Jan. 19, 2026

AWS News Jan 12 - Jan 18

Show Notes

This week: EC2 X8i instances deliver 43% higher performance with up to 6TB memory for demanding workloads, Lambda functions can now trigger from DynamoDB Streams across accounts, and EBS volumes support four modifications per day. Plus Inspector expands vulnerability scanning, Bedrock adds API keys in GovCloud, and second-gen Outposts racks gain new capabilities.

Compute

EC2 X8i: 43% faster, 1.5x memory (6TB max), custom Intel Xeon 6, SAP-certified

Database

RDS PostgreSQL: Extended Support versions for PG 11/12 with security fixes
RDS SQL Server: Latest Microsoft security patches (2016-2022)
RDS Custom SQL Server: GDR updates for CVE-2025-59499
Neptune: R7g/R8g Graviton instances expand regions, 16% cheaper than R6g, R8g 40% faster

Serverless

Lambda: Cross-account DynamoDB Streams triggers via resource policies

Storage

EBS: 4 modifications per 24hrs (up from 1), no detach needed
S3 on Outposts: Now on 2nd-gen racks, 196TB-786TB tiers

AI/ML

Bedrock: API keys in GovCloud, 12hr short-term or flexible long-term
Bedrock Data Exports: Granular operation types in cost reports
SageMaker HyperPod: Pre-creation quota validation with fix links
Lex: Neural speech model for English, 3 voice detection sensitivity levels

Security

Inspector: Gradle deps in Lambda/ECR, plus MySQL/MariaDB/PHP/Jenkins/Curl
IPAM: Enforced IP policies for RDS and ALB allocations

Analytics

Redshift Serverless: Dedicated query queues with per-queue monitoring rules
Clean Rooms: Parameters in PySpark templates

Contact Center

Connect: Screen recording status via EventBridge, visual calendar for hours overrides, scheduling metrics to data lake
Connect Cases: CloudFormation support

Networking