

I run the following prompt example about technical architecture decision:
Design a distributed architecture on AWS in Python that should support 100k requests per second across multiple geographic regions.

You can also access the model programmatically using the Anthropic Messages API to call the bedrock-runtime through Anthropic SDK or bedrock-mantle endpoints, or keep using the Invoke and Converse API on bedrock-runtime through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) and AWS SDK.

To get started with making your first API call to Amazon Bedrock in minutes, choose Quickstart in the left navigation pane in the console. After choosing your use case, you can generate a short term API key to authenticate your requests as testing purpose.

When you choose the API method such as the OpenAI-compatible Responses API, you can get sample codes to run your prompt to make your inference request using the model.

To invoke the model through the Anthropic Claude Messages API, you can proceed as follows using anthropic[bedrock] SDK package for a streamlined experience:

from anthropic import AnthropicBedrockMantle
# Initialize the Bedrock Mantle client (uses SigV4 auth automatically)
mantle_client = AnthropicBedrockMantle(aws_region="us-east-1")
# Create a message using the Messages API
message = mantle_client.messages.create(
    model="us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-7",
    max_tokens=32000,
    messages=[ 
	    {"role": "user", "content": "Design a distributed architecture on AWS in Python that should support 100k requests per second across multiple geographic regions"}
    ]
)
print(message.content[0].text)

You can also run the following command to invoke the model directly to bedrock-runtime endpoint using the AWS CLI and the Invoke API:

aws bedrock-runtime invoke-model \ 
 --model-id us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-7 \ 
 --region us-east-1 \ 
 --body '{"anthropic_version":"bedrock-2023-05-31", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Design a distributed architecture on AWS in Python that should support 100k requests per second across multiple geographic regions."}], "max_tokens": 32000}' \ 
 --cli-binary-format raw-in-base64-out \ 
invoke-model-output.txt

For more intelligent reasoning capability, you can use Adaptive thinking with Claude Opus 4.7, which lets Claude dynamically allocate thinking token budgets based on the complexity of each request.

To learn more, visit the Anthropic Claude Messages API and check out code examples for multiple use cases and a variety of programming languages.

Things to know
Let me share some important technical details that I think you’ll find useful.

Choosing APIs: You can choose from a variety of Bedrock APIs for model inference, as well as the Anthropic Messages API. The Bedrock-native Converse API supports multi-turn conversations and Guardrails integration. The Invoke API provides direct model invocation and lowest-level control.
Scaling and capacity: Bedrock’s new inference engine is designed to rapidly provision and serve capacity across many different models. When accepting requests, we prioritize keeping steady state workloads running, and ramp usage and capacity rapidly in response to changes in demand. During periods of high demand, requests are queued, rather than rejected. Up to 10,000 requests per minute (RPM) per account per Region are available immediately, with more available upon request.

Now available
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 model is available today in the US East (N. Virginia), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland), and Europe (Stockholm) Regions; check the full list of Regions for future updates. To learn more, visit the Claude by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock page and the Amazon Bedrock pricing page.

Give Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 a try in the Amazon Bedrock console today and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Amazon Bedrock or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

Updated on April 17, 2026 – We fixed code samples and CLI commends to align new version.

AWS Interconnect is now generally available, with a new option to simplify last-mile connectivity

Sébastien Stormacq — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 23:54:47 +0000

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of AWS Interconnect – multicloud, a managed private connectivity service that connects your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) directly to VPCs on other cloud providers. We’re also introducing AWS Interconnect – last mile, a new capability that simplifies how you establish high-speed, private connections to AWS from your branch offices, data centers, and remote locations through your existing network providers.

Large enterprises increasingly run workloads across multiple cloud providers, whether to use specialized services, meet data residency requirements, or support teams that have standardized on different providers. Connecting those environments reliably and securely has historically required significant coordination: managing VPN tunnels, working with colocation facilities, and configuring third-party network fabrics. The result is that your networking team spends time on undifferentiated heavy lifting instead of focusing on the applications that matter to your business.

AWS Interconnect is the answer to these challenges. It is a managed connectivity service that simplifies connectivity into AWS. Interconnect provides you the ability to establish private, high-speed network connections with dedicated bandwidth to and from AWS across hybrid and multicloud environments. You can configure resilient, end-to-end connectivity with ease in a few clicks through the AWS Console by selecting your location, partner, or cloud provider, preferred Region, and bandwidth requirements, removing the friction of discovering partners and the complexity of manual network configurations.

It comes with two capabilities: multicloud connectivity between AWS and other cloud providers, and last-mile connectivity between AWS and your private on-premises networks. Both capabilities are built on the same principle: a fully managed, turnkey experience that removes the infrastructure complexity from your team.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud
AWS Interconnect – multicloud gives you a private, managed Layer 3 connection between your AWS environment and other cloud providers, starting with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) coming later in 2026. Traffic flows entirely over the AWS global backbone and the partner cloud’s private network, so it never traverses the public internet. This means you get predictable latency, consistent throughput, and isolation from internet congestion without having to manage any physical infrastructure yourself.

Security is built in by default. Every connection uses IEEE 802.1AE MACsec encryption on the physical links between AWS routers and the partner cloud provider’s routers at the interconnection facilities. You don’t need to configure these separately. Note that each cloud provider manages encryption independently on its own backbone, so you should review the encryption documentation for your specific deployment to verify it meets your compliance requirements. Resiliency is also built in: each connection spans multiple logical links distributed across at least two physical facilities, so a single device or building failure does not interrupt your connectivity.

For monitoring, AWS Interconnect – multicloud integrates with Amazon CloudWatch. You get a Network Synthetic Monitor included with each connection to track round-trip latency and packet loss, and bandwidth utilization metrics to support capacity planning.

AWS has published the underlying specification on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, providing any cloud service provider the opportunity to collaborate with AWS Interconnect – multicloud. To become an AWS Interconnect partner, cloud providers must implement the technical specification and meet AWS operational requirements, including resiliency standards, support commitments, and service level agreements.

How it works
Provisioning a connection takes minutes. I create the connection from the AWS Direct Connect console. I start from the AWS Interconnect section and select Google Cloud as the provider. I select my source and destination regions. I specify bandwidth, and provide my Google Cloud project ID. AWS generates an activation key that I use on the Google Cloud side to complete the connection. Routes propagate automatically in both directions, and my workloads can start exchanging data shortly after.

For this demo, I start with a single VPC and I connect it to a Google Cloud VPC. I use a Direct Connect Gateway. It’s the simplest path: one connection, one attachment, and my workloads on both sides can start talking to each other in minutes.

Step 1: request an interconnect in the AWS Management Console.

I navigate to AWS Direct Connect, AWS Interconnect and I select Create. I first choose the cloud provider I want to connect to. In this example, Google Cloud.

Then, I choose the AWS Region (eu-central-1) and the Google Cloud Region (europe-west3).

On step 3, I enter Description,I choose the Bandwidth, the Direct Connect gateway to attach, and the ID of my Google Cloud project.

After reviewing and confirming the request, the console gives me an activation key. I will use that key to validate the request on the Google cloud side.

Step 2: create the transport and VPC Peering resources on my Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.

Now that I have the activation key, I continue the process on the GCP side. At the time of this writing, no web-based console was available. I choose to use the GCP command line (CLI) instead. I take note of the CIDR range in the GCP VPC subnet in the europe-west3 region. Then, I open a Terminal and type:

gcloud network-connectivity transports create aws-news-blog \
    --region=europe-west3  \
    --activation-key=${ACTIVATION_KEY} \
    --network=default \
    --advertised-routes=10.156.0.0/20

Create request issued for: [aws-news-blog]
...
peeringNetwork: projects/oxxxp-tp/global/networks/transport-9xxxf-vpc
...
state: PENDING_CONFIG
updateTime: '2026-03-19T09:30:51.103979219Z'

It takes a couple of minutes for the command to complete. Once the command returns, I create a peering between my GCP VPC and the new transport I just created. I can do that in the GCP console or with the gcloud command line. Because I was using the Terminal for the previous command, I continued with the command line:

gcloud compute networks peerings create aws-news-blog \
      --network=default \
      --peer-network=projects/oxxxp-tp/global/networks/transport-9xxxf-vpc \
      --import-custom-routes \
      --export-custom-routes

The network name is the name of my GCP VPC. The peer network is given in the output of the previous command.

Once completed, I can verify the peering in the GCP console.

In the AWS Interconnect console, I verify the status is available.

In the AWS Direct Connect console, under Direct Connect gateways, I see the attachment to the new interconnect.

Step 3: associate the new gateway on the AWS side

I select Gateway associations and Associate gateway to attach the Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) that I created before starting this demo (pay attention to use a VGW in the same AWS Region as the interconnect)

You don’t need to configure the network routing on the GCP side. On AWS, there is a final step: add a route entry in your VPC Route tables to send all traffic to the GCP IP address range through the Virtual Gateway.

Once the network setup is done. I start two compute instances, one on AWS and one on GCP.

On AWS, I verify the Security Group accepts ingress traffic on TCP:8080. I connect to the machine and I start a minimal web server:

python3 -c \
"from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler 
class H(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
   def do_GET(self):
      self.send_response(200);self.end_headers()
      self.wfile.write(b'Hello AWS World!\n\n')
HTTPServer(('',8080),H).serve_forever()"

On the GCP side, I open a SSH session to the machine and I call the AWS web server by its private IP address.

Et voilà! I have a private network route between my two networks, entirely managed by the two Cloud Service Providers.

Things to know
There are a couple of configuration options that you should keep in mind:

When connecting networks, pay attention to the IP addresses range on both sides. The GCP and AWS VPC ranges can’t overlap. For this demo, the default range on AWS was 172.31.0.0/16and the default on GCP was 10.156.0.0/20. I was able to proceed with these default values.
You can configure IPV4, IPV6, or both on each side. You must select the same option on both sides.
The Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) must be the same on both VPC. The default values for AWS VPCs and GCP VPCs are not. MTU is the largest packet size, in bytes, that a network interface can transmit without fragmentation. Mismatched MTU sizes between peered VPCs cause packet drops or fragmentation, leading to silent data loss, degraded throughput, and broken connections across the interconnect.
For more details, refer to the GCP Partner Cross Cloud Interconnect and the AWS Interconnect User Guide.

Reference architectures
When your deployment grows and you have multiple VPCs in a single region, AWS Transit Gateway gives you a centralized routing hub to connect them all through a single Interconnect attachment. You can segment traffic between environments, apply consistent routing policies, and integrate AWS Network Firewall if you need to inspect what crosses the cloud boundary.

And when you’re operating at global scale, with workloads spread across multiple AWS Regions and multiple Google Cloud environments, AWS Cloud WAN extends that same model across the world. Any region in your network can reach any Interconnect attachment globally, with centralized policy management and segment-based routing that applies consistently everywhere you operate.

