Today, AWS announces the general availability of the new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C8gn instances, powered by the latest-generation AWS Graviton4 processors. The new instances provide up to 30% better compute performance than Graviton3-based Amazon EC2 C7gn instances. Amazon EC2 C8gn instances feature the latest 6th generation AWS Nitro Cards, and offer up to 600 Gbps network bandwidth, the highest network bandwidth among network optimized EC2 instances.

Take advantage of the enhanced networking capabilities of C8gn to scale performance and throughput, while optimizing the cost of running network-intensive workloads such as network virtual appliances, data analytics, CPU-based artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) inference.

For increased scalability, C8gn instances offer instance sizes up to 48xlarge, up to 384 GiB of memory, and up to 60 Gbps of bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). C8gn instances support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) networking on the 16xlarge, 24xlarge, 48xlarge, metal-24xl, and metal-48xl sizes, which enables lower latency and improved cluster performance for workloads deployed on tightly coupled clusters.

C8gn instances are available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon). The metal instances are only available in US East (N. Virginia).

To learn more, see Amazon C8gn Instances. To begin your Graviton journey, visit the Level up your compute with AWS Graviton page. To get started, see AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and AWS SDKs.

 

​Today, AWS announces the general availability of the new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C8gn instances, powered by the latest-generation AWS Graviton4 processors. The new instances provide up to 30% better compute performance than Graviton3-based Amazon EC2 C7gn instances. Amazon EC2 C8gn instances feature the latest 6th generation AWS Nitro Cards, and offer up to 600 Gbps network bandwidth, the highest network bandwidth among network optimized EC2 instances. Take advantage of the enhanced networking capabilities of C8gn to scale performance and throughput, while optimizing the cost of running network-intensive workloads such as network virtual appliances, data analytics, CPU-based artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) inference. For increased scalability, C8gn instances offer instance sizes up to 48xlarge, up to 384 GiB of memory, and up to 60 Gbps of bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). C8gn instances support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) networking on the 16xlarge, 24xlarge, 48xlarge, metal-24xl, and metal-48xl sizes, which enables lower latency and improved cluster performance for workloads deployed on tightly coupled clusters. C8gn instances are available in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon). The metal instances are only available in US East (N. Virginia). To learn more, see Amazon C8gn Instances. To begin your Graviton journey, visit the Level up your compute with AWS Graviton page. To get started, see AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and AWS SDKs.  

Today, AWS announced Ubuntu support for Finch, an open source command line tool that allows developers to build, run, and publish Linux containers. Finch simplifies container development by bundling a minimal native client with a curated selection of open-source components.

With the addition of Ubuntu support, Finch now provides a consistent and streamlined container development experience across more Linux distributions, addressing a key pain point for developers who work across multiple environments. Previously, Ubuntu users needed to build Finch from source and handle dependency management, which required additional setup time and coordination across development teams. Now, they can easily install Finch using Ubuntu’s APT package manager. This expansion allows teams to standardize their container workflows and tooling, improving productivity and collaboration across different Linux flavors.

Finch’s Ubuntu support is available in the deb file format for Ubuntu LTS versions. Detailed installation instructions and troubleshooting guides are now available on the project’s website and GitHub repository, ensuring a smoother setup process for users across different Linux distributions. To learn more about using Finch on Linux, read the AWS News Blog.

 

​Today, AWS announced Ubuntu support for Finch, an open source command line tool that allows developers to build, run, and publish Linux containers. Finch simplifies container development by bundling a minimal native client with a curated selection of open-source components. With the addition of Ubuntu support, Finch now provides a consistent and streamlined container development experience across more Linux distributions, addressing a key pain point for developers who work across multiple environments. Previously, Ubuntu users needed to build Finch from source and handle dependency management, which required additional setup time and coordination across development teams. Now, they can easily install Finch using Ubuntu’s APT package manager. This expansion allows teams to standardize their container workflows and tooling, improving productivity and collaboration across different Linux flavors. Finch’s Ubuntu support is available in the deb file format for Ubuntu LTS versions. Detailed installation instructions and troubleshooting guides are now available on the project’s website and GitHub repository, ensuring a smoother setup process for users across different Linux distributions. To learn more about using Finch on Linux, read the AWS News Blog.  

Today, AWS Config rules adds classification information from AWS Control Tower Control Catalog to make it easier for you to identify how Config rules map to different compliance frameworks such as CIS-v8.0, FedRAMP-r4, and NIST-CSF-v1.1. AWS Config rules help you automatically evaluate your AWS resource configurations for desired settings, enabling you to assess, audit, and evaluate configurations of your AWS resources. Control Catalog is a feature of AWS Control Tower that enables you to search AWS managed controls and their associated compliance frameworks.

