Starting today, C5d instances are available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Regions. C5d instances were first introduced in May 2018 and delivers C5 instances equipped with local NVMe-based SSD block level storage physically connected to the host server. C5d instances provide high-performance block storage for applications that need access to high-speed, low latency local storage like video encoding, image manipulation and other forms of media processing. It will also benefit applications that need temporary storage of data, such as batch and log processing and applications that need caches and scratch files.

Amazon S3 announces feature enhancements to S3 Select. S3 Select is an Amazon S3 capability designed to pull out only the data you need from an object, which can dramatically improve the performance and reduce the cost of applications that need to access data in S3.

Today, Amazon S3 Select works on objects stored in CSV and JSON format. Based on customer feedback, we’re happy to announce S3 Select support for Apache Parquet format, JSON Arrays, and BZIP2 compression for CSV and JSON objects. We are also adding support for CloudWatch Metrics for S3 Select, which lets you monitor S3 Select usage for your applications. 

Starting today, M5d instances are available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacfic (Tokyo), and Europe (London) Regions. M5d instances were first introduced in June 2018 and delivers M5 instances equipped with local NVMe-based SSD block level storage physically connected to the host server. M5d instances are ideal for workloads that require a balance of compute and memory resources along with high-speed, low latency local block storage including data logging and media processing.

Starting today, you can enable persistent application and Windows settings for your users on AppStream 2.0. With this launch, your users’ plugins, toolbar settings, browser favorites, application connection profiles, and other settings will be saved and applied each time they start a streaming session. For example, your users can configure their plugins and toolbars for their CAD/CAM applications, and retain those settings every time they stream their application. Your users’ settings are stored in an S3 bucket you control in your AWS account.

To get started, select Stacks from the AppStream 2.0 console. Below the stacks list, choose User Settings, Application Settings Persistence, Edit. In the Application Settings Persistence dialog box, choose Enable Application Settings Persistence. To learn more about persistent application settings, see Enable Application Settings Persistence for Your AppStream 2.0 Users .

You can enable persistent application settings for your users at no additional charge in all AWS Regions where AppStream 2.0 is offered. However, you will be billed for the S3 storage used to store your user’s settings data. To use this feature, the AppStream 2.0 agent software on your image must be dated August 29, 2018 or newer. AppStream 2.0 offers pay-as-you-go pricing. Please see Amazon AppStream 2.0 Pricing for more information, and try our sample applications.

AWS Config, a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources, announces seven new managed rules to help you evaluate whether your AWS resource configurations comply with common best practices. This allows you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS) is now available in the AWS Europe (Ireland) Region.

Starting today, AWS Batch supports running workloads on z1d, r5d, r5, m5d, c5d, p3, and x1e EC2 instances.

AWS CloudFormation Macros perform custom processing on CloudFormation templates from simple actions such as find-and-replace to transformation of entire templates. CloudFormation Macros use the same technology that powers AWS::Include and AWS::Serverless transforms. CloudFormation transforms help simplify template authoring by condensing the expression of AWS infrastructure as code and enabling reuse of template components.

Previously, you could use AWS::Include and AWS::Serverless transforms to process your templates that were hosted by CloudFormation. Now, you can use CloudFormation Macros to create your own custom transforms. For example, you can create common string functions for templates or define short-hand syntaxes for common CloudFormation resources. Click here to learn more about sample macros for your reference.

To learn more about CloudFormation Macros, please visit AWS CloudFormation documentation .

CloudFormation Macros are available in all AWS regions that have AWS Lambda. For a full list of AWS regions where AWS Lambda is available, please visit our Region table .

You can now enable AWS X-Ray for your APIs in Amazon API Gateway, making it easier to trace and analyze user requests as they travel through the APIs to the underlining services.

Amazon SageMaker now supports version 1.10 in its pre-built TensorFlow containers. This makes it easier to run TensorFlow scripts, while taking advantage of the capabilities Amazon SageMaker offers, including a library of high-performance algorithms, managed and distributed training with automatic model tuning, one-click deployment, and managed hosting.