AWS Lambda increases asynchronous invocations maximum payload size from 256 KB to 1 MB, allowing customers to ingest richer, complex payloads for their event-driven workloads without the need to split, compress, or externalize data. Customers invoke their Lambda functions asynchronously using either Lambda API directly, or by receiving push-based events from various AWS services like Amazon S3, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon SNS, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Step Functions. Modern cloud applications increasingly rely on AWS Lambda’s asynchronous invocations and its integration with various AWS serverless services to build scalable, event-driven architectures. These applications often need to process rich contextual data, including large-language model prompts, telemetry signals, and complex JSON structures for machine learning outputs. With increase in maximum payload size to 1MB for asynchronous invocations, developers can streamline their architectures by including comprehensive data, from detailed user profiles to complete transaction histories, in a single event, eliminating the need for complex data chunking or external storage solutions. This feature is generally available in all https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/. Customers can start sending asynchronous invocation payloads up to 1 MB using Lambda’s invoke API. Customers are charged for 1 request per each asynchronous invocation for first 256 KB. Individual payload size beyond 256 KB is charged 1 additional request for each 64 KB of chunk up to 1 MB. To learn more, read Lambda asynchronous invocation https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/invocation-async.html and AWS Lambda https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/. 

AWS Transfer Family now enables you to change your server's identity provider (IdP) type without service interruption. This enhancement gives you more control and flexibility over authentication management in your file transfer workflows, enabling you to adapt quickly to changing business requirements. AWS Transfer Family provides fully managed file transfers over SFTP, FTP, FTPS, AS2, and web-browser based interfaces. With this launch, you can now dynamically switch between service managed authentication, Active Directory, and custom IdP configurations for SFTP, FTPS, and FTP servers. This enables you to implement zero-downtime authentication migration and meet evolving compliance requirements.  Changing IDP type is available in all https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/. To learn more, visit the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transfer/latest/userguide/configuring-servers-edit-custom-idp.html.

With this launch, Amazon https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/reachability/getting-started.html and Amazon VPC https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/network-access-analyzer/what-is-network-access-analyzer.html are now available in both AWS GovCloud (US-West) and AWS GovCloud (US-East) Regions. VPC Reachability Analyzer allows you to diagnose network reachability between a source resource and a destination resource in your virtual private clouds (VPCs) by analyzing your network configurations. For example, Reachability Analyzer can help you identify a missing route table entry in your VPC route table that could be blocking network reachability between an EC2 instance in Account A that is not able to connect to another EC2 instance in Account B in your AWS Organization. VPC Network Access Analyzer allows you to identify unintended network access to your AWS resources, helping you meet your security and compliance guidelines. For example, you can create a scope to verify that all paths from your web-applications to the internet, traverse the firewall, and detect any paths that bypass the firewall. For more information, visit documentation for https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/reachability/what-is-reachability-analyzer.html and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/network-access-analyzer/what-is-network-access-analyzer.html For pricing, refer to the Network Analysis tab on the https://aws.amazon.com/vpc/pricing/. 

Today, Amazon announced two new Amazon CloudWatch metrics that provide insight into when your application exceeds the I/O performance limits for your EC2 instance with attached EBS volumes. These two metrics, Instance EBS IOPS Exceeded Check and Instance EBS Throughput Exceeded Check, monitor if the driven IOPS or throughput is exceeding the maximum EBS IOPS or throughput that your instance can support. With these two new metrics at the instance level, you can quickly identify and respond to application performance issues stemming from exceeding the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-optimized.html. These metrics will return a value of 0 (performance not exceeded) or a 1 (performance exceeded) when your workload is exceeding the EBS-Optimized IOPS or throughput limit of the EC2 instance. With Amazon CloudWatch, you can use these new metrics to create customized dashboards and set alarms that notify you or automatically perform actions based on these metrics, such as moving to a larger instance size or a different instance type that supports higher EBS-Optimized limits. The Instance EBS IOPS Exceeded Check and Instance EBS Throughput Exceeded Check metrics are available by default at a 1-minute frequency at no additional charges, for all Nitro-based Amazon EC2 instances with EBS volumes attached. You can access these metrics via the EC2 console, CLI, or CloudWatch API in all Commercial AWS Regions, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and China Regions. To learn more about these CloudWatch metrics, please visit the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/viewing_metrics_with_cloudwatch.html#ebs-metrics-nitro.