Control Catalog has classifications including Domain (such as «Data Protection»), Objective (such as «Data Encryption»), and common control (such as «Encrypt data at rest») to help you better understand the purpose of a control. Today’s launch maps AWS Config rules to the specific compliance frameworks available in AWS Control Tower Control Catalog (CIS-v8.0, FedRAMP-r4, ISO-IEC-27001:2013-Annex-A, NIST-CSF-v1.1, NIST-SP-800-171-r2, PCI-DSS-v4.0, SSAE-18-SOC-2-Oct-2023), adding classification information (Domain, Objective, common control) to each AWS Config rule.

If you’re using AWS Config, you’ll now see the same classification information in the AWS Config Console and in the AWS Control Tower Control Catalog, ensuring a unified experience across your AWS environment. This alignment between AWS Control Tower and AWS Config allows for seamless integration and more efficient management of your compliance and security posture.

AWS Config rules with classifications from AWS Control Tower Control Catalog are available in all AWS Commercial regions where AWS Config and AWS Control Tower are available.

To learn more about AWS Config rules and compliance frameworks, visit the AWS Config documentation.

 

​Today, AWS Config rules adds classification information from AWS Control Tower Control Catalog to make it easier for you to identify how Config rules map to different compliance frameworks such as CIS-v8.0, FedRAMP-r4, and NIST-CSF-v1.1. AWS Config rules help you automatically evaluate your AWS resource configurations for desired settings, enabling you to assess, audit, and evaluate configurations of your AWS resources. Control Catalog is a feature of AWS Control Tower that enables you to search AWS managed controls and their associated compliance frameworks. Control Catalog has classifications including Domain (such as «Data Protection»), Objective (such as «Data Encryption»), and common control (such as «Encrypt data at rest») to help you better understand the purpose of a control. Today’s launch maps AWS Config rules to the specific compliance frameworks available in AWS Control Tower Control Catalog (CIS-v8.0, FedRAMP-r4, ISO-IEC-27001:2013-Annex-A, NIST-CSF-v1.1, NIST-SP-800-171-r2, PCI-DSS-v4.0, SSAE-18-SOC-2-Oct-2023), adding classification information (Domain, Objective, common control) to each AWS Config rule. If you’re using AWS Config, you’ll now see the same classification information in the AWS Config Console and in the AWS Control Tower Control Catalog, ensuring a unified experience across your AWS environment. This alignment between AWS Control Tower and AWS Config allows for seamless integration and more efficient management of your compliance and security posture. AWS Config rules with classifications from AWS Control Tower Control Catalog are available in all AWS Commercial regions where AWS Config and AWS Control Tower are available. To learn more about AWS Config rules and compliance frameworks, visit the AWS Config documentation.  

You can now use Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD volumes (gp3) volumes with the second-generation AWS Outposts racks for your workloads that require local data processing and data residency. The latest generation of gp3 enables you to provision performance independently of storage capacity, delivering a baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s at any volume size. With gp3 volumes, you can scale up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s, delivering 4x the maximum throughput of the previously supported gp2 volumes.

EBS gp3 volumes on second-generation AWS Outposts are ideal for a wide variety of performance-intensive applications, including MySQL, Cassandra, virtual desktops, and Hadoop analytics clusters. AWS Outposts racks offer the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any on-premises data center or colocation space for a truly consistent hybrid experience. Second-generation AWS Outposts racks support the latest generation of x86-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, starting with C7i, M7i, and R7i instances. These instances deliver twice the vCPU, memory, and network bandwidth, as well as up to 40% better performance compared to C5, M5, and R5 instances on first-generation AWS Outposts racks.

You can manage gp3 volumes using the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or the AWS SDKs in all Regions and countries/territories where second-generation AWS Outposts racks are supported. For more information on gp3 volumes, see the product overview page. For a current list of AWS Regions and countries/territories where second-generation AWS Outposts racks are supported, check out the AWS Outposts racks FAQs page.
 

