Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Custom for Oracle, is a managed database service for legacy, custom, and packaged applications that require access to the underlying operating system and database environment. Starting today, you can deploy RDS Custom for Oracle using AWS CloudFormation templates. AWS CloudFormation simplifies provisioning and management of resources on AWS.

Starting today, the general-purpose Amazon EC2 M6a instances are now available in Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) region. M6a instances are powered by third-generation AMD EPYC processors with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.6 GHz. M6a instances deliver up to 35% higher price performance compared to M5a instances, and offer 10% lower cost than comparable x86-based EC2 instances. These instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor that delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance and security. 

Starting today, the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G5g instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and featuring NVIDIA T4G Tensor Core GPUs are available in Europe(Spain) region. G5g instances can be used for graphics intensive and machine learning workloads.

A New minor version of Microsoft SQL Server is now available on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, offering performance and security fixes. Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports a new minor version for SQL Server 2019 on the Express, Web, Standard, and Enterprise Editions.

Today, AWS announces the general availability of a new Local Zone in Phoenix, Arizona. This new AWS Local Zone comes with Amazon EC2C6i, M6i, R6i and C6gn instances and Amazon EBS volume types gp2, gp3, io1, sc1, and st1. You can also access Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, Application Load Balancer, AWS Direct Connect and NAT Gateway in this new Local Zone to support a broad set of workloads at the edge.

AWS Lake Formation is launching a Read-Only Administrator role which enables customers to add a Data Lake Administrator role with read-only permissions for Glue Data Catalog metadata and Lake Formation permissions. Previously, Data Lake Administrators could perform actions on the Glue Data Catalog and Lake Formation permissions, including modifying the Lake Formation grants and LF-Tags. Now, you can add an IAM role or user to be a Read-Only Administrator. Using this role, Read-Only Administrators can access metadata and permissions without making changes. This allows Read-Only Administrators to search metadata without needing access the data and to validate permissions without requiring access to make changes to permissions.

Amazon SageMaker Studio launched support for the ml.G5 GPU instance family in the South America region (São Paulo). Customers using ml.G5 instances in Amazon SageMaker Studio Notebooks can leverage up to 3.3x faster performance for machine learning training compared to ml.G4dn instances. This makes them a high performance and cost-efficient solution for interactive model training for use cases such as generative AI foundation model tuning, natural language processing, computer vision, and recommender engines.

AWS announces the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C7gd instances, Amazon EC2 M7gd instances, and Amazon EC2 R7gd instances with up to 3.8 TB of local NVMe-based SSD block-level storage. They have up to 45% improved real-time NVMe storage performance than comparable Graviton2-based instances. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton3 processors, delivering up to 25% better performance over Graviton2-based instances. These Graviton3-based instances feature the latest DDR5 memory, which provides 50% more memory bandwidth than DDR4. These instances are built on the AWS Nitro System and are great fit for applications that need access to high-speed, low latency local storage, including those that need temporary storage of data for scratch space, temporary files, and caches. C7gd instances are ideal for high performance computing (HPC), CPU-based machine learning (ML) inference, and ad serving. M7gd instances are ideal for general purpose workloads, such as application servers, microservices, and gaming servers. R7gd instances are ideal for memory-intensive workloads such as open-source databases, and real-time big data analytics.

AWS Wickr now offers Data Retention that extends to both internal and external communications in a Wickr network. A Wickr network administrator can configure and apply Data Retention to all in-network conversations. This includes shared media and files, as well as conversations with guest users, external teams, and other partner networks to help meet internal, legal, and regulatory requirements.

Today, Amazon Web Services announces support for deploying to Kubernetes clusters running on Elastic Kubernetes Service from an Amazon CodeCatalyst workflow. A workflow is an automated procedure that describes how to build, test, and deploy your code as part of a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) system. A workflow defines a series of steps, or actions, to take during a workflow run. This launch allows you to add a “Deploy to Kubernetes cluster“ action to a workflow, providing a simple and repeatable process for deploying updates to Kubernetes clusters running on EKS.