Customers can now enable predictive scaling for their Auto Scaling groups (ASGs) in six more regions: Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Israel (Tel Aviv), Canada West (Calgary), Europe (Spain), and Europe (Zurich). Predictive Scaling can proactively scale out your ASGs to be ready for upcoming demand. This allows you to avoid the need to over-provision capacity, resulting in lower EC2 cost, while ensuring your application’s responsiveness. To see the list of all supported AWS public regions and AWS GovCloud (US) regions, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/predictive-scaling-policy-overview.html#predictive-scaling-regions. Predictive Scaling is appropriate for applications that experience recurring patterns of steep demand changes, such as early morning spikes when business resumes. It learns from the past patterns and launches instances in advance of predicted demand, giving instances time to warm up. Predictive scaling enhances existing Auto Scaling policies, such as Target Tracking or Simple Scaling, so that your applications scale based on both real-time metrics and historic patterns. You can preview how Predictive Scaling works with your ASG by using the “Forecast Only” mode. Predictive Scaling is available as a scaling policy type through AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), EC2 Auto Scaling Management Console, AWS CloudFormation and AWS SDKs. To learn more, visit the Predictive Scaling page in the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/predictive-scaling-policy-overview.html#predictive-scaling-regions.

Data engineers and data analysts using Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio can now connect to and run queries with pre-existing Amazon Athena workgroups. This feature enables data teams to run SQL queries in SageMaker Unified Studio with the default settings and properties from existing Athena workgroups. Since Athena workgroups are used to manage query access and control costs, data engineers and data analysts can save time by reusing Athena workgroups as their SQL analytics compute while maintaining data usage limits and tracking query usage by team or project. When choosing a compute for SQL analytics within SageMaker Unified Studio, customers can create a new Athena compute connection or choose to connect to an existing Athena workgroup. To get started, navigate to SageMaker Unified Studio, select “Add compute” and choose “Connect to existing compute resources”. Then create a connection to your pre-existing Athena workgroups and save. This new compute is now available within the SageMaker Unified Studio query editor to run SQL queries. Connecting to Athena workgroups within SageMaker Unified Studio is available in all https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker-unified-studio/latest/adminguide/supported-regions.html. To learn more, refer to the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker-unified-studio/latest/userguide/adding-a-existing-athena-connection.html and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/creating-workgroups.html.

Amazon Aurora DSQL now supports resource-based policies, enabling you to simplify access control for your Aurora DSQL resources. With resource-based policies, you can specify Identity and Access Management (IAM) principals and the specific IAM actions they can perform against your Aurora DSQL resources. Resource-based policies also enable you to implement Block Public Access (BPA), which helps to further restrict access to your Aurora DSQL public or VPC endpoints. Aurora DSQL support for resource-based policies is available in the following https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Paris), and Europe (Frankfurt). To get started, visit the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/resource-based-policies.html.

Amazon Connect now provides granular permissions to access conversation recordings and transcripts in the UI, giving administrators greater flexibility and security control. Contact center administrators can now separately configure access to recordings and transcripts, allowing users to listen to calls while preventing unauthorized copying of transcripts. The system also provides flexible download controls, enabling users to download redacted recordings while restricting downloads of unredacted versions. Administrators can also create sophisticated permission scenarios, providing access to redacted recordings of sensitive conversations while granting unredacted recording access for other conversations. This feature is available in all regions where https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/regions.html#amazonconnect_region is offered. To learn more, please visit our https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/security-profile-list.htmland our https://aws.amazon.com/connect/contact-lens/. 

Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift is now supported in the Asia Pacific (Taipei) region. This expansion enables customers to run high-performance analytics on their DynamoDB data in Amazon Redshift with no impact on production workloads running on DynamoDB.  Zero-ETL integrations help you derive holistic insights across many applications, break data silos in your organization, and gain significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. Now you can run enhanced analysis on your DynamoDB data with the rich capabilities of Amazon Redshift, such as high performance SQL, built-in ML and Spark integrations, materialized views with automatic and incremental refresh, and data sharing. Additionally, you can use history mode to easily run advanced analytics on historical data, build lookback reports, and build Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD 2) tables on your historical data from DynamoDB, out-of-the-box in Amazon Redshift, without writing any code. The Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei), in addition to previously supported regions. For a complete list of supported regions, please refer to the AWS Region Table where Amazon Redshift is available. To learn more, visit the getting started guides for https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/RedshiftforDynamoDB-zero-etl.html and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/zero-etl-using.html. For more information on using history mode, we encourage you to visit our recent blog post https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/amazon-redshift-announces-history-mode-for-zero-etl-integrations-to-simplify-historical-data-tracking-and-analysis/.

Amazon Quick Sight, a capability of Amazon Quick Suite, now offers a visual data preparation experience that helps business users perform advanced data transformations without writing complex code. Users can now clean, transform, and combine data in multi-step workflows—appending tables, aggregating data, executing flexible joins, and other advanced operations that previously required custom programming or SQL commands. Users can easily track data transformations step-by-step, enhancing traceability and shareability. With the ability to utilize datasets as a source expanded from 3 to 10 levels, teams can build reusable transformation logic that cascades across departments. For instance, centralized data analysts can now prepare foundational data sets that can then be further customized by regional business users, applying territory-specific calculations and business logic with simple clicks. The enhanced experience now also supports 20X larger cross-source joins, moving from a previous capacity of 1GB to 20GB today. This feature is available to Quick Sight Author and Author Pro customers in the following regions: US East (N.Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), South America (Sao Paulo), Europe (Frankfurt, Milan, Paris, Spain, Stockholm, Ireland, London, Zurich), Africa (Cape Town), Middle East (UAE), Israel (Tel Aviv), Asia Pacific (Jakarta, Mumbai, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney), AWS GovCloud (US-West, US- East) and to Quick Suite Enterprise subscribers in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Europe (Ireland). For more details, read our documentation https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksuite/latest/userguide/data-prep-experience-new.html.

AWS Outposts 2U server is now supported in the AWS GovCloud (US-East) and AWS GovCloud (US-West) Regions. Outposts 2U server is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to on-premises or edge locations with limited space or smaller capacity requirements for a truly consistent hybrid experience. It is delivered in an industry-standard 2U form factor and provides up to 128 vCPUs of compute. It is ideal for applications that need to run on-premises to meet low latency and stringent compliance requirements. You can also use Outposts 2U server to manage your local data processing needs. With the availability of Outposts 2U server in the GovCloud (US-East) and GovCloud (US-West) Regions, you can now run Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), and AWS IoT Greengrass locally on Outposts 2U servers, and connect to a broader range of AWS services available in the parent AWS GovCloud (US) Region. For AWS GovCloud (US) Regions customers, this means you can run sensitive and controlled unclassified information (CUI) data on-premises at your facilities and connect to the parent AWS GovCloud (US) Region for management and operations. To learn more about Outposts 2U server, visit the https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/ and read the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/outposts/latest/server-userguide/what-is-outposts.html.