 

​You can now use Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD volumes (gp3) volumes with the second-generation AWS Outposts racks for your workloads that require local data processing and data residency. The latest generation of gp3 enables you to provision performance independently of storage capacity, delivering a baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s at any volume size. With gp3 volumes, you can scale up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s, delivering 4x the maximum throughput of the previously supported gp2 volumes. EBS gp3 volumes on second-generation AWS Outposts are ideal for a wide variety of performance-intensive applications, including MySQL, Cassandra, virtual desktops, and Hadoop analytics clusters. AWS Outposts racks offer the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any on-premises data center or colocation space for a truly consistent hybrid experience. Second-generation AWS Outposts racks support the latest generation of x86-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, starting with C7i, M7i, and R7i instances. These instances deliver twice the vCPU, memory, and network bandwidth, as well as up to 40% better performance compared to C5, M5, and R5 instances on first-generation AWS Outposts racks. You can manage gp3 volumes using the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or the AWS SDKs in all Regions and countries/territories where second-generation AWS Outposts racks are supported. For more information on gp3 volumes, see the product overview page. For a current list of AWS Regions and countries/territories where second-generation AWS Outposts racks are supported, check out the AWS Outposts racks FAQs page.    

Amazon Elastic Container Services (Amazon ECS) now makes it easier to troubleshoot unhealthy tasks by adding the Task ID in service action events generated due to health failures.

Amazon ECS is designed to help easily launch and scale your applications. When your Amazon ECS task fails Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) health checks, Amazon ECS produces an unhealthy service action event. With today’s launch, the Task ID is also included as part of the generated event, so you can quickly pinpoint the Task in question for faster troubleshooting.

The new experience is now automatically enabled in all AWS Regions. See more details regarding unhealthy Service Events in the Amazon ECS documentation and how to set up Amazon EventBridge rules to capture Amazon ECS service action events.
 

 

​Amazon Elastic Container Services (Amazon ECS) now makes it easier to troubleshoot unhealthy tasks by adding the Task ID in service action events generated due to health failures. Amazon ECS is designed to help easily launch and scale your applications. When your Amazon ECS task fails Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) health checks, Amazon ECS produces an unhealthy service action event. With today’s launch, the Task ID is also included as part of the generated event, so you can quickly pinpoint the Task in question for faster troubleshooting. The new experience is now automatically enabled in all AWS Regions. See more details regarding unhealthy Service Events in the Amazon ECS documentation and how to set up Amazon EventBridge rules to capture Amazon ECS service action events.    

We are excited to announce that Amazon Athena is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei).

Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that makes it simple to analyze petabytes of data using SQL, without requiring infrastructure setup or management. Athena is built on open-source Trino and Presto query engines, providing powerful and flexible interactive query capabilities, and supports popular data formats such as Apache Parquet and Apache Iceberg.

For more information about the AWS Regions where Athena is available, see the AWS Region table. To learn more, see Amazon Athena.
 

 

​We are excited to announce that Amazon Athena is now available in Asia Pacific (Taipei). Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that makes it simple to analyze petabytes of data using SQL, without requiring infrastructure setup or management. Athena is built on open-source Trino and Presto query engines, providing powerful and flexible interactive query capabilities, and supports popular data formats such as Apache Parquet and Apache Iceberg. For more information about the AWS Regions where Athena is available, see the AWS Region table. To learn more, see Amazon Athena.    

Amazon Textract is a managed machine learning service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, and data from any document or image. We regularly improve the underlying machine learning models based on customer feedback to provide even better accuracy. Today, we are pleased to announce feature and accuracy updates to the text detection model used in Textract DetectDocumentText and AnalyzeDocument APIs.

This update adds support for superscripts, subscripts, and rotated text in documents. The update also includes accuracy improvements for text detection in box forms, extraction of visually similar character sets (e.g., ‘0’ vs. ‘O’), and lower-resolution documents such as faxes.

This update is now available in US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Spain), and AWS GovCloud (US-East, US-West) Regions.

To get started, log on to the Amazon Textract console. To learn more about Textract capabilities, please visit the Amazon Textract website, developer guide, or resources page.
 

 

​Amazon Textract is a managed machine learning service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, and data from any document or image. We regularly improve the underlying machine learning models based on customer feedback to provide even better accuracy. Today, we are pleased to announce feature and accuracy updates to the text detection model used in Textract DetectDocumentText and AnalyzeDocument APIs. This update adds support for superscripts, subscripts, and rotated text in documents. The update also includes accuracy improvements for text detection in box forms, extraction of visually similar character sets (e.g., ‘0’ vs. ‘O’), and lower-resolution documents such as faxes. This update is now available in US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Spain), and AWS GovCloud (US-East, US-West) Regions. To get started, log on to the Amazon Textract console. To learn more about Textract capabilities, please visit the Amazon Textract website, developer guide, or resources page.    