My colleagues Alexandra and Santiago documented these reference architectures in their blog post: Build resilient and scalable multicloud connectivity architectures with AWS Interconnect – multicloud.

AWS Interconnect – last mile
Based on the same architecture and design as AWS Interconnect – multicloud, AWS Interconnect – last mile provides the ability to connect your on-premises or remote location to AWS through a participating network provider’s last-mile infrastructure, directly from the AWS Management Console.

The onboarding process mirrors AWS Interconnect – multicloud: you select a provider, authenticate, and specify your connection endpoints and bandwidth. AWS generates an activation key that you provide in the provider console to complete the configuration. AWS Interconnect – last mile automatically provisions four redundant connections across two physical locations, configures BGP routing, and activates MACsec encryption and Jumbo Frames by default. The result is a resilient private connection to AWS that aligns with best practices, without requiring you to manually configure networking components.

AWS Interconnect – last mile supports bandwidths from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps, and you can adjust bandwidth from the console without reprovisioning. The service includes a 99.99% availability SLA up to the Direct Connect port and bundles CloudWatch Network Synthetic Monitor for connection health monitoring. Just like AWS Interconnect – multicloud, AWS Interconnect – last mile attaches to a Direct Connect Gateway, which connects to your Virtual Private Gateway, Transit Gateway, or AWS Cloud WAN deployment. For more details, refer to the AWS Interconnect User Guide.

Scott Yow, SVP Product at Lumen Technologies, wrote:

By combining AWS Interconnect – last mile with Lumen fiber network and Cloud Interconnect, we simplify the last-mile complexity that often slows cloud adoption and enable a faster, and more resilient path to AWS for customers.

Pricing and availability
AWS Interconnect – multicloud and AWS Interconnect – last mile pricing is based on a flat hourly rate for the capacity you request, billed prorata by the hour. You select the bandwidth tier that fits your workload needs.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud pricing varies by region pair: a connection between US East (N. Virginia) and Google Cloud N. Virginia is priced differently from a connection between US East (N. Virginia) and a more distant region. When you use AWS Cloud WAN, the global any-to-any routing model means traffic can traverse multiple regions, which affects the total cost of your deployment. I recommend reviewing the AWS Interconnect – multicloud pricing page and AWS Interconnect – last mile pricing page for the full rate card by region pair and capacity tier before sizing your connection.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud is available today in five region pairs: US East (N. Virginia) to Google Cloud N. Virginia, US West (N. California) to Google Cloud Los Angeles, US West (Oregon) to Google Cloud Oregon, Europe (London) to Google Cloud London, and Europe (Frankfurt) to Google Cloud Frankfurt. Microsoft Azure support is coming later in 2026.

AWS Interconnect – last mile is launching in US East (N. Virginia) with Lumen as the initial partner. Additional partners, including AT&T and Megaport, are in progress, and additional regions are planned.

To get started with AWS Interconnect, visit the AWS Direct Connect console and select AWS Interconnect from the navigation menu.

I’d love to hear how you’re using AWS Interconnect in your environment. Leave a comment below or reach out through the AWS re:Post community.

— seb

Updated on April 15 – Updated wrong link for pricing pages. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) added to list of coming providers.

AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Mythos Preview in Amazon Bedrock, AWS Agent Registry, and more (April 13, 2026)

Micah Walter — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:16:20 +0000

In my last Week in Review post, I mentioned how much time I’ve been spending on AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AI-DLC) workshops with customers this year. A common theme in those sessions is the need for better cost visibility. Teams are moving fast with AI, but as they go from experimenting to full production, finance and leadership really need to know who is using which resources and at what cost. That’s why I was so excited to see the launch of Amazon Bedrock new support for cost allocation by IAM user and role this week. This lets you tag IAM principals with attributes like team or cost center and then activate those tags in your Billing and Cost Management console. The resulting cost data flows into AWS Cost Explorer and the detailed Cost and Usage Report, giving you a clear line of sight into model inference spending. Whether you’re scaling agents across teams, tracking foundation model use by department, or running tools like Claude Code on Amazon Bedrock, this new feature is a game changer for tracking and managing your AI investments. You can get all the details on setting this up in the IAM principal cost allocation documentation.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Headlines
Amazon Bedrock now offers Claude Mythos Preview Anthropic’s most sophisticated AI model to date is now available on Amazon Bedrock as a gated research preview through Project Glasswing. Claude Mythos introduces a new model class focused on cybersecurity, capable of identifying sophisticated security vulnerabilities in software, analyzing large codebases, and delivering state of the art performance across cybersecurity, coding, and complex reasoning tasks. Security teams can use it to discover and address vulnerabilities in critical software before threats emerge. Access is currently limited to allowlisted organizations, with Anthropic and AWS prioritizing internet critical companies and open source maintainers.

AWS Agent Registry for centralized agent discovery and governance now in preview AWS launched Agent Registry through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, providing organizations with a private catalog for discovering and managing AI agents, tools, skills, MCP servers, and custom resources. The registry helps teams locate existing capabilities rather than duplicating them, with semantic and keyword search, approval workflows, and CloudTrail audit trails. It is accessible via the AgentCore Console, AWS CLI, SDK, and as an MCP server queryable from IDEs.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

Announcing Amazon S3 Files, making S3 buckets accessible as file systems — Amazon S3 Files transforms S3 buckets into shared file systems that connect any AWS compute resource directly with your S3 data. Built on Amazon EFS technology, it delivers full file system semantics with low latency performance, caching actively used data and providing multiple terabytes per second of aggregate read throughput. Applications can access S3 data through both file system and S3 APIs simultaneously without code modifications or data migration.
Amazon OpenSearch Service supports Managed Prometheus and agent tracing —Amazon OpenSearch Service now provides a unified observability platform that consolidates metrics, logs, traces, and AI agent tracing into a single interface. The update includes native Prometheus integration with direct PromQL query support, RED metrics monitoring, and OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic convention support for LLM execution visibility. Operations teams can correlate slow traces to logs and overlay Prometheus metrics on dashboards without switching between tools.
Amazon WorkSpaces Advisor now available for AI powered troubleshooting— AWS launched Amazon WorkSpaces Advisor, an AI powered administrative tool that uses generative AI to help IT administrators troubleshoot Amazon WorkSpaces Personal deployments. It analyzes WorkSpace configurations, detects problems automatically, and provides actionable recommendations to restore service and optimize performance.
Amazon Braket adds support for Rigetti’s 108 qubit Cepheus QPU — Amazon Braket now offers access to Rigetti’s Cepheus-1-108Q device, the first 100+ qubit superconducting quantum processor on the platform. The modular design features twelve 9 qubit chiplets with CZ gates that offer enhanced resilience to phase errors. It supports multiple frameworks including Braket SDK, Qiskit, CUDA-Q, and Pennylane, with pulse level control for researchers.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

Building automated AWS Regional availability checks with Amazon S3— Storage blog post on implementing automated systems for monitoring service availability across AWS regions using Amazon S3 as core infrastructure.
Understanding Amazon Bedrock model lifecycle — Machine learning blog post that walks through the stages foundation models go through in Bedrock from availability through deprecation, helping teams plan for model updates and manage version dependencies in production.
Building memory intensive apps with AWS Lambda managed instances — Compute blog post exploring how Lambda managed instances extend the platform beyond lightweight workloads to support memory intensive applications while maintaining serverless benefits.
Deploy OpenClaw on AWS: Choose the right options for your AI workload — Builder Center guide comparing four AWS deployment options for OpenClaw: Amazon Lightsail for individual developers, Amazon EC2 for startups needing deeper AWS integration, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore for serverless multiuser scenarios, and Amazon EKS for enterprises requiring VM level isolation and advanced orchestration.
We’re bringing back the Kiro startup credits program — Kiro is relaunching its startup credits initiative, offering eligible early stage companies complimentary access to Kiro Pro+ for up to one year. The three tier program (Starter, Growth, Scale) provides 2 to 30 users based on team size, with rolling applications accepted globally.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

What’s Next with AWS (April 28, Virtual) Join this livestream at 9am PT for a candid discussion about how agentic AI is transforming how businesses operate. Featuring AWS CEO Matt Garman, SVP Colleen Aubrey, and OpenAI leaders discussing emerging agent capabilities, Amazon’s internal experiences, and new agentic solutions and platform capabilities.

Browse here for upcoming AWS led in person and virtual events, startup events, and developer focused events.

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

~ micah

Launching S3 Files, making S3 buckets accessible as file systems

Sébastien Stormacq — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:18:32 +0000

I’m excited to announce Amazon S3 Files, a new file system that seamlessly connects any AWS compute resource with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

More than a decade ago, as an AWS trainer, I spent countless hours explaining the fundamental differences between object storage and file systems. My favorite analogy was comparing S3 objects to books in a library (you can’t edit a page, you need to replace the whole book) versus files on your computer that you can modify page by page. I drew diagrams, created metaphors, and helped customers understand why they needed different storage types for different workloads. Well, today that distinction becomes a bit more flexible.

With S3 Files, Amazon S3 is the first and only cloud object store that offers fully-featured, high-performance file system access to your data. It makes your buckets accessible as file systems. This means changes to data on the file system are automatically reflected in the S3 bucket and you have fine-grained control over synchronization. S3 Files can be attached to multiple compute resources enabling data sharing across clusters without duplication.

Until now, you had to choose between Amazon S3 cost, durability, and the services that can natively consume data from it or a file system’s interactive capabilities. S3 Files eliminates that tradeoff. S3 becomes the central hub for all your organization’s data. It’s accessible directly from any AWS compute instance, container, or function, whether you’re running production applications, training ML models, or building agentic AI systems.

You can access any general purpose bucket as a native file system on your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, containers running on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), or AWS Lambda functions. The file system presents S3 objects as files and directories, supporting all Network File System (NFS) v4.1+ operations like creating, reading, updating, and deleting files.

As you work with specific files and directories through the file system, associated file metadata and contents are placed onto the file system’s high-performance storage. By default, files that benefit from low-latency access are stored and served from the high performance storage. For files not stored on high performance storage such as those needing large sequential reads, S3 Files automatically serves those files directly from Amazon S3 to maximize throughput. For byte-range reads, only the requested bytes are transferred, minimizing data movement and costs.

The system also supports intelligent pre-fetching to anticipate your data access needs. You have fine-grained control over what gets stored on the file system’s high performance storage. You can decide whether to load full file data or metadata only, which means you can optimize for your specific access patterns.

Under the hood, S3 Files uses Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) and delivers ~1ms latencies for active data. The file system supports concurrent access from multiple compute resources with NFS close-to-open consistency, making it ideal for interactive, shared workloads that mutate data, from agentic AI agents collaborating through file-based tools to ML training pipelines processing datasets.

Let me show you how to get started.
Creating my first Amazon S3 file system, mounting, and using it from an EC2 instance is straightforward.