Amazon Connect outbound campaigns now offers a preview dialing mode that gives agents more context about a customer before placing a call. Agents can see key customer information—such as name, account balance, and prior interactions—and choose the right moment to call. Campaign managers can tailor preview settings and monitor performance through new dashboards that bring visibility to agent behavior, campaign outcomes, and customer engagement trends. Without proper context, agents struggle to personalize interactions, leading to low customer engagement and poor experiences. Additionally, businesses can face steep regulatory penalties under laws such as the U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) or the UK Office of Communications (OFCOM) for delays in customer-agent connection. With preview dialing, campaign managers can define review time limits and optionally enable contact removal from campaigns. During preview, agents see a countdown timer alongside customer data and can initiate calls at any moment. Analytics reveal performance patterns—such as average preview time or discard volume—giving managers data to optimize strategy and coach teams effectively. By reserving an agent prior to placing the call, companies can support compliance with regulations while bringing precision to outbound calling, improving both customer connection and operational control. With Amazon Connect outbound campaigns, companies pay-as-they-go for campaign processing and channel usage. Preview dialing is available in AWS regions, including US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (London). To learn more about configuring preview dialing, visit our https://aws.amazon.com/connect/outbound/.

Starting today, Amazon Aurora DSQL is now available in Europe (Frankfurt). Aurora DSQL is the fastest serverless, distributed SQL database with active-active high availability and multi-Region strong consistency. Aurora DSQL enables you to build always available applications with virtually unlimited scalability, the highest availability, and zero infrastructure management. It is designed to make scaling and resilience effortless for your applications and offers the fastest distributed SQL reads and writes. Aurora DSQL is now available in the following https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Paris), and Europe (Frankfurt). Get started with Aurora DSQL for free with the https://aws.amazon.com/free/?all-free-tier.sort-by=item.additionalFields.SortRank&all-free-tier.sort-order=asc&awsf.Free%20Tier%20Types=*all&awsf.Free%20Tier%20Categories=categories%23databases. To learn more, visit the Aurora DSQL https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/dsql/and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aurora-dsql/latest/userguide/what-is-aurora-dsql.html.

AWS is announcing the general availability of Amazon EC2 Storage Optimized I8g instances in Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions. I8g instances offer the best performance in Amazon EC2 for storage-intensive workloads. I8g instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors that deliver up to 60% better compute performance compared to previous generation I4g instances. I8g instances use the latest third generation AWS Nitro SSDs, local NVMe storage that deliver up to 65% better real-time storage performance per TB while offering up to 50% lower storage I/O latency and up to 60% lower storage I/O latency variability. These instances are built on the https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/nitro/, which offloads CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software enhancing the performance and security for your workloads. Amazon EC2 I8g instances are designed for I/O intensive workloads that require rapid data access and real-time latency from storage. These instances excel at handling transactional, real-time, distributed databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Hbase and NoSQL solutions like Aerospike, MongoDB, ClickHouse, and Apache Druid. They're also optimized for real-time analytics platforms such as Apache Spark, data lakehouse and AI LLM pre-processing for training. I8g instances are available in 10 different sizes with up to 48xlarge including one metal size, 1.5 TiB of memory, and 45 TB local instance storage. They deliver up to 100 Gbps of network performance bandwidth, and 60 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). To learn more, visit https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/i8g/.

Amazon Connect now includes the conversation history in agent replies and introduces threaded views of email exchanges, making it easier for both agents and customers to maintain context and continuity across interactions. This enhancement provides a more natural and familiar email experience for both agents and customers. Amazon Connect Email is available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (London) https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/. To learn more and get started, please refer to the help https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/setup-email-channel.html, https://aws.amazon.com/connect/pricing/, or visit the https://aws.amazon.com/connect/ website.