Amazon Connect can now integrate agent activities from third-party applications as Connect Tasks, which can be evaluated alongside work completed in Connect, providing managers with a unified application for quality management. You can programmatically ingest activities from third-party applications (such as application processing, social media posts, etc.) as completed Tasks within Connect, capturing details relevant for performance evaluation as Task attributes. Managers can then evaluate these external activities, alongside native Connect interactions to get a unified view of agent performance within Connect dashboards.

This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations are already available. To learn more, please visit our documentation and our webpage. For information about Contact Lens pricing, please visit our pricing page.
 

 

​Amazon Connect can now integrate agent activities from third-party applications as Connect Tasks, which can be evaluated alongside work completed in Connect, providing managers with a unified application for quality management. You can programmatically ingest activities from third-party applications (such as application processing, social media posts, etc.) as completed Tasks within Connect, capturing details relevant for performance evaluation as Task attributes. Managers can then evaluate these external activities, alongside native Connect interactions to get a unified view of agent performance within Connect dashboards. This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations are already available. To learn more, please visit our documentation and our webpage. For information about Contact Lens pricing, please visit our pricing page.    

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is now available in the Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), Middle East (UAE), and Europe (Zurich) Regions. Customers can now use these new Regions to leverage Amazon SES to send emails and, if needed, to help manage data sovereignty requirements.

Amazon SES is a scalable, cost-effective, and flexible cloud-based email service that allows digital marketers and application developers to send marketing, notification, and transactional emails from within any application. To learn more about Amazon SES, visit this page.

With this launch, Amazon SES is available in 27 AWS Regions globally: US East (Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), AWS GovCloud (US-West, US-East), Asia Pacific (Osaka, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Jakarta), Canada (Central), Europe (Ireland, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, Zurich), Israel (Tel Aviv), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), South America (São Paulo), and Africa (Cape Town).

For a complete list of all of the regional endpoints for Amazon SES, see AWS Service Endpoints in the AWS General Reference.

 

​Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is now available in the Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), Middle East (UAE), and Europe (Zurich) Regions. Customers can now use these new Regions to leverage Amazon SES to send emails and, if needed, to help manage data sovereignty requirements. Amazon SES is a scalable, cost-effective, and flexible cloud-based email service that allows digital marketers and application developers to send marketing, notification, and transactional emails from within any application. To learn more about Amazon SES, visit this page. With this launch, Amazon SES is available in 27 AWS Regions globally: US East (Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), AWS GovCloud (US-West, US-East), Asia Pacific (Osaka, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Jakarta), Canada (Central), Europe (Ireland, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, Zurich), Israel (Tel Aviv), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), South America (São Paulo), and Africa (Cape Town). For a complete list of all of the regional endpoints for Amazon SES, see AWS Service Endpoints in the AWS General Reference.  

Zonal autoshift practice runs take place once a week to ensure your application is ready for a zonal shift. Now with on-demand practice runs, you can trigger a practice run anytime you want to and validate your application’s preparedness. When a practice run is started, a pre-check will be performed to ensure your application has balanced capacity across AZs. This check is done for Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and EC2 Auto Scaling groups.

To get started, you can initiate an on-demand practice run in the ARC console, API, or CLI. This allows you to test your application’s practice run configuration to ensure the alarms are configured correctly and your application behaves as expected. For both automated and on-demand practice, pre-checks for balanced capacity will validate your resource’s capacity and ensure it’s safe to start the practice. If the pre-check fails, you’ll be alerted, so you can take corrective action.

Zonal autoshift on-demand practice runs and practice run pre-checks for balanced capacity are available in all commercial AWS Regions, and including AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, please refer to the ARC zonal autoshift documentation.
 

 

​Zonal autoshift practice runs take place once a week to ensure your application is ready for a zonal shift. Now with on-demand practice runs, you can trigger a practice run anytime you want to and validate your application’s preparedness. When a practice run is started, a pre-check will be performed to ensure your application has balanced capacity across AZs. This check is done for Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and EC2 Auto Scaling groups. To get started, you can initiate an on-demand practice run in the ARC console, API, or CLI. This allows you to test your application’s practice run configuration to ensure the alarms are configured correctly and your application behaves as expected. For both automated and on-demand practice, pre-checks for balanced capacity will validate your resource’s capacity and ensure it’s safe to start the practice. If the pre-check fails, you’ll be alerted, so you can take corrective action. Zonal autoshift on-demand practice runs and practice run pre-checks for balanced capacity are available in all commercial AWS Regions, and including AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more, please refer to the ARC zonal autoshift documentation.