Amazon FSx for Lustre—a service that makes it simple and cost effective to launch and run the world’s most popular high-performance file system, Lustre—is launching several enhancements that make it even easier to use a Lustre file system for any workload where storage speed matters: The ability to launch persistent file systems that are durable and highly available, increased throughput for non-durable scratch file systems, and enhanced encryption capabilities.

Today, AWS is launching the Activate Founders package, a new set of benefits specifically designed for bootstrapped startups. The package is being offered as part of the AWS Activate program and is open to founders and startups who have not yet raised any venture capital, seed, or angel funding and have no affiliation with any accelerators or incubators. Successful applicants can receive up to $1,000 in AWS Activate Credits, which are valid for two years, and one year of technical support.

Today AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) enabled you to control access for requests made on your behalf by AWS services. For example, using the new control, you can now grant your IAM principals the ability to launch Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, but only through AWS CloudFormation, without granting direct access to EC2.

Amazon RDS for MariaDB has been updated to support release 10.3.20 of the MariaDB database. This release includes a number of bug fixes as well as functionality improvements.

Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports the January 2020 Patch Set Updates (PSU) for Oracle Database 11.2 and 12.1, and January 2020 Release Update (RU) for Oracle Database 12.2, 18c and 19c.

AWS Security Hub has added 7 new external partner integrations bringing its total 54 integrations, including 48 external partner integrations and 6 AWS service integrations. Security Hub now supports integrations with Cloud Custodian (cloud compliance and remediation), FireEye Helix (Security Information Event Management, or SIEM), Forcepoint CASB (cloud access security broker), Forcepoint DLP (data loss prevention), Forcepoint NGFW (next-generation firewall), Rackspace Cloud Native Security (Managed Security Service Provider, or MSSP), and Vectra.ai Cognito (network anomaly detection). The Forcepoint and Vectra.ai integrations send findings from their respective product to Security Hub using the AWS Security Finding Format. FireEye receives findings from Security Hub, and Rackspace is a managed security service provider (MSSP) that leverages Security Hub to gather security and compliance information about their customers’ accounts. Setting up the integration only requires deployment of a AWS CloudFormation template or similar script. To learn more, visit the Integration pages in the Security Hub console and click on the “Configuration” link for the partner to learn more about the integration and how to set it up.  

Today we’re excited to release Lumberyard Beta 1.23 , featuring over 40 stability and performance improvements. Some highlights include the addition of cloth physics, EMotion FX improvements, and ease of use updates to the slice system. Let’s take a closer look:

Amazon RDS on VMware enhances custom AZ status to include a new state: Disconnected.

Amazon Managed Apache Cassandra Service (MCS), a scalable, highly available, and managed Apache Cassandra–compatible database service, now enables you to optimize the price of throughput for predictable workloads by using provisioned capacity mode.  

The SMS channel in Amazon Pinpoint is now U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) eligible. You can now use Amazon Pinpoint to send SMS messages that contain protected health information (PHI).