I have an EC2 instance and a general purpose bucket. In this demo, I configure an S3 file system and access the bucket from an EC2 instance, using regular file system commands.

For this demo, I use the AWS Management Console. You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or infrastructure as code (IaC).

Here is the architecture diagram for this demo.

Step 1: Create an S3 file system.

On the Amazon S3 section of the console, I choose File systems and then Create file system.

I enter the name of the bucket I want to expose as a file system and choose Create file system.

Step 2: Discover the mount target.

A mount target is a network endpoint that will live in my virtual private cloud (VPC). It allows my EC2 instance to access the S3 file system.

The console creates the mount targets automatically. I take notes of the Mount target IDs on the Mount targets tab.

When using the CLI, two separate commands are necessary to create the file system and its mount targets. First, I create the S3 file system with create-file-system. Then, I create the mount target with create-mount-target.

Step 3: Mount the file system on my EC2 instance.

After it’s connected to an EC2 instance, I type:

sudo mkdir /home/ec2-user/s3files sudo mount -t s3files fs-0aa860d05df9afdfe:/ /home/ec2-user/s3files

I can now work with my S3 data directly through the mounted file system in ~/s3files, using standard file operations.

When I make updates to my files in the file system, S3 automatically manages and exports all updates as a new object or a new version on an existing object back in my S3 bucket within minutes.

Changes made to objects on the S3 bucket are visible in the file system within a few seconds but can sometimes take a minute or longer.

# Create a file on the EC2 file system 
echo "Hello S3 Files" > s3files/hello.txt 

# and verify it's here 
ls -al s3files/hello.txt
 -rw-r--r--. 1 ec2-user ec2-user 15 Oct 22 13:03 s3files/hello.txt 

# See? the file is also on S3 
aws s3 ls s3://s3files-aws-news-blog/hello.txt 
2025-10-22 13:04:04 15 hello.txt 

# And the content is identical! 
aws s3 cp s3://s3files-aws-news-blog/hello.txt . && cat hello.txt
Hello S3 Files

Things to know
Let me share some important technical details that I think you’ll find useful.

S3 Files integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control and encryption. You can use identity and resource policies to manage permissions at both the file system and object level.
Data is always encrypted in transit using TLS 1.3 and at rest using Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3) or customer-managed keys with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS).
S3 Files uses POSIX permissions for files and directories, checking user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) against file permissions stored as object metadata in the S3 bucket.
Monitor S3 Files using Amazon CloudWatch metrics for drive performance and updates and AWS CloudTrail for logging management events.
Verify that the latest version of the EFS driver (amazon-efs-utils package) is installed on your EC2 instances. This package is preinstalled on the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provided by AWS. At the time of writing, you can update it to the latest version.
In this post, I showed you how to use S3 Files from an EC2 instance. You can also mount your S3 bucket as a file system from your ECS or EKS containers, on AWS Fargate or not, and from your Lambda functions.

Another question I frequently hear in customer conversations is about choosing the right file service for your workloads. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: AWS and its seemingly overlapping services, keeping cloud architects entertained during their architecture review meetings. Let me help demystify this one.

S3 Files works best when you need interactive, shared access to data that lives in Amazon S3 through a high performance file system interface. It’s ideal for workloads where multiple compute resources—whether production applications, agentic AI agents using Python libraries and CLI tools, or machine learning (ML) training pipelines—need to read, write, and mutate data collaboratively. You get shared access across compute clusters without data duplication, sub-millisecond latency, and automatic synchronization with your S3 bucket.

For workloads migrating from on-premises NAS environments, Amazon FSx provides the familiar features and compatibility you need. Amazon FSx is also ideal for high-performance computing (HPC) and GPU cluster storage with Amazon FSx for Lustre. It’s particularly valuable when your applications require specific file system capabilities from Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Amazon FSx for OpenZFS, or Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.

Pricing and availability
S3 Files is available today in all commercial AWS Regions.

You pay for the portion of data stored in your S3 file system, for small file read and all write operations to the file system, and for S3 requests during data synchronization between the file system and the S3 bucket. The Amazon S3 pricing page has all the details.

From discussions with customers, I believe S3 Files helps simplify cloud architectures by eliminating data silos, synchronization complexity, and manual data movement between objects and files. Whether you’re running production tools that already work with file systems, building agentic AI systems that rely on file-based Python libraries and shell scripts, or preparing datasets for ML training, S3 Files lets these interactive, shared, hierarchical workloads access S3 data directly without choosing between the durability of Amazon S3 and cost benefits and a file system’s interactive capabilities. You can now use Amazon S3 as the place for all your organizations’ data, knowing the data is accessible directly from any AWS compute instance, container, and function.

To learn more and get started, visit the S3 Files documentation.

I’d love to hear how you use this new capability. Feel free to share your feedback in the comments below.

— seb

AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS DevOps Agent & Security Agent GA, Product Lifecycle updates, and more (April 6, 2026)

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:51:00 +0000

Last week, I visited AWS Hong Kong User Group with my team. Hong Kong has a small but strong community, and their energy and passion are high. They recently started a new AI user group, and we hope more people will join. I was able to strengthen my bond with the community through great food and conversation.

This week, I’ll first take a closer look at some of the key launches.

AWS DevOps Agent and Security Agent GA
At the last re:Invent, we introduced the concept of frontier agents that work autonomously across multiple steps to achieve outcomes, operating continuously until the job is done. The first two—AWS DevOps Agent and AWS Security Agent—are now generally available after the preview.

AWS DevOps Agent helps you run cloud operations—investigating incidents, reducing time to resolution, and preventing issues before they happen. Customers like United Airlines, Western Governors University, and T-Mobile are already using DevOps Agent to accelerate incident response and simplify operations at scale. At WGU, resolution time dropped from hours to minutes, and in preview customers report up to 75% lower MTTR and 3 to 5 times faster resolution. Learn more in Sébastien’s preview blog post and GA announcement.

AWS Security Agent brings continuous, context-aware penetration testing into the development lifecycle. This agent operates like a human penetration tester. Customers including LG CNS, HENNGE, and Wayspring are seeing strong results. At LG CNS, teams estimate over 50% faster testing and ~30% lower costs, along with significantly fewer false positives. Learn more in Esra’s preview blog post and GA announcement.

Both are designed to work across AWS cloud, multicloud, and on-prem environments. You can have an always-available teammate that can handle the heavy lifting, so you can focus on what matters most.

AWS Service Availability Updates
When the availability of an AWS service or feature changes, we provide customers guidance in AWS Product Lifecycle Changes on available alternatives and support for migration so that disruptions to your operations are minimized. The following lifecycle changes were updated on March 31, 2026.

Availability change guide for services in maintenance
Availability change guide for services in sunset:
Services reaching in sunset:
- Amazon Chime SDK – Proxy Sessions

We understand that changes in availability can impact your operations. For specific guidance, consult the relevant service documentation or contact AWS Support.

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

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Additional updates
Here are some additional news items that you might find interesting:

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Learn more about AWS, browse and join upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events as well as AWS Summits and AWS Community Days. Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development.

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

— Channy

Amazon Bedrock Guardrails supports cross-account safeguards with centralized control and management

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:36:40 +0000

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of cross-account safeguards in Amazon Bedrock Guardrails, a new capability that enables centralized enforcement and management of safety controls across multiple AWS accounts within an organization.

With this new capability, you can specify a guardrail in a new Amazon Bedrock policy within the management account of your organization that automatically enforces configured safeguards across all member entities for every model invocation with Amazon Bedrock. This organization-wide implementation supports uniform protection across all accounts and generative AI applications with centralized control and management. This capability also offers flexibility to apply account-level and application-specific controls depending on use case requirements in addition to organizational safeguards.

Organization-level enforcements apply a single guardrail from your organization’s management account to all entities within the organization through policy settings. This guardrail automatically enforces filters across all member entities, including organizational units (OUs) and individual accounts, for all Amazon Bedrock model invocations.
Account-level enforcement enables automatic enforcement of configured safeguards across all Amazon Bedrock model invocations in your AWS account. The configured safeguards in the account-level guardrail apply to all inference API calls.

You can now establish and centrally manage dependable, comprehensive protection through a single, unified approach. This supports consistent adherence to corporate responsible AI requirements while significantly reducing the administrative burden of monitoring individual accounts and applications. Your security team no longer needs to oversee and verify configurations or compliance for each account independently.

Getting started with centralized enforcement in Amazon Bedrock Guardrails
You can get started with account-level and organization-level enforcement configuration in the Amazon Bedrock Guardrails console. Before the enforcement configuration, you need to create a guardrail with a particular version to support the guardrail configuration remains immutable and cannot be modified by member accounts and complete prerequisites for using the new capability such as resource-based policies for guardrails.

To enable account-level enforcement, choose Create in the section of Account-level enforcement configurations.

You can choose the guardrail and version to automatically apply to all Bedrock inference calls from this account in this Region. With general availability, we introduce the new feature defining which models will be affected by the enforcement with either Include or Exclude behavior.

You can also configure selective content guarding controls for system prompts and user prompts with either Comprehensive or Selective.

Use Comprehensive when you want to enforce guardrails on everything, regardless of what the caller tags. This is the safer default when you don’t want to rely on callers to correctly identify sensitive content.
Use Selective when you trust callers to tag the right content and want to reduce unnecessary guardrail processing. This is useful when callers handle a mix of pre-validated and user-generated content, and only need guardrails applied to specific portions.

After creating the enforcement, you can test and verify enforcement using a role in your account. The account-enforced guardrail should automatically apply to both prompts and outputs.

Check the response for guardrail assessment information. The guardrail response will include enforced guardrail information. You can also test by making a Bedrock inference call using InvokeModel, InvokeModelWithResponseStream, Converse, or ConverseStream APIs.

To enable organization-level enforcement, go to AWS Organizations console and choose Policies menu. You can enable the Bedrock policies in the console.

You can create a Bedrock policy that specifies your guardrail and attach it to your target accounts or OUs. Choose Bedrock policies enabled and Create policy. Specify your guardrail ARN and version and configure the input tags setting for in the AWS Organizations. To learn more, visit Amazon Bedrock policies in AWS Organizations and Amazon Bedrock policy syntax and examples.

After creating the policy, you can attach the policy to your desired organizational units, accounts, root in the Targets tab.

Search and select your organization root, OUs, or individual accounts to attach your policy, and choose Attach policy.

You can test that the guardrail is being enforced on member accounts and verify which guardrail is enforced. From a member account attached, you should see the organization enforced guardrail under the section Organization-level enforcement configurations.

The underlying safeguards within the specified guardrail are then automatically enforced for every model inference request across all member entities, ensuring consistent safety controls. To accommodate varying requirements of individual teams or applications, you can attach different policies with associated guardrails to different member entities through your organization.

