During August, 2021, 4 new versions of the AWS Cloud Development Kit  (CDK) for JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Python, .NET and Go were released (v1.117.0 through v1.120.0). These releases include multiple additions to the Kinesis Firehose Construct Library , including compression and prefixes on S3 delivery stream destinations, delivery stream metrics, S3 source backups, AWS Lambda-based data processors and more. Additionally, CloudFront Construct Library  now supports Origin Shield, CloudWatch  supports defining alarms across AWS accounts, and Cognito User Pools  support Device Tracking. These releases resolve 28 issues and introduce 37 new features that span 30 different modules across the library. Many of these changes were contributed by the developer community.

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) now allows you to connect any conformant Kubernetes cluster to AWS and visualize it in the Amazon EKS console. You can connect any conformant Kubernetes cluster, including Amazon EKS Anywhere clusters running on-premises, self-managed clusters on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and other Kubernetes clusters running outside of AWS. Regardless where your cluster is running, you can use the Amazon EKS console to view all connected clusters and the Kubernetes resources running on them.

The AWS Firewall Manager Automations for AWS Organizations solution allows you to centrally configure, manage, and audit firewall rules across all your accounts and resources in AWS Organizations. This solution is a reference implementation to automate the process to setup AWS Firewall Manager security policies. This solution supersedes AWS Centralized WAF and VPC Security Group Management solution.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Anywhere, a new deployment option for Amazon EKS that allows customers to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on customer-managed infrastructure, supported by AWS. Customers can now run Amazon EKS Anywhere on their own on-premises infrastructure using VMware vSphere starting today, with support for other deployment targets in the near future, including support for bare metal coming in 2022.

AWS Managed Services (AMS) is excited to announce Operations on Demand, a flexible and scalable option to gain access to additional skilled AMS operations capacity, skills, and experience. Operations on Demand gives customers access to a full range of operational capabilities above and beyond the extensive scope provided by AMS Operations Plans . Customers choose from a curated and continually expanding catalog of operational offerings which are delivered by a combination of automation and highly skilled AMS resources. The catalog includes a mix of short-term and ongoing operational use cases and can be used to supplement your existing operations or fill a knowledge or capacity gap. Examples of catalog offerings include assisting with the maintenance of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), operations of AWS Control Tower, management of SAP clusters, and performing in-place upgrades of instances running out-of-support operating systems. Customers pay for what they use in blocks of hours, and can unsubscribe from a catalog offering at any time. Please see our public documentation for a listing of current catalog offerings . The Operations on Demand feature is available for both the AMS Advanced and Accelerate Operations Plans in all regions where AMS is available.

You can now launch RabbitMQ 3.8.22 brokers on Amazon MQ. This release includes a fix for an issue with queues using per-message TTL (time to live) , identified in the previously supported version, RabbitMQ 3.8.17, and we recommend upgrading to RabbitMQ 3.8.22.

AWS Managed Services (AMS) now allows customers to deploy SAP HANA-based workloads using AWS Launch Wizard. 

Today, AWS announced that customers can use aliases to refer to Amazon Machine Images (AMI) purchased from AWS Marketplace. AMI aliases are unique identifiers that be used instead of an AMI ID in deployment scripts. Starting today, aliases are available for all single AMI products on AWS Marketplace. This simplifies launching new AMIs as customers don’t have to change AMI IDs for each region every time there is a version update. Customers can rather use a single alias that will auto-resolve to current AWS region. Additionally, customers can always refer to the latest version by using the ‘latest’ alias for a given AMI product. This will automate deployment pipelines and reduce the manual steps required to upgrade to a new version of AMI purchased from AWS Marketplace.

Amazon Elasticsearch Service has a new name: Amazon OpenSearch Service. This change, which was previously announced here , coincides with the addition of support for OpenSearch 1.0. You can now run and scale both OpenSearch and Elasticsearch (until version 7.10) clusters on Amazon OpenSearch Service and get all of the same benefits you have enjoyed so far from Amazon Elasticsearch Service.

Today we are announcing the general availability of AWS Local Zones in Chicago, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. Customers can now use these new Local Zones to deliver applications that require single-digit millisecond latency to end-users or for on-premises installations in these three metro areas.