Amazon WorkSpaces Personal now integrates with AWS Global Accelerator (AGA) to enhance WorkSpaces connection performance by optimizing streaming traffic through the AWS Global Network and edge locations. This feature particularly benefits customers whose end users connect to WorkSpaces across long distances.

The AGA feature can be enabled at either the WorkSpaces directory level or for individual WorkSpaces running DCV protocol. When advantageous, the service automatically routes the streaming traffic through the nearest AWS edge location and across AWS’s congestion-free, redundant global network, delivering a more responsive and stable streaming experience. The WorkSpaces service fully manages AGA usage, subject to outbound data volume limits detailed in WorkSpaces documentation.

This enhancement is available at no additional cost for Personal WorkSpaces running DCV protocol in all AWS Regions where Amazon WorkSpaces is supported , except Africa (Cape Town), Israel (Tel Aviv), AWS GovCloud (US), and China Regions.

Customers can configure this feature through the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or Amazon WorkSpaces APIs. For detailed configuration instructions and best practices, please refer to the Amazon WorkSpaces documentation .

Amazon Q Business is now SOC (System and Organization Controls ) eligible. Amazon Q Business is a generative AI–powered assistant that can answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and securely complete tasks based on data and information in your enterprise systems.

With the Amazon Q Business SOC certification, customers, can now use Amazon Q Business for use cases that are subject to Service Organization Control (SOC) requirements. Amazon Q Business is now SOC 1, 2 and 3 compliant, allowing you to get deep insight into the security processes and controls that protect customer data. AWS maintains SOC compliance through extensive third-party audits of AWS controls. These audits ensure that the appropriate safeguards and procedures are in place to protect against security risks that may affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer and company data.

Amazon Q Business is SOC compliant in all of the AWS Regions where Amazon Q Business is supported. See the AWS Regional Services List for the most up-to-date availability information. To learn more about SOC eligible services, visit the webpage . To get started with Amazon Q Business, visit the product page to learn more.
 

AWS Network Firewall introduces dual stack support for Network Firewall management API, enabling you to connect using Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), or dual stack clients. Dual stack support is also available when the AWS Network Firewall management API endpoint is privately accessed from your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using AWS PrivateLink . Dual stack endpoints are made available on a new AWS DNS domain name. The existing AWS Network Firewall management API endpoints are maintained for backwards compatibility reasons.

AWS Network Firewall is a managed firewall service that is easy to deploy. The service automatically scales with network traffic volume to provide high-availability protections without the need to set up and maintain the underlying infrastructure. With simultaneous support for both IPv4 and IPv6 clients on AWS Network Firewall endpoints, you are able to gradually transition from IPv4 to IPv6 based systems and applications, without needing to switch all over at once. There is no additional charge when you connect to AWS Network Firewall endpoints using Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) clients.

To see which regions AWS Network Firewall is available in, visit the AWS Region Table . For more information, please see the AWS Network Firewall product page and the service documentation .
 

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for MariaDB now supports MariaDB minor versions 11.4.4, 10.11.10, 10.6.20, and 10.5.27. We recommend that you upgrade to the latest minor versions to fix known security vulnerabilities in prior versions of MariaDB, and to benefit from the bug fixes, performance improvements, and new functionality added by the MariaDB community.

You can leverage automatic minor version upgrades to automatically upgrade your databases to more recent minor versions during scheduled maintenance windows. You can also leverage Amazon RDS Managed Blue/Green deployments for safer, simpler, and faster updates to your MariaDB instances. Learn more about upgrading your database instances, including automatic minor version upgrades and Blue/Green Deployments, in the Amazon RDS User Guide.

Amazon RDS for MariaDB makes it straightforward to set up, operate, and scale MariaDB deployments in the cloud. Learn more about pricing details and regional availability at Amazon RDS for MariaDB . Create or update a fully managed Amazon RDS database in the Amazon RDS Management Console .
 

Amazon QuickSight is excited to announce the launch of Unique Key for Dataset, enabling users to define additional aspects of their data semantics. The unique key will be used to improve performance for QuickSight visuals, especially un-aggregated table charts. Previously, to maintain table pagination stability, all columns in the table visual were sorted, which was an expensive query causing performance latency. Now, with the unique key defined in the dataset, once the column is used in the visual, users will automatically experience improved sorting performance without compromising user behavior. For some cases, the new approach can increase the performance up to 60% decrease of the visual rendering time. For further details, visit here .

The new Unique Key for Dataset feature is now available in Amazon QuickSight Enterprise Editions in all QuickSight regions – US East (N. Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon), Canada, Sao Paulo, Europe (Frankfurt, Stockholm, Paris, Ireland and London), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo), and the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region.
 