Things to know
Here are key considerations to know about GA features:

You can now choose to include or exclude specific models in Bedrock for inference, enabling centralized enforcement on model invocation calls. You can also choose to safeguard partial or complete system prompts and input prompts. To learn more, visit Apply cross-account safeguards with Amazon Bedrock Guardrails enforcement.
Ensure you are specifying the accurate guardrail Amazon Resource Names (ARN) in the policy. Specifying an incorrect or invalid ARN will result in policy violations, non-enforcement of safeguards, and the inability to use the models in Amazon Bedrock for inference. To learn more, visit Best practices for using Amazon Bedrock policies.
Automated Reasoning checks are not supported with this capability.

Now available
Cross-account safeguards in Amazon Bedrock Guardrails is generally available today in the all AWS commercial and GovCloud Regions where Bedrock Guardrails is available. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, visit the AWS Capabilities by Region. Charges apply to each enforced guardrail according to its configured safeguards. For detailed pricing information on individual safeguards, visit Amazon Bedrock Pricing page.

Give this capability a try in the Amazon Bedrock console and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Amazon Bedrock Guardrails or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

Announcing managed daemon support for Amazon ECS Managed Instances

Micah Walter — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 23:31:24 +0000

Today, we’re announcing managed daemon support for Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Managed Instances. This new capability extends the managed instances experience we introduced in September 2025, by giving platform engineers independent control over software agents such as monitoring, logging, and tracing tools, without requiring coordination with application development teams, while also improving reliability by ensuring every instance consistently runs required daemons and enabling comprehensive host-level monitoring.

When running containerized workloads at scale, platform engineers manage a wide range of responsibilities, from scaling and patching infrastructure to keeping applications running reliably and maintaining the operational agents that support those applications. Until now, many of these concerns were tightly coupled. Updating a monitoring agent meant coordinating with application teams, modifying task definitions, and redeploying entire applications, a significant operational burden when you’re managing hundreds or thousands of services.

Decoupled lifecycle management for daemons
Amazon ECS now introduces a dedicated managed daemons construct that enables platform teams to centrally manage operational tooling. This separation of concerns allows platform engineers to independently deploy and update monitoring, logging, and tracing agents to infrastructure, while enforcing consistent use of required tools across all instances, without requiring application teams to redeploy their services. Daemons are guaranteed to start before application tasks and drain last, ensuring that logging, tracing, and monitoring are always available when your application needs them.

Platform engineers can deploy managed daemons across multiple capacity providers, or target specific capacity providers, giving them flexibility in how they roll out agents across their infrastructure. Resource management is also centralized, allowing teams to define daemon CPU and memory parameters separately from application configurations with no need to rebuild AMIs or update task definitions, while optimizing resource utilization since each instance runs exactly one daemon copy shared across multiple application tasks.

Let’s try it out
To take ECS Managed Daemons for a spin, I decided to start with the Amazon CloudWatch Agent as my first managed daemon. I had previously set up an Amazon ECS cluster with a Managed Instance capacity provider using the documentation.

From the Amazon Elastic Container Service console, I noticed a new Daemon task definitions option in the navigation pane, where I can define my managed daemons.

I chose Create new daemon task definition to get started. For this example, I configured the CloudWatch Agent with 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB of memory. In the Daemon task definition family field, I entered a name I’d recognize later.

For the Task execution role, I selected ecsTaskExecutionRole from the dropdown. Under the Container section, I gave my container a descriptive name and pasted in the image URI: public.ecr.aws/cloudwatch-agent/cloudwatch-agent:latest along with a few additional details.

After reviewing everything, I chose Create.

Once my daemon task definition was created, I navigated to the Clusters page, selected my previously created cluster and found the new Daemons tab.

Here I can simply click the Create daemon button and complete the form to configure my daemon.

Under Daemon configuration, I selected my newly created daemon task definition family and then assigned my daemon a name. For Environment configuration, I selected the ECS Managed Instances capacity provider I had set up earlier. After confirming my settings, I chose Create.

Now ECS automatically ensures the daemon task launches first on every provisioned ECS managed instance in my selected capacity provider. To see this in action, I deployed a sample nginx web service as a test workload. Once my workload was deployed, I could see in the console that ECS Managed Daemons had automatically deployed the CloudWatch Agent daemon alongside my application, with no manual intervention required.

When I later updated my daemon, ECS handled the rolling deployment automatically by provisioning new instances with the updated daemon, starting the daemon first, then migrating application tasks to the new instances before terminating the old ones. This “start before stop” approach ensures continuous daemon coverage: your logging, monitoring, and tracing agents remain operational throughout the update with no gaps in data collection. The drain percentage I configured controlled the pace of this replacement, giving me complete control over addon updates without any application downtime.

How it works
The managed daemon experience introduces a new daemon task definition that is separate from task definitions, with its own parameters and validation scheme. A new daemon_bridge network mode enables daemons to communicate with application tasks while remaining isolated from application networking configurations.

Managed daemons support advanced host-level access capabilities that are essential for operational tooling. Platform engineers can configure daemon tasks as privileged containers, add additional Linux capabilities, and mount paths from the underlying host filesystem. These capabilities are particularly valuable for monitoring and security agents that require deep visibility into host-level metrics, processes, and system calls.

When a daemon is deployed, ECS launches exactly one daemon process per container instance before placing application tasks. This guarantees that operational tooling is in place before your application starts receiving traffic. ECS also supports rolling deployments with automatic rollbacks, so you can update agents with confidence.

Now available
Managed daemon support for Amazon ECS Managed Instances is available today in all AWS Regions. To get started, visit the Amazon ECS console or review the Amazon ECS documentation. You can also explore the new managed daemons Application Programming Interface (APIs) by visiting this website.

There is no additional cost to use managed daemons. You pay only for the standard compute resources consumed by your daemon tasks.

Announcing the AWS Sustainability console: Programmatic access, configurable CSV reports, and Scope 1–3 reporting in one place

Sébastien Stormacq — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:04:00 +0000

As many of you are, I’m a parent. And like you, I think about the world I’m building for my children. That’s part of why today’s launch matters for many of us. I’m excited to announce the launch of the AWS Sustainability console, a standalone service that consolidates all AWS sustainability reporting and resources in one place.

With the The Climate Pledge, Amazon set a goal in 2019 to reach net-zero carbon across our operations by 2040. That commitment shapes how AWS builds its data centers and services. In addition, AWS is also committed to helping you measure and reduce the environmental footprint of your own workloads. The AWS Sustainability console is the latest step in that direction.

The AWS Sustainability console builds on the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (CCFT), which lives inside the AWS Billing console, and introduces a new set of capabilities for which you’ve been asking.

Until now, accessing your carbon footprint data required billing-level permissions. That created a practical problem: sustainability professionals and reporting teams often don’t have (and shouldn’t need) access to cost and billing data. Getting the right people access to the right data meant navigating permission structures that weren’t designed with sustainability workflows in mind. The AWS Sustainability console has its own permissions model, independent of the Billing console. Sustainability professionals can now get direct access to emissions data without requiring billing permissions to be granted alongside it.

The console includes Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions attributed to your AWS usage and shows you a breakdown by AWS Region, service, such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The underlying data and methodology haven’t changed with this launch; these are the same as the ones used by the CCFT. We changed how you can access and work with the data.

As sustainability reporting requirements have grown more complex, teams need more flexibility accessing and working with their emissions data. The console now includes a Reports page where you can download preset monthly and annual carbon emissions reports covering both market-based method (MBM) and location-based method (LBM) data. You can also build a custom comma-separated values (CSV) report by selecting which fields to include, the time granularity, and other filters.

If your organization’s fiscal year doesn’t align with the calendar year, you can now configure the console to match your reporting period. When that is set, all data views and exports reflect your fiscal year and quarters, which removes a common friction point for finance and sustainability teams working in parallel.

You can also use the new API or the AWS SDKs to integrate emissions data into your own reporting pipelines, dashboards, or compliance workflows. This is useful for teams that need to pull data for a specific month across a large number of accounts without setting up a data export or for organizations that need to establish custom account groupings that don’t align with their existing AWS Organizations structure.

You can read about the latest features released and methodology updates directly on the Release notes page on the Learn more tab.

Lets see it in action
To show you the Sustainability console, I opened the AWS Management Console and searched for “sustainability” in the search bar at the top of the screen.

The Carbon emissions section gives an estimate on your carbon emissions, expressed in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e). It shows the emissions by scope, expressed in the MBM and the LBM. On the right side of the screen, you can adjust the date range or filter by service, Regions, and more.

For those unfamiliar: Scope 1 includes direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (for example, data center fuel use); Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the production of purchased energy (with MBM accounting for energy attribute certificates and LBM using average local grid emissions); and Scope 3 includes other indirect emissions across the value chain, such as server manufacturing and data center construction. You can read more about this in our methodology document, which was independently verified by Apex, a third-party consultant.

I can also use API or AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to programmatically pull the emissions data.

aws sustainability get-estimated-carbon-emissions \
     --time-period='{"Start":"2025-03-01T00:00:00Z","End":"2026-03-01T23:59:59.999Z"}'

{
    "Results": [
        {
            "TimePeriod": {
                "Start": "2025-03-01T00:00:00+00:00",
                "End": "2025-04-01T00:00:00+00:00"
            },
            "DimensionsValues": {},
            "ModelVersion": "v3.0.0",
            "EmissionsValues": {
                "TOTAL_LBM_CARBON_EMISSIONS": {
                    "Value": 0.7,
                    "Unit": "MTCO2e"
                },
                "TOTAL_MBM_CARBON_EMISSIONS": {
                    "Value": 0.1,
                    "Unit": "MTCO2e"
                }
            }
        },
...

The combination of the visual console and the new API gives you two additional ways to work with your data, in addition to the Data Exports still available. You can now explore and identify hotspots on the console and automate the reporting you want to share with stakeholders.

The Sustainability console is designed to grow. We plan to continue to release new features as we grow the console’s capabilities alongside our customers.

Get started today
The AWS Sustainability console is available today at no additional cost. You can access it from the AWS Management Console. Historical data is available going back to January 2022, so you can start exploring your emissions trends right away.

Get started on the console today. If you want to learn more about the AWS commitment to sustainability, visit the AWS Sustainability page.

— seb

AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS AI/ML Scholars program, Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless, and more (March 30, 2026)

Prasad Rao — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:11:28 +0000

Last week, what excited me most was the launch of the 2026 AWS AI & ML Scholars program by Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of AWS Agentic AI, to provide free AI education to up to 100,000 learners worldwide. The program has two phases: a Challenge phase where you’ll learn foundational generative AI skills, followed by a fully funded three-month Udacity Nanodegree for the top 4,500 performers. Anyone 18 or older can apply, with no prior AI or ML experience required. Applications close on June 24, 2026. Visit the AWS AI & ML Scholars webpage to learn more and apply.