The Nova Act extension is a new IDE-integrated tool that enables developers to create browser automation agents using natural language through the Nova Act model, offering features like Builder Mode, chat capabilities, and predefined templates while streamlining the development process without leaving their preferred development environment.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is excited to announce the launch of our second Secret Region - AWS Secret-West. With this launch, AWS now offers two regions capable of operating mission-critical workloads at the Secret U.S. security classification level. AWS Secret-West places cloud resources in closer proximity to users and mission in the western U.S., delivering enhanced performance for latency-sensitive workloads and improving operational efficiency. Additionally, the region provides customers with multi-region resiliency capabilities and geographic separation to best meet their U.S. Government mission requirements. Architected for Security and Compliance Security is the highest priority at AWS. With the AWS Secret-West Region, customers benefit from data centers and network architecture designed, built, accredited, and operated for security compliance with Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) requirements. The region features multiple Availability Zones, providing the high availability, fault tolerance, and resilience that mission-critical workloads require. Mission Workload Support The AWS Secret-West Region allows customers to: • Build and run mission-critical applications with enhanced geographic distribution • Process and analyze sensitive data across multiple regions • Deploy robust disaster recovery strategies • Leverage comprehensive compute and storage solutions located in the western U.S. • Utilize services authorized at ICD 503 and Department of Defense (DoD) Security Requirements Guide (SRG) Impact Level (IL6) supporting Intelligence Community and Department of Defense authority to operate mission needs. To learn more about the AWS Secret-West Region and how to get started, https://pages.awscloud.com/AWSSecretCloudContactUs_01.LandingPage.html

Today, AWS announces RTB Fabric, a fully managed service that helps you connect with your AdTech partners such as Amazon Ads, GumGum, Kargo, MobileFuse, Sovrn, TripleLift, Viant, Yieldmo, and more in three steps while delivering single-digit millisecond latency through a private, high-performance network environment. RTB Fabric reduces standard cloud networking costs by up to 80% and does not require upfront commitments. The service includes modules, a capability that helps you bring your own and partner applications securely into the compute environment for real-time bidding. Modules support containerized applications and foundation models (FMs) that can enhance transaction efficiency and bidding effectiveness. Today, AWS RTB Fabric launches with three built-in modules to help you optimize traffic, improve bid efficiency, and increase bid response rates—all running inline for consistent low-latency execution. AWS RTB Fabric helps you to optimize auction execution, maximize supply monetization, and increase publisher revenue. You can connect with AdTech companies faster to reach target audiences, increase campaign scale, and improve performance for higher return on ad spend. AWS RTB Fabric is generally available in the following https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (Ireland).. To learn more, read the https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-rtb-fabric-for-real-time-advertising-technology-workloads, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rtb-fabric/latest/userguide/what-is-rtb-fabric.html, or visit the https://aws.amazon.com/rtb-fabric/ product page.

AWS RTB Fabric is a fully managed service designed for real-time bidding advertising workloads that enables AdTech companies to connect with their supply and demand partners through a dedicated, high-performance network environment, delivering single-digit millisecond performance and up to 80% lower networking costs compared to standard cloud connections while eliminating the need for colocation infrastructure or upfront commitments.

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C7i-flex instances that deliver up to 19% better price performance compared to C6i instances, are available in the Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. C7i-flex instances expand the EC2 Flex instances portfolio to provide the easiest way for you to get price performance benefits for a majority of compute intensive workloads. The new instances are powered by the 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable custom processors (Sapphire Rapids) that are available only on AWS, and offer 5% lower prices compared to C7i. C7i-flex instances offer the most common sizes, from large to 16xlarge, and are a great first choice for applications that don't fully utilize all compute resources. With C7i-flex instances, you can seamlessly run web and application servers, databases, caches, Apache Kafka, and Elasticsearch, and more. For compute-intensive workloads that need larger instance sizes (up to 192 vCPUs and 384 GiB memory) or continuous high CPU usage, you can leverage C7i instances. To learn more, visit https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/c7i/. To get started, see the https://console.aws.amazon.com/.

