Tag: SysAdmin

Amazon Lightsail now offers a new WordPress blueprint, making it easier than ever to launch and manage a WordPress website on the cloud. With just a few clicks, you can create a Lightsail virtual private server (VPS) preinstalled with WordPress, and follow a guided setup wizard to get your site fully configured and running in minutes. This new blueprint has Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) enforced by default. With Lightsail, you can easily get started on the cloud by choosing a blueprint and an instance bundle to build your web application. Lightsail instance bundles include instances preinstalled with your preferred operating system, storage, and monthly data transfer allowance, giving you everything you need to get up and running quickly. The new WordPress blueprint includes a step-by-step setup workflow that walks you through connecting a custom domain, configuring DNS, attaching a static IP address, and enabling HTTPS encryption using a free Let's Encrypt S

EC2 Image Builder, a service that helps you automate the creation, distribution, and management of customized Amazon Machine