I’m also excited about the start of AWS Summit season, kicking off with AWS Summit Paris on April 1, followed by London on April 22. AWS Summits are free in-person events where builders and innovators can learn about Cloud and AI, think big, and make new connections. Explore the AWS Summits near you and join us in person.

Now, let’s dive into this week’s AWS news…

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

Announcing Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database creation in seconds — Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now offers express configuration, a streamlined setup with preconfigured defaults that supports creating and connecting to a database in seconds. With just two clicks, you can launch an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database. You can modify certain settings during or after creation.
Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now available with the AWS Free Tier — Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL is now available on the AWS Free Tier. If you’re new to AWS, you receive $100 in AWS credits upon sign-up and can earn an additional $100 in credits by using services like Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).
Announcing Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless — With the new Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless, you can easily build, deploy, troubleshoot, and manage serverless applications using AI coding assistants like Kiro, Claude Code, and Cursor. This plugin extends AI assistants with structured capabilities by packaging skills, sub-agents, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers into one modular unit. It automatically loads the guidance and expertise you need throughout development to build production-ready serverless applications on AWS.
Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports Kiro and Cursor IDEs as remote IDEs — You can now remotely connect from Kiro and Cursor IDEs to Amazon SageMaker Studio. This lets you use your existing Kiro and Cursor setup, including spec-driven development, conversational coding, and automated feature generation, while accessing the scalable compute resources of Amazon SageMaker Studio.
Introducing visual customization capability in AWS Management Console — You can now customize your AWS Management Console with visual settings like account color and control which regions and services you see. Hiding unused regions and services helps you focus better and work faster by reducing cognitive load and unnecessary scrolling.
Announcing Aurora DSQL connector to simplify building Ruby applications — You can now use the Aurora DSQL Connector for Ruby (pg gem) to easily build Ruby applications on Aurora DSQL. The Ruby Connector simplifies authentication and improves security by automatically generating tokens for each connection, eliminating the risks of traditional passwords while maintaining full compatibility with existing pg gem features.
AWS Lambda increases the file descriptor limit for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances — AWS Lambda increases the file descriptor limit from 1,024 to 4,096, a 4x increase, for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances (LMI). You can now run I/O intensive workloads such as high-concurrency web services and file-heavy data processing pipelines without running into file descriptor limits.
AWS Lambda now supports up to 32 GB of memory and 16 vCPUs for Lambda Managed Instances — AWS Lambda functions on Lambda Managed Instances now support up to 32 GB of memory and 16 vCPUs. You can run compute-intensive workloads like data processing, media transcoding, and scientific simulations without managing infrastructure. Plus, you can adjust the memory-to-vCPU ratio (2:1, 4:1, or 8:1) to fit your workload.
Announcing Bidirectional Streaming API for Amazon Polly — Traditional text-to-speech APIs use a request-response pattern. The new Bidirectional Streaming API for Amazon Polly is designed for conversational AI applications that generate text or audio incrementally, like large language model (LLM) responses. This lets you start synthesizing audio before the full text is available.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on our News Blog channel and the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits — As I mentioned earlier, join AWS Summits in 2026 for free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), Bengaluru (April 23–24), Singapore (May 6), Tel Aviv (May 6), and Stockholm (May 7).
AWS Community Days — Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include San Francisco (April 10) and Romania (April 23–24).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse the AWS Events and Webinars for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

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

— Prasad

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

Customize your AWS Management Console experience with visual settings including account color, region and service visibility

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 21:34:19 +0000

In August 2025, we introduced AWS User Experience Customization (UXC) capability to tailor user interfaces (UIs) to meet your specific needs and complete your tasks efficiently. With this capability, your account administrator can customize some UI component of AWS Management Console, such as assigning a color to an AWS account for easier identification.

Today, we’re announcing additional customization capability in UXC that enables selective display of relevant AWS Regions and services for your team members. By hiding unused Regions and services, you can reduce cognitive load and eliminate unnecessary clicks and scrolling, helping you focus better and work faster. With this launch, we offer the ability to customize account color, Region, and service visibility together.

Categorize account by color
You can set a color for your accounts to visually distinguish between them. To get started, sign in to the AWS Management Console and choose your account name on the navigation bar. Your account color isn’t set yet. To set the color, choose Account.

In the Account display settings, select your preferred account color and choose Update. You can see the chosen color in the navigation bar.

By changing the account color, you can clearly distinguish the account’s purpose. For example, you can use orange for development accounts, light blue for test accounts, and red for production accounts.

Customize Regions and services visibility
You can control which AWS Regions appear in the Region selector or which AWS services appear in the console navigation. In other words, you can set to show only the Regions and services that are relevant to your account.

To get started, choose the gear icon on the navigation bar and choose See all user settings. If you are in an administrator role, you can see a new Account settings tab in the unified settings. If you have not configured a setting, all Regions and services are visible.

To set visible Regions, choose Edit in the Visible Regions section. Select your visible Regions to All available Regions or Select Regions and configure your list. Choose Save changes.

After configuring visible Region setting, you will find only selected Regions in the Regions selector on the navigation bar in the console.

You can also set visible services in the same way. Search or select services from the category. I used the Popular services category to select my favorites. When you finish selection, choose Save changes.

After configuring visible services setting, you will find only selected services in the All services menu on the navigation bar.

When you search the service name in the search bar, you can only choose selected services.

The Regions and services visibility settings control only the appearance of services and Regions in the console. They don’t restrict access through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), AWS SDKs, AWS APIs, or Amazon Q Developer.

You can also manage these account customization settings programmatically with new visibleServices and visibleRegions parameters. For example, you can use AWS CloudFormation sample template:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Description: Customize AWS Console appearance for this account

Resources:
  AccountCustomization:
    Type: AWS::UXC::AccountCustomization
    Properties:
      AccountColor: red
      VisibleServices:
        - s3
        - ec2
        - lambda
      VisibleRegions:
        - us-east-1
        - us-west-2

And you can deploy your Cloudformation template.

$ aws cloudformation deploy \
  --template-file account-customization.yaml \
  --stack-name my-account-customization

To learn more, visit the AWS User Experience Customization API Reference and AWS CloudFormation template reference.

Give it a try in the AWS Management Console today and provide feedback by selecting the Feedback link at the bottom of the console, posting to the AWS re:Post forum for the AWS Management Console, or reaching out to your AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

Announcing Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database creation in seconds

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:37:11 +0000

At re:Invent 2025, Colin Lazier, vice president of databases at AWS, emphasized the importance of building at the speed of an idea—enabling rapid progress from concept to running application. Customers can already create production-ready Amazon DynamoDB tables and Amazon Aurora DSQL databases in seconds. He previewed creating an Amazon Aurora serverless database with the same speed, and customers have since requested quick access and speed to this capability.

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of a new express configuration for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, a streamlined database creation experience with preconfigured defaults designed to help you get started in seconds.

With only two clicks, you can have an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database ready to use in seconds. You have the flexibility to modify certain settings during and after database creation in the new configuration. For example, you can change the capacity range for the serverless instance at the time of create or add read replicas, modify parameter groups after the database is created. Aurora clusters with express configuration are created without an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) network and include an internet access gateway for secure connections from your favorite development tools – no VPN, or AWS Direct Connect required. Express configuration also sets up AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication for your administrator user by default, enabling passwordless database authentication from the beginning without additional configuration.

After it’s created, you have access to features available for Aurora PostgreSQL serverless, such as deploying additional read replicas for high availability and automated failover capabilities. This launch also introduces a new internet access gateway routing layer for Aurora. Your new serverless instance comes enabled by default with this feature, which allows your applications to connect securely from anywhere in the world through the internet using the PostgreSQL wire protocol from a wide range of developer tools. This gateway is distributed across multiple Availability Zones, offering the same level of high availability as your Aurora cluster.

Creating and connecting to Aurora in seconds means fundamentally rethinking how you get started. We launched multiple capabilities that work together to help you onboard and run your application with Aurora. Aurora is now available on AWS Free Tier, which you gain hands-on experience with Aurora at no upfront cost. After it’s created, you can directly query an Aurora database in AWS CloudShell or using programming languages and developer tools through a new internet accessible routing component for Aurora. With integrations such as v0 by Vercel, you can use natural language to start building your application with the features and benefits of Aurora.

Create an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database in seconds
To get started, go to the Aurora and RDS console and in the navigation pane, choose Dashboard. Then, choose Create with a rocket icon.

Review pre-configured settings in the Create with express configuration dialog box. You can modify the DB cluster identifier or the capacity range as needed. Choose Create database.

You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs with the parameter --with-express-configuration to create both a cluster and an instance within the cluster with a single API call which makes it ready for running queries in seconds.To learn more, visit Creating an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster with express configuration.

Here is a CLI command to create the cluster:

$ aws rds create-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier channy-express-db \
    --engine aurora-postgresql \
    –-with-express-configuration

Your Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database should be ready in seconds. A success banner confirms the creation, and the database status changes to Available.

After your database is ready, go to the Connectivity & security tab to access three connection options. When connecting through SDKs, APIs, or third-party tools including agents, choose Code snippets. You can choose various programming languages such as .NET, Golang, JDBC, Node.js, PHP, PSQL, Python, and TypeScript. You can paste the code from each step into your tool and run the commands.

For example, the following Python code is dynamically generated to reflect the authentication configuration:

import psycopg2
import boto3

auth_token = boto3.client('rds', region_name='ap-south-1').generate_db_auth_token(DBHostname='channy-express-db-instance-1.abcdef.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com', Port=5432, DBUsername='postgres', Region='ap-south-1')

conn = None
try:
    conn = psycopg2.connect(
        host='channy-express-db-instance-1.abcdef.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com',
        port=5432,
        database='postgres',
        user='postgres',
        password=auth_token,
        sslmode='require'
    )
    cur = conn.cursor()
    cur.execute('SELECT version();')
    print(cur.fetchone()[0])
    cur.close()
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Database error: {e}")
    raise
finally:
    if conn:
        conn.close()

Choose CloudShell for quick access to the AWS CLI which launches directly from the console. When you choose Launch CloudShell, you can see the command is pre-populated with relevant information to connect to your specific cluster. After connecting to the shell, you should see the psql login and the postgres => prompt to run SQL commands.

You can also choose Endpoints to use tools that only support username and password credentials, such as pgAdmin. When you choose Get token, you use an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication token generated by the utility in the password field. The token is generated for the master username that you set up at the time of creating the database. The token is valid for 15 minutes at a time. If the tool you’re using terminates the connection, you will need to generate the token again.

Building your application faster with Aurora databases
At re:Invent 2025, we announced enhancements to the AWS Free Tier program, offering up to $200 in AWS credits that can be used across AWS services. You’ll receive $100 in AWS credits upon sign-up and can earn an additional $100 in credits by using services such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Lambda, and Amazon Bedrock. In addition, Amazon Aurora is now available across a broad set of eligible Free Tier database services.