Starting today, Amazon EC2 High Memory instances with 6TB of memory (u-6tb1.56xlarge and u-6tb1.112xlarge) are available in the Asia Pacific (Osaka) region. Customers can start using these new High Memory instances with On Demand and Savings Plan purchase options.

Amazon EC2 High Memory instances are certified by SAP for running Business Suite on HANA, SAP S/4HANA, Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA, and SAP BW/4HANA in production environments. For details, see the Certified and Supported SAP HANA Hardware Directory.

For information on how to get started with your SAP HANA migration to EC2 High Memory instances, view the Migrating SAP HANA on AWS to an EC2 High Memory Instance documentation. To hear from Steven Jones, GM for SAP on AWS on what this launch means for our SAP customers, you can read his launch blog .
 

Amazon Connect now provides built-in capabilities for customer authentication within chats, making it easier to verify customer identity and deliver personalized experiences. You can use the new Authenticate Customer flow block to simplify authentication in your chat workflows. For example, unauthenticated customers who require agent assistance can be shown a pop-up to sign-in before connecting with an agent, allowing agent’s to provide more personalized and efficient support.

To get started, visit the new ‘Customer authentication’ page within the AWS Console to configure your identify provider, then add the Authenticate Customer block to your contact flow. To learn more, please refer to the help documentation or visit the Amazon Connect website. This feature is available in all commercial AWS regions where Amazon Connect is available.
 

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka Connect (Amazon MSK Connect) now supports Apache Kafka Connect version 3.7 for new connectors. Apache Kafka Connect version 3.7 includes several bug fixes and performance improvements. For more details and a complete list of improvements and bug fixes, see the Apache Kafka release notes for version 3.7 .

Amazon MSK Connect is a feature of Amazon MSK that allows you to run fully managed Apache Kafka Connect workloads on AWS. This feature makes it easy to deploy, monitor, and automatically scale connectors that move data between Apache Kafka clusters and external systems such as databases, file systems, and search indices. MSK Connect is fully compatible with Kafka Connect, enabling you to lift and shift your Kafka Connect applications with zero code changes. With MSK Connect, you only pay for connectors you are running, without the need for cluster infrastructure. To learn how to get started, see the Amazon MSK Connect Developer Guide .

Support for Apache Kafka Connect version 3.7 is offered in all AWS regions where Amazon MSK Connect is available.

AWS announces the general availability of custom billing view, a new feature within AWS Billing and Cost Management that enables customers to grant member accounts access to cost management data spanning multiple accounts within their organization. Custom billing view allows you to provide application and business unit owners with access to relevant cost management data across multiple AWS accounts using a single view in AWS Cost Explorer, without granting access to the management account.

With custom billing view, you can create filtered views of cost management data based on cost allocation tags or specific AWS accounts. These views can be shared with member accounts using AWS Resource Access Manager, empowering teams to monitor, analyze and forecast their AWS spend across multiple accounts using AWS Cost Explorer, Cost Explorer reports, and the AWS Billing and Cost Management console homepage. This allows you to reduce the number of users that require access to the management account, while enabling more users to have visibility into their AWS spend. Custom billing views is ideal for customers who implement decentralized cost management practices, or provide business unit owners with comprehensive spend oversight across their accounts.

Support for custom billing views is available in all AWS Regions, excluding AWS GovCloud Regions and the AWS China Regions. To get started with custom billing views, visit Billing View within the Cost Management Preferences page in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console and create a new custom billing view. To get started visit the Billing View user guide .

Today, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) announces new enhancements to upgrade insights, a feature that surfaces cluster configuration issues that may impact your ability to successfully upgrade a cluster to a newer version of Kubernetes. With these new enhancements, EKS upgrade insights will scan and warn on cluster health and version compatibility issues between different Kubernetes and EKS components such as kubelet, kube-proxy and EKS add-ons.

Kubernetes is a fast-paced, evolving open source project with 3 releases per year, making upgrades a routine part of running Kubernetes clusters. EKS upgrade insights automatically scan clusters against a list of potential Kubernetes version upgrade impacting issues. EKS periodically updates the list of insight checks to perform, based on evaluations of changes in the Kubernetes project, as well as changes introduced in the EKS service along with new versions. EKS upgrade insights surface issues and provide remediation recommendations, accelerating the testing and verification process for upgrades to newer versions of Kubernetes.

EKS upgrade insights is available for all EKS clusters in all AWS Regions, except the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, China (Beijing, operated by Sinnet) Region, and China (Ningxia, operated by NWCD) Region. To learn more visit the EKS documentation .