AWS News Feb 09 - Feb 15

This week: Bedrock adds six open-weight models through Project Mantle with higher quotas and OpenAI API compatibility, CloudWatch Alarm Mute Rules let you silence notifications during maintenance without losing visibility, and MSK now manages Kafka topics directly through AWS APIs. Plus new EC2 M8azn instances hit 5GHz, Aurora Global Database automates cross-region upgrades, and Lake Formation scales to hundreds of thousands of shared tables.

Compute

• EC2 M8azn: 5GHz (highest cloud frequency), 2x M5zn performance
• EC2 C8id/M8id/R8id: 43% better perf, 3x memory bandwidth, flex network/EBS
• Outposts: C8i/M8i/R8i support, 20% better perf, same power

AI/ML

• Bedrock: 6 open-weight models (DeepSeek V3.2, Kimi K2.5, GLM 4.7, MiniMax 2.1)
• Bedrock Project Mantle: Distributed inference, OpenAI API compatible, higher quotas
• Bedrock GovCloud: 25x higher Claude Sonnet 4.5 quotas (5M tokens/min)
• SageMaker HyperPod: Console node management, one-click SSM sessions

Database

• Aurora Global DB: Auto minor upgrades across all regions, single action
• Aurora DSQL: Identity columns and sequences for auto-increment IDs
• RDS/Aurora: Configure backup settings during snapshot restore
• RDS PostgreSQL: 5 new versions, pg_stat_monitor extension
• OpenSearch Serverless: Collection Groups, shared compute across KMS keys

Analytics

• Athena: 1-min capacity reservations, 4 DPU minimum, up to 95% savings
• Lake Formation: 100K+ tables cross-account sharing via wildcards
• S3 Tables: Partition/sort order in CreateTable API
• MSK: Topic management via AWS APIs/console, no Kafka client needed
• MSK Express: Free broker logs

Operations

• CloudWatch Alarm Mute: Silence during maintenance, auto-trigger on expiry
• EKS Auto Mode: Enhanced logging to CloudWatch/S3/Firehose
• Elastic Beanstalk: GitHub Actions integration, OIDC auth
• Backup: Direct Aurora/Neptune/DocDB copies to air-gapped vaults

Contact Center

• Connect: Audio enhancement (voice isolation/noise suppression)
• Connect: Auto-accept per channel, ACW timeouts per channel
• Connect: AI Task overviews, in-app notifications

Other

• Data Transfer Terminal: 6 new cities (Seattle, Phoenix, London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo)
• Payment Cryptography: Cartes Bancaires approved
• Resource Control Policies: DynamoDB support

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For detailed show notes check out awsnewsweekly.com