Developers are embracing platforms such as Vercel, where natural language is all it takes to build production-ready applications. We announced integrations with Vercel Marketplace to create and connect to an AWS database directly from Vercel in seconds and v0 by Vercel, an AI-powered tool that transforms your ideas into production-ready, full-stack web applications in minutes. It includes Aurora PostgreSQL, Aurora DSQL, and DynamoDB databases. You can also connect your existing databases created through express configuration with Vercel. To learn more, visit AWS for Vercel.

Like Vercel, we’re bringing our databases seamlessly into their experiences and are integrating directly with widely adopted frameworks, AI assistant coding tools, environments, and developer tools, all to unlock your ability to build at the speed of an idea.

We introduced Aurora PostgreSQL integration with Kiro powers, which developers can use to build Aurora PostgreSQL backed applications faster with AI agent-assisted development through Kiro. You can use Kiro power for Aurora PostgreSQL within Kiro IDE and from the Kiro powers webpage for one-click installation. To learn more about this Kiro Power, read Introducing Amazon Aurora powers for Kiro and Amazon Aurora Postgres MCP Server.

Now available
You can create an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database in seconds today in all AWS commercial Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, visit the AWS Capabilities by Region.

You pay only for capacity consumed based on Aurora Capacity Units (ACUs) billed per second from zero capacity, which automatically starts up, shuts down, and scales capacity up or down based on your application’s needs. To learn more, visit the Amazon Aurora Pricing page.

Give it a try in the Aurora and RDS console and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Aurora PostgreSQL or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS Weekly Roundup: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super on Amazon Bedrock, Nova Forge SDK, Amazon Corretto 26, and more (March 23, 2026)

Daniel Abib — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:40:41 +0000

Hello! I’m Daniel Abib, and this is my first AWS Weekly Roundup. I’m a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS, focused on the generative AI and Amazon Bedrock. With over 28 years of experience in solution architecture, software development, and cloud architecture, I help Startups & Enterprises harness the power of generative AI with Amazon Bedrock. I’ve been at AWS for more than six and a half years, working closely with customers across Latin America, and I’m also passionate about Serverless technologies.

Outside of work and endurance sports, I’m a dedicated father to Cecília (7) and Rafael (4), who keep me busier—and happier— than any distributed system ever could. I’m based in São Paulo, you can find me on LinkedIn and X (@DCABib), where I share insights about generative AI, Amazon Bedrock, AWS serverless services, and the occasional Ironman throwback.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

Amazon Redshift increases performance for new queries in dashboards and ETL workloads by up to 7x — Amazon Redshift now delivers up to 7x faster performance for new queries in dashboards and ETL workloads. Queries you run for the first time — without cached results — now execute significantly faster, reducing wait times for interactive dashboards and accelerating your ETL pipelines. This is particularly impactful for workloads with high query variability where cache hits are less frequent.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super now available on Amazon Bedrock — NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super is now available in Amazon Bedrock, expanding the lineup of foundation models you can access through the unified Bedrock API. Nemotron 3 Super is a high-performance language model optimized for tasks such as text generation, complex reasoning, summarization, and code generation. You can now invoke Nemotron 3 Super alongside other foundation models in your existing Bedrock workflows, without managing any infrastructure.
Introducing Nova Forge SDK, a seamless way to customize Nova models for enterprise AI — Nova Forge SDK provides a streamlined way to fine-tune and customize Amazon Nova models for enterprise use cases. You can adapt Nova models to your domain-specific data and deploy them directly within Amazon Bedrock, reducing the complexity of building tailored AI solutions. The SDK handles the heavy lifting of model customization, letting you focus on your business logic rather than the underlying infrastructure.
Amazon Corretto 26 is now generally available — Amazon Corretto 26, the latest long-term support (LTS) release of the no-cost, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK, is now generally available. Corretto 26 includes the latest Java language features, performance improvements, and security patches, all backed by long-term support from AWS. You can use it across development and production environments on Amazon Linux, Windows, macOS, and Docker images.
AWS Lambda now supports Availability Zone metadata — AWS Lambda now provides Availability Zone metadata for your function invocations. You can now identify which Availability Zone your Lambda function is running in, enabling better observability, more informed architectural decisions, and simplified troubleshooting for latency-sensitive and multi-AZ workloads. This is particularly useful when correlating Lambda execution with other AZ-aware services in your architecture.
Amazon CloudWatch Logs now supports log ingestion using HTTP-based protocol — Amazon CloudWatch Logs now supports ingesting logs using an HTTP-based protocol, making it simpler to send logs from applications and services that use standard HTTP endpoints. You can now route logs to CloudWatch Logs without requiring custom agents or additional SDK integrations, lowering the barrier to centralized log management across your workloads.
Amazon EKS announces 99.99% Service Level Agreement and new 8XL scaling tier for Provisioned Control Plane clusters — Amazon EKS now offers a 99.99% Service Level Agreement (SLA) for clusters running on Provisioned Control Plane, up from the 99.95% SLA offered on standard control plane. EKS is also introducing the 8XL scaling tier, the largest available Provisioned Control Plane tier, which doubles the Kubernetes API server request processing capacity of the next lower 4XL tier — ideal for large-scale workloads like AI/ML training, high-performance computing (HPC), and large-scale data processing.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

Kiro for students — Kiro is now available for students, giving the next generation of builders access to AI-powered development tools at no cost. As Swami Sivasubramanian shared on LinkedIn, “Students are the future decision-makers shaping technology” — and Kiro gives them hands-on experience building with AI from day one. If you’re a student or know someone who is, this is a great opportunity to start building with AI-assisted development.
Strands Steering Hooks achieved 100% agent accuracy — The Strands Agents team published results showing that Steering Hooks can achieve 100% agent accuracy, outperforming both prompt engineering and rigid workflow approaches for controlling agent behavior. As Swami highlighted on LinkedIn, building reliable AI agents often means rethinking how we guide model behavior — and Steering Hooks offer a compelling new path to agent reliability.
Introducing Badges on AWS Builder Center — AWS Builder Center now features badges that recognize your contributions and achievements within the builder community. You can earn badges by sharing solutions, participating in challenges, and engaging with fellow builders. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise and track your growth.
Keep Building Together: The Power of Community — A thoughtful read on the power of community-driven learning and collaboration in the AWS ecosystem. Whether you’re just getting started with AWS or you’ve been building for years, the builder community is a place to connect, share knowledge, and grow together. I highly recommend checking it out.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits — Join AWS Summits in 2026, free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), Bengaluru (April 23–24), Singapore (May 6), Tel Aviv (May 6), and Stockholm (May 7).
AWS Community Days — Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include San Francisco (April 10) and Romania (April 23–24).
AWSome Women Summit LATAM — Taking place on March 28 in Mexico City, this event celebrates and empowers women in cloud technology across Latin America. A fantastic initiative for the LATAM tech community.

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

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

20 years in the AWS Cloud – how time flies!

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:35:54 +0000

AWS has reached its 20th anniversary! With a steady pace of innovation, AWS has grown to offer over 240 comprehensive cloud services and continues to launch thousands of new features annually for millions of customers. During this time, over 4,700 posts have been published on this blog—more than double the number since Jeff Barr wrote the 10th anniversary post.

AWS changed my life
Reflecting on what I was doing 20 years ago, I met Jeff in Seoul on March 13, 2006, when he came as the keynote speaker for the Korea NGWeb conference. At that time, Amazon was one of the first pioneers to initiate an API economy, introducing ecommerce API services. After the keynote speech, he returned home that evening, and I believe he wrote the Amazon S3 launch blog post on the flight back to the United States.

That short meeting with him brought significant changes to my life. He became my role model as a blogger, and I began building API-based services in my company and opening them to third-party developers. When I was a PhD student while taking a break from work, I realized that for individual researchers like me, AWS Cloud services are powerful tools for conducting large-scale research projects. After returning to work, my company became one of the first AWS customers in Korea in 2014. Countless developers—myself included—have embraced cloud computing and actively used its capabilities to accomplish what was previously impossible.

Over the past decade, the technology landscape has transformed dramatically. Deep learning emerged as a breakthrough in AI, evolving through generative AI based on large language models (LLMs) to today’s agentic AI technology. Jeff wrote, “When looking into the future, you need to be able to distinguish between flashy distractions and genuine trends, while remaining flexible enough to pivot if yesterday’s niche becomes today’s mainstream technology.” This principle guides how AWS approaches innovation—we start by listening to what customers truly need. The real trend isn’t pursuing every emerging technology, but rather reimagining solutions that address customers’ most critical challenges.

20 years of AWS
For the first 10 years, Jeff selected his favorite AWS launches and blog posts. Amazon S3, Amazon EC2 (2006), Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (2009), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift (2012), Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon Kinesis (2013), AWS Lambda (2014), and AWS IoT (2015).

While I also hate to play favorites, I want to choose some of my favorite AWS blog posts of the past decade.

Deploying containers easily (2014) – Amazon Elastic Container Service makes it straightforward for you to run any number of containers across a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances using powerful APIs and other tools. In 2017, we launched Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service as a fully managed Kubernetes service and AWS Fargate as a serverless deployment option.
High availability database at global scale (2017) – Amazon Aurora is a modern relational database service offering performance and high availability at scale. In 2018, we launched Amazon Aurora Serverless v1, and this serverless database evolved to Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 to scale down to zero. In 2025, we also launched Amazon Aurora DSQL is the fastest serverless distributed SQL database for always available applications.
Machine learning (ML) at your fingertips (2017) – Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed end-to-end ML service that data scientists, developers, and ML experts can use to quickly build, train, and host machine learning models at scale. In 2024, we launched the next generation of Amazon SageMaker, a unified platform for data, analytics, and AI and introduced Amazon SageMaker AI to focus specifically on building, training, and deploying AI and ML models at scale.
Best price performance for cloud workloads (2018) – We launched Amazon EC2 A1 instances powered by the first generation of Arm-based AWS Graviton Processors designed to deliver the best price performance for your cloud workloads. Last year, we previewed EC2 M9g instances powered by AWS Graviton5 processors. Over 90,000 AWS customers have reaped the benefits of Graviton supporting popular AWS services such as Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon EMR, and Amazon OpenSearch Service.
Run AWS Cloud in your data center (2019) – AWS Outposts is a family of fully managed services delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. Now, AWS Outposts is available in a variety of form factors, from 1U and 2U Outposts servers to 42U Outposts racks, and multiple rack deployments. Customers such as DISH, Fanduel, Morningstar, Philips, and others use Outposts in workloads requiring low latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing, data residency, and application migration with local system interdependencies.
Best price performance for ML workloads (2019) – We launched Amazon EC2 Inf1 instances powered by the first generation of AWS Inferentia chips designed to provide fast, low-latency inferencing. In 2022, we launched Amazon EC2 Trn1 instances powered by the first generation of AWS Trainium chips optimized for high performance AI training. Last year, we launched Amazon EC2 Trn3 UltraServers powered by Trainium3 to deliver the best token economics for next-generation generative AI applications. Customers such as Anthropic, Decart, poolside, Databricks, Ricoh, Karakuri, SplashMusic, and others are realizing performance and cost benefits of Trainium-based instances and UltraServers.
Build your generative AI apps on AWS (2023) – Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers a choice of industry leading AI models along with a broad set of capabilities that you need to build generative AI applications, simplifying development with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Last year, we introduced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, an agentic platform for building, deploying, and operating effective agents securely at scale. Now, more than 100,000 customers worldwide choose Amazon Bedrock to deliver personalized experiences, automate complex workflows, and uncover actionable insights.
Your AI coding companion (2023) – We launched Amazon CodeWhisperer as the industry’s first cloud-based AI coding assistant service. The service delivered code generation from comments, open-source code reference tracking, and vulnerability scanning capabilities. In 2024, we rebranded the service to Amazon Q Developer and expanded its features to include a chat-based assistant in the console, project-based code generation, and code transformation tools. In 2025, this service evolved into Kiro, a new agentic AI development tool that brings structure to AI coding through spec-driven development, taking projects from prototype to production. Recently, Kiro previewed an autonomous agent, a frontier agent that works independently on development tasks, maintaining context and learning from every interaction.
Broaden your AI model choices (2024) – We launched Amazon Titan models further increasing cost-effective AI model choice for text and multimodal needs in Amazon Bedrock. At AWS re:Invent 2024, we announced Amazon Nova models that delivers frontier intelligence and industry leading price performance. Now Amazon Nova has a portfolio of AI offerings—including Amazon Nova models, Amazon Nova Forge, a new service to build your own frontier models; and Amazon Nova Act, a new service to build agents that automate browser-based UI workflows powered by a custom Amazon Nova 2 Lite model.