Amazon S3 Metadata is now available in three additional AWS Regions: Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). Amazon S3 Metadata is the easiest and fastest way to help you instantly discover and understand your S3 data with automated, easily-queried metadata that updates in near real-time. This helps you to curate, identify, and use your S3 data for business analytics, real-time inference applications, and more. S3 Metadata supports object metadata, which includes system-defined details like size and source of the object, and custom metadata, which allows you to use tags to annotate your objects with information like product SKU, transaction ID, or content rating. S3 Metadata automatically populates metadata for both new and existing objects, providing you with a comprehensive, queryable view of your data. With this expansion, S3 Metadata is now generally available in six https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/metadata-tables-restrictions.html#metadata-tables-regions. For pricing details, visit the https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/. To learn more, visit the https://aws.amazon.com/s3/features/metadata/, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/metadata-tables-overview.html, and https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/analyzing-amazon-s3-metadata-with-amazon-athena-and-amazon-quicksight/.https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/analyzing-amazon-s3-metadata-with-amazon-athena-and-amazon-quicksight/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch_Synthetics_Canaries.html introduces multi-check blueprints, enabling customers to create comprehensive synthetic tests using simple JSON configuration files. This new feature addresses the challenge many customers face when developing custom scripts for basic endpoint monitoring, which often lack the depth needed for thorough synthetic testing across various check types like HTTP endpoints with different authentication methods, DNS record validation, SSL certificate monitoring, and TCP port checks. With multi-check blueprints, customers can now bundle up to 10 different monitoring steps, one step per endpoint, in a single canary, making API monitoring more cost-effective and easier to implement. The solution provides built-in support for complex assertions on response codes, latency, headers, and body content, along with seamless integration with AWS Secrets Manager for secure credential handling. Customers benefit from detailed step-by-step results and debugging capabilities through the existing CloudWatch Synthetics console, significantly simplifying the process of implementing comprehensive API monitoring compared to writing individual custom canaries for each check. This feature streamlines monitoring workflows, reduces costs, and enhances the overall efficiency of synthetic monitoring setups. Multi-check blueprints are available in all commercial AWS regions where Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics is offered. For pricing details, see https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/. To learn more about multi-check blueprints and how to get started, see the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch_Synthetics_Canaries_Blueprints.html.

Amazon MQ is now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region with three Availability Zones and API name ap-southeast-6. With this launch, Amazon MQ is now available in a total of 38 regions. Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for open-source Apache ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ that makes it easier to set up and operate message brokers on AWS. Amazon MQ reduces your operational responsibilities by managing the provisioning, setup, and maintenance of message brokers for you. Because Amazon MQ connects to your current applications with industry-standard APIs and protocols, you can more easily migrate to AWS without having to rewrite code. For more information, please visit the https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-mq/, and see the https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/ for complete regional availability.

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/ now allows maintaining Change Data Capture (CDC) settings and metadata when restoring native database backups. CDC is a Microsoft SQL Server feature that customers can use to record insert, update, and delete operations occurring in a database table, and make these changes accessible to applications. When a database is restored from a backup, CDC configurations and data are not preserved by default, which can result in gaps in data capture. With this new feature, customers can preserve their database CDC settings when restoring a database backup to a new instance, or a different database name. To retain CDC configurations, customers can specify the KEEP_CDC option when restoring a database backup. This option ensures that the CDC metadata and any captured change data are kept intact. Refer to the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Appendix.SQLServer.Options.BackupRestore.html to learn more about KEEP_CDC. This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon RDS for SQL Server is available.

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/ now supports encrypting native backups in Amazon S3 using server-side encryption with AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS). When customers create database backup files (.bak files) in their Amazon S3 buckets, the backup files are automatically encrypted using server-side encryption with Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3). Now, customers have the option to additionally encrypt their native backup files in Amazon S3 using their own AWS KMS key for additional protection. To use SSE-KMS encryption for native backups, customers must update their KMS key policies to provide access to the RDS backup service, and specify the parameter @enable_bucket_default_encryption in their native backup stored procedure. For detailed instructions on how to use SSE-KMS with native backups, please refer to the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/SQLServer.Procedural.Importing.html. This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon RDS for SQL Server is available.