Amazon Redshift now automatically runs the VACUUM DELETE operation to reclaim disk space occupied by rows that were marked for deletion by previous UPDATE and DELETE operations. It also defragments the tables to free up consumed space and improves performance for your workloads.

AWS Auto Scaling with Predictive Scaling for Amazon EC2 is now available in 8 additional regions. Using AWS Auto Scaling, customers can configure Predictive Scaling to automatically scale their Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Groups in advance of impending traffic changes. Customers can also use AWS Auto Scaling to manage scaling configuration for multiple resources with a single scaling plan for services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Aurora.

AWS Auto Scaling with Predictive Scaling for EC2 is now available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), US West (Northern California), Europe (London), Europe (Frankfurt) in addition to the existing regions US East (Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore). Today’s launch brings the total number of regions the service is available to 13.

AWS Auto Scaling can be accessed using the AWS Auto Scaling console, API via SDK/CLI, or CloudFormation. To learn more about AWS Auto Scaling, please visit this page . To learn more about Predictive Scaling, please visit the blog .

The MediaTek MT7697H System on Chip (SoC) is now qualified for Amazon FreeRTOS. You can take advantage of Amazon FreeRTOS features and benefits using the MediaTek MT7697Hx Development Kit available from MediaTek.

Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) is now available in Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) AWS regions.

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility now supports Query Plan Management in version 10.5, and is available in the US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Seoul) Regions.

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility version 10.5 adds support for Query Plan Management, a new feature that allows you to control how and when query execution plans change. Query plan management allows you to prevent plan regressions when the database system or environment changes, and allows you to control when and whether the optimizer can use new plans.

The quality and consistency of query optimization have a major impact on the performance and stability of any relational database management system (RDBMS). Query optimizers create a query execution plan for a SQL statement at a specific point in time. As conditions change, the optimizer might pick a different plan that makes performance worse. For example, changes in statistics, constraints, environment settings, query parameter bindings, and software upgrades can all cause the query optimizer to choose a different plan and lead to performance regression. Regression is a major concern for high-performance applications.

With query plan management, you can control execution plans for a set of statements that you want to manage. You can do the following:

• Improve plan stability by forcing the optimizer to choose from a small number of known, good plans.
• Optimize plans centrally and then distribute the best plans globally.
• Identify indexes that aren’t used and assess the impact of creating or dropping an index.
• Automatically detect a new minimum-cost plan discovered by the optimizer.
• Try new optimizer features with less risk, because you can choose to approve only the plan changes that improve performance.

To use the new version, you can create an Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility database instance with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console. You can also create an Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility 10.5 read replica using an RDS for PostgreSQL 10.5 master instance, and then fail over your connections and applications to Aurora when ready. Learn more about migrating to Aurora PostgreSQL 10.5 in the Amazon RDS User Guide.

Amazon Aurora combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. It provides up to three times better performance than the typical PostgreSQL database, together with increased scalability, durability, and security.

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility now supports PostgreSQL major version 10.5 , and is available in the US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Seoul) Regions.

Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility version 10.5 adds support for Query Plan Management, a new feature that allows you to control how and when query execution plans change. Query plan management allows you to prevent plan regressions when the database system or environment changes, and allows you to control when and whether the optimizer can use new plans.

This release includes all patches from the PostgreSQL 10.1 , PostgreSQL 10.2 , PostgreSQL 10.3 , PostgreSQL 10.4, and PostgreSQL 10.5 minor versions. It also includes all extensions that are supported in the Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility 9.6 release.

To use the new version, you can create an Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility database instance with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console . You can also create an Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility 10.5 read replica using an RDS for PostgreSQL 10.5 master instance, and then fail over your connections and applications to Aurora when ready. Learn more about migrating to Aurora PostgreSQL 10.5 in the Amazon RDS User Guide .

Amazon Aurora combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. It provides up to three times better performance than the typical PostgreSQL database, together with increased scalability, durability, and security.

The AWS Solutions team has updated the AWS WAF Security Automations solution. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that enables customers to quickly create custom, application-specific rules that block common attack patterns that can affect application availability, or consume excessive resources.

AWS CodeStar now lets you automatically create a new Alexa Skill from within your Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. Previously, you needed to create the skill in the Alexa Skill console and link it with an AWS Lambda function in your AWS account. You would also need to manually register changes any time you updated your skill. These manual steps are no longer needed if you develop your Alexa Skills with CodeStar. To get started with Alexa skill templates on AWS CodeStar, go to our getting started guide to follow step by step instructions.

AWS IoT Device Defender helps you keep connected devices secure. AWS IoT Device Defender alerts you whenever devices violate a user-defined behavior for security metrics gathered from devices and AWS IoT Core.

Amazon Transcribe is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) service that makes it easy for you to add a speech-to-text capability to your applications. Amazon Transcribe now supports transcription of audio in the following new languages: French, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese. These languages expand upon the existing 5 languages already available in Amazon Transcribe: US English, US Spanish, Australian English, British English and Canadian French.