Build with AI: Your path forward
A decade ago, AWS responded to the emergence of deep learning by launching the broadest and deepest ML services, such as Amazon SageMaker, democratizing AI for a wide range of customers—from individual developers and startups to large enterprises—regardless of their technical expertise.

AI technology has advanced significantly, but building and deploying AI models and applications still remains complex for many developers and organizations. AWS offers the broadest selection of AI models through Amazon Bedrock, including leading providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI. By using our model training and inference infrastructure and responsible AI both practical and scalable, you can accelerate trusted AI innovation while maintaining control of your data and costs—all built on our global infrastructure’s operational excellence.

Reinvent your idea, keep on learning, build confidently with AI you can trust, and share your successes with us! New AWS customers receive up to $200 in credits to try AWS AI for free. If you’re a student, start building with Kiro for free using 1,000 credits per month for one year.

— Channy

Our First 2026 AWS Heroes Cohort Is Here!

Taylor Jacobsen — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:26:15 +0000

We’re thrilled to celebrate three exceptional developer community leaders as AWS Heroes. These individuals represent the heart of what makes the AWS community so vibrant. In addition to sharing technical knowledge, they build connections, forge genuine human relationships, and create pathways for others to grow. From pioneering cloud culture in mountain villages to leading cybersecurity education across continents, these Heroes demonstrate that true leadership extends beyond technical expertise to the communities we build and the lives we impact.

Maurizio Argoneto – Pignola, Italy

Community Hero Maurizio is a CTO and organizer of the AWS User Group Basilicata, recognized for his dedication to building tech ecosystems where they previously did not exist. For over a decade, he has pioneered cloud culture through a philosophy centered on genuine human connection and knowledge transfer. He founded an international tech conference in a small mountain village, creating a unique space where global experts and local talent meet, blending deep technical sessions on cloud architectures, DevOps, and web scaling with unconventional networking experiences. Beyond organizing events, Maurizio is a tireless mentor working across generations, which span from introducing children to coding to helping university students and professionals transition into cloud architecture. His impact is defined by a rare combination of technical leadership and inclusive community building that draws people from across Europe.

Ray Goh – Singapore

Artificial Intelligence Hero Ray Goh is a seasoned AWS machine learning and AI community leader based in Singapore and a long-standing contributor in various AWS community programs since 2018, from AWS ASEAN Cloud Warrior and AWS Dev/Cloud Alliance to being part of the pioneer batch of AWS Community Builders in 2020. He founded The Gen-C (a Generative AI Learning Community) in 2024, organizing regular public workshops at libraries across Singapore on topics ranging from LLM fine-tuning to AI agents on AWS. Ray has spoken at AWS re:Invent, AWS Summit ASEAN, AWS Community Day Hong Kong, and numerous user group meetups, and guest-authored for the AWS Machine Learning Blog. He spearheaded the world’s largest enterprise AWS DeepRacer program for DBS Bank in 2020, upskilling over 3,100 employees, and trained more than 1,300 ASEAN students in LLM techniques in 2025. His community work extends to skills-based CSR initiatives teaching AI and machine learning to women, children, and youths, with contributions featured on CNBC and Euromoney.

Sheyla Leacock – Panama City, Panama

Security Hero Sheyla Leacock is an IT security professional, mentor, technical author, and international speaker contributing to the global cloud and cybersecurity community. She has spoken at AWS Summit Mexico, AWS Summit LATAM in Peru, and led PeerTalk sessions at AWS re:Invent, while also leading the AWS User Group in Panama and regularly participating in AWS Community Days and regional meetups. Beyond AWS-focused events, she has delivered talks at more than 20 international conferences and publishes technical articles and educational content on AWS cloud computing and cybersecurity. She collaborates with universities as a guest lecturer, supporting the development of emerging technology and cybersecurity talent. Through community leadership, knowledge sharing, and education, she contributes to strengthening the AWS and cybersecurity ecosystem.

Learn More

Visit the AWS Heroes webpage if you’d like to learn more about the AWS Heroes program, or to connect with a Hero near you.

— Taylor

AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon S3 turns 20, Amazon Route 53 Global Resolver general availability, and more (March 16, 2026)

Esra Kayabali — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:02:17 +0000

Twenty years ago this past week, Amazon S3 launched publicly on March 14, 2006. While Amazon Simple Storage Service is often considered the foundational storage service that defined cloud infrastructure, what began as a simple object storage service has grown into something far larger in scope and scale.

As of March 2026, S3 stores more than 500 trillion objects, serves more than 200 million requests per second globally across hundreds of exabytes of data, and the price has dropped to just over 2 cents per gigabyte — an approximately 85% reduction since launch. My colleague Sébastien Stormacq wrote a detailed look at the engineering and the road ahead in Twenty years of Amazon S3 and building what’s next, and if you want to read about those earliest customers and how they shaped what AWS became, I recommend How three startups helped Amazon invent cloud computing and paved the way for AI. Twenty years is worth pausing to celebrate.

Alongside the 20th anniversary of S3, Channy Yun also wrote about a new S3 feature this week: Account regional namespaces for Amazon S3 general purpose buckets. With this feature, you can create general purpose buckets in your own account regional namespace by appending your account’s unique suffix to your requested bucket name, ensuring your desired names are always reserved exclusively for your account. You can enforce adoption across your organization using AWS IAM policies and AWS Organizations service control policies with the new s3:x-amz-bucket-namespace condition key. Read Channy’s post to learn more about account regional namespaces for Amazon S3 general purpose buckets.

This week’s featured launch is one I have a personal connection to: the general availability of Amazon Route 53 Global Resolver. I wrote about the preview of this capability back in December at re:Invent 2025, and I had a great time putting that post together, so I am happy to hear that it’s generally available now.

Amazon Route 53 Global Resolver is an internet-reachable anycast DNS resolver that provides DNS resolution for authorized clients from any location. It is now generally available across 30 AWS Regions, with support for both IPv4 and IPv6 DNS query traffic. Route 53 Global Resolver gives authorized clients in your organization anycast DNS resolution of public internet domains and private domains associated with Route 53 private hosted zones — from any location, not just from within a specific VPC or Region. It also provides DNS query filtering to block potentially malicious domains, domains that are not safe for work, and domains associated with advanced DNS threats such as DNS tunneling and Domain Generation Algorithms (DGA). Centralized query logging is included as well. With general availability, Global Resolver adds protection against Dictionary DGA threats.

Last week’s launches
Here are some of the other announcements from last week:

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime now supports stateful MCP server features — Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime now supports stateful Model Context Protocol (MCP) server features, enabling developers to build MCP servers that use elicitation, sampling, and progress notifications alongside existing support for resources, prompts, and tools. With stateful MCP sessions, each user session runs in a dedicated microVM with isolated resources, and the server maintains session context across multiple interactions using an Mcp-Session-Id header. Elicitation enables server-initiated, multi-turn conversations to gather structured input from users during tool execution. Sampling allows servers to request LLM-generated content from the client for tasks such as personalized recommendations. Progress notifications keep clients informed during long-running operations. To learn more, see the Amazon Bedrock AgentCore documentation.
Amazon WorkSpaces now supports Microsoft Windows Server 2025 — New bundles powered by Microsoft Windows Server 2025 are now available for Amazon WorkSpaces Personal and Amazon WorkSpaces Core. These bundles include security capabilities such as Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM 2.0), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot, Secured-core server, Credential Guard, Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity (HVCI), and DNS-over-HTTPS. Existing Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2022 bundles remain available. You can use the managed Windows Server 2025 bundles or create a custom bundle and image. This support is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon WorkSpaces is available. For more information, visit the Amazon WorkSpaces FAQs.
AWS Builder ID now supports Sign in with GitHub and Amazon — AWS Builder ID now supports two additional social login options: GitHub and Amazon. These options join the existing Google and Apple sign-in capabilities. With this update, developers can access their AWS Builder ID profile — and services including AWS Builder Center, AWS Training and Certification, and Kiro — using their existing GitHub or Amazon account credentials, without managing a separate set of credentials. To learn more and get started, visit the AWS Builder ID documentation.
Amazon Redshift introduces reusable templates for COPY operations — Amazon Redshift now supports templates for the COPY command, allowing you to store and reuse frequently used COPY parameters. Templates help maintain consistency across data ingestion operations, reduce the effort required to execute COPY commands, and simplify maintenance by applying template updates automatically to all future uses. Support for COPY templates is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Redshift is available, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To get started, see the documentation or read the Standardize Amazon Redshift operations using Templates blog.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on our News Blog channel the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits – Join AWS Summits in 2026, free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), and Bengaluru (April 23–24).

AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include Pune (March 21), San Francisco (April 10), and Romania (April 23-24).

AWS at NVIDIA GTC 2026 — Join us at our AWS sessions, booths, demos, and ancillary events in NVIDIA GTC 2026 on March 16 – 19, 2026 in San Jose. You can receive 20% off event passes through AWS and request a 1:1 meeting at GTC.

AWS Community GameDay Europe — Taking place on March 17, 2026, AWS Community GameDay Europe is a team-based, hands-on AWS challenge event running simultaneously across 50+ cities in Europe. Your team is dropped into a broken AWS environment — misconfigured services, failing architectures, and security gaps — and has two hours to fix as much as possible. Find your nearest city and sign up at awsgameday.eu.

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

— Esra

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

Twenty years of Amazon S3 and building what’s next

Sébastien Stormacq — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:58:39 +0000

Twenty years ago today, on March 14, 2006, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) quietly launched with a modest one-paragraph announcement on the What’s New page:

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites.

Even Jeff Barr’s blog post was only a few paragraphs, written before catching a plane to a developer event in California. No code examples. No demo. Very low fanfare. Nobody knew at the time that this launch would shape our entire industry.

The early days: Building blocks that just work
At its core, S3 introduced two straightforward primitives: PUT to store an object and GET to retrieve it later. But the real innovation was the philosophy behind it: create building blocks that handle the undifferentiated heavy lifting, which freed developers to focus on higher-level work.

From day one, S3 was guided by five fundamentals that remain unchanged today.

Security means your data is protected by default. Durability is designed for 11 nines (99.999999999%), and we operate S3 to be lossless. Availability is designed into every layer, with the assumption that failure is always present and must be handled. Performance is optimized to store virtually any amount of data without degradation. Elasticity means the system automatically grows and shrinks as you add and remove data, with no manual intervention required.

When we get these things right, the service becomes so straightforward that most of you never have to think about how complex these concepts are.

S3 today: Scale beyond imagination
Throughout 20 years, S3 has remained committed to its core fundamentals even as it’s grown to a scale that’s hard to comprehend.

When S3 first launched, it offered approximately one petabyte of total storage capacity across about 400 storage nodes in 15 racks spanning three data centers, with 15 Gbps of total bandwidth. We designed the system to store tens of billions of objects, with a maximum object size of 5 GB. The initial price was 15 cents per gigabyte.

Today, S3 stores more than 500 trillion objects and serves more than 200 million requests per second globally across hundreds of exabytes of data in 123 Availability Zones in 39 AWS Regions, for millions of customers. The maximum object size has grown from 5 GB to 50 TB, a 10,000 fold increase. If you stacked all of the tens of millions S3 hard drives on top of each other, they would reach the International Space Station and almost back.

Even as S3 has grown to support this incredible scale, the price you pay has dropped. Today, AWS charges slightly over 2 cents per gigabyte. That’s a price reduction of approximately 85% since launch in 2006. In parallel, we’ve continued to introduce ways to further optimize storage spend with storage tiers. For example, our customers have collectively saved more than $6 billion in storage costs by using Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering as compared to Amazon S3 Standard.

Over the past two decades, the S3 API has been adopted and used as a reference point across the storage industry. Multiple vendors now offer S3 compatible storage tools and systems, implementing the same API patterns and conventions. This means skills and tools developed for S3 often transfer to other storage systems, making the broader storage landscape more accessible.

Despite all of this growth and industry adoption, perhaps the most remarkable achievement is this: the code you wrote for S3 in 2006 still works today, unchanged. Your data went through 20 years of innovation and technical advances. We migrated the infrastructure through multiple generations of disks and storage systems. All the code to handle a request has been rewritten. But the data you stored 20 years ago is still available today, and we’ve maintained complete API backward compatibility. That’s our commitment to delivering a service that continually “just works.”

The engineering behind the scale
What makes S3 possible at this scale? Continuous innovation in engineering.

Much of what follows is drawn from a conversation between Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, VP of Data and Analytics at AWS, and Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer. The in-depth interview goes further into the technical details for those who want to go deeper. In the following paragraphs, I share some examples:

At the heart of S3 durability is a system of microservices that continuously inspect every single byte across the entire fleet. These auditor services examine data and automatically trigger repair systems the moment they detect signs of degradation. S3 is designed to be lossless: the 11 nines design goal reflects how the replication factor and re-replication fleet are sized, but the system is built so that objects aren’t lost.

S3 engineers use formal methods and automated reasoning in production to mathematically prove correctness. When engineers check in code to the index subsystem, automated proofs verify that consistency hasn’t regressed. This same approach proves correctness in cross-Region replication or for access policies.

Over the past 8 years, AWS has been progressively rewriting performance-critical code in the S3 request path in Rust. Blob movement and disk storage have been rewritten, and work is actively ongoing across other components. Beyond raw performance, Rust’s type system and memory safety guarantees eliminate entire classes of bugs at compile time. This is an essential property when operating at S3 scale and correctness requirements.

S3 is built on a design philosophy: “Scale is to your advantage.” Engineers design systems so that increased scale improves attributes for all users. The larger S3 gets, the more de-correlated workloads become, which improves reliability for everyone.

Looking forward
The vision for S3 extends beyond being a storage service to becoming the universal foundation for all data and AI workloads. Our vision is simple: you store any type of data one time in S3, and you work with it directly, without moving data between specialized systems. This approach reduces costs, eliminates complexity, and removes the need for multiple copies of the same data.

Here are a few standout launches from recent years:

S3 Tables – Fully managed Apache Iceberg tables with automated maintenance that optimize query efficiency and reduce storage cost over time.
S3 Vectors – Native vector storage for semantic search and RAG, supporting up to 2 billion vectors per index with sub-100ms query latency. In only 5 months (July–December 2025), you created more than 250,000 indices, ingested more than 40 billion vectors, and performed more than 1 billion queries.
S3 Metadata – Centralized metadata for instant data discovery, removing the need to recursively list large buckets for cataloging and significantly reducing time-to-insight for large data lakes.

Each of these capabilities operates at S3 cost structure. You can handle multiple data types that traditionally required expensive databases or specialized systems but are now economically feasible at scale.

From 1 petabyte to hundreds of exabytes. From 15 cents to 2 cents per gigabyte. From simple object storage to the foundation for AI and analytics. Through it all, our five fundamentals–security, durability, availability, performance, and elasticity–remain unchanged, and your code from 2006 still works today.

Here’s to the next 20 years of innovation on Amazon S3.

— seb

Introducing account regional namespaces for Amazon S3 general purpose buckets

Channy Yun (윤석찬) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:18:55 +0000

Today, we’re announcing a new feature of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) you can use to create general purpose buckets in your own account regional namespace simplifying bucket creation and management as your data storage needs grow in size and scope. You can create general purpose bucket names across multiple AWS Regions with assurance that your desired bucket names will always be available for you to use.

With this feature, you can predictably name and create general purpose buckets in your own account regional namespace by appending your account’s unique suﬃx in your requested bucket name. For example, I can create the bucket mybucket-123456789012-us-east-1-an in my account regional namespace. mybucket is the bucket name prefix that I specified, then I add my account regional suffix to the requested bucket name: -123456789012-us-east-1-an. If another account tries to create buckets using my account’s suffix, their requests will be automatically rejected.

Your security teams can use AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) policies and AWS Organizations service control policies to enforce that your employees only create buckets in their account regional namespace using the new s3:x-amz-bucket-namespace condition key, helping teams adopt the account regional namespace across your organization.

Create your S3 bucket with account regional namespace in action
To get started, choose Create bucket in the Amazon S3 console. To create your bucket in your account regional namespace, choose Account regional namespace. If you choose this option, you can create your bucket with any name that is unique to your account and region.

This configuration supports all of the same features as general purpose buckets in the global namespace. The only difference is that only your account can use bucket names with your account’s suffix. The bucket name prefix and the account regional suffix combined must be between 3 and 63 characters long.

Using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), you can create a bucket with account regional namespace by specifying the x-amz-bucket-namespace:account-regional request header and providing a compatible bucket name.

$ aws s3api create-bucket --bucket mybucket-123456789012-us-east-1-an \
   --bucket-namespace account-regional \
   --region us-east-1

You can use the AWS SDK for Python (Boto3) to create a bucket with account regional namespace using CreateBucket API request.

import boto3

class AccountRegionalBucketCreator:
    """Creates S3 buckets using account-regional namespace feature."""
    
    ACCOUNT_REGIONAL_SUFFIX = "-an"
    
    def __init__(self, s3_client, sts_client):
        self.s3_client = s3_client
        self.sts_client = sts_client
    
    def create_account_regional_bucket(self, prefix):
        """
        Creates an account-regional S3 bucket with the specified prefix.
        Resolves caller AWS account ID using the STS GetCallerIdentity API.
        Format: ---an
        """
        account_id = self.sts_client.get_caller_identity()['Account']
        region = self.s3_client.meta.region_name
        bucket_name = self._generate_account_regional_bucket_name(
            prefix, account_id, region
        )
        
        params = {
            "Bucket": bucket_name,
            "BucketNamespace": "account-regional"
        }
        if region != "us-east-1":
            params["CreateBucketConfiguration"] = {
                "LocationConstraint": region
            }
        
        return self.s3_client.create_bucket(**params)
    
    def _generate_account_regional_bucket_name(self, prefix, account_id, region):
        return f"{prefix}-{account_id}-{region}{self.ACCOUNT_REGIONAL_SUFFIX}"


if __name__ == '__main__':
    s3_client = boto3.client('s3')
    sts_client = boto3.client('sts')
    
    creator = AccountRegionalBucketCreator(s3_client, sts_client)
    response = creator.create_account_regional_bucket('test-python-sdk')
    
    print(f"Bucket created: {response}")

You can update your infrastructure as code (IaC) tools, such as AWS CloudFormation, to simplify creating buckets in your account regional namespace. AWS CloudFormation offers the pseudo parameters, AWS::AccountId and AWS::Region, making it easy to build CloudFormation templates that create account regional namespace buckets.

The following example demonstrates how you can update your existing CloudFormation templates to start creating buckets in your account regional namespace:

BucketName: !Sub "amzn-s3-demo-bucket-${AWS::AccountId}-${AWS::Region}-an"
BucketNamespace: "account-regional"

Alternatively, you can also use the BucketNamePrefix property to update your CloudFormation template. By using the BucketNamePrefix, you can provide only the customer defined portion of the bucket name and then it automatically adds the account regional namespace suffix based on the requesting AWS account and Region specified.

BucketNamePrefix: 'amzn-s3-demo-bucket'
BucketNamespace: "account-regional"

Using these options, you can build a custom CloudFormation template to easily create general purpose buckets in your account regional namespace.

Things to know
You can’t rename your existing global buckets to bucket names with account regional namespace, but you can create new general purpose buckets in your account regional namespace. Also, the account regional namespace is only supported for general purpose buckets. S3 table buckets and vector buckets already exist in an account-level namespace and S3 directory buckets exist in a zonal namespace.

To learn more, visit Namespaces for general purpose buckets in the Amazon S3 User Guide.

Now available
Creating general purpose buckets in your account regional namespace in Amazon S3 is now available in 37 AWS Regions including the AWS China and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. You can create general purpose buckets in your account regional namespace at no additional cost.

Give it a try in the Amazon S3 console today and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Amazon S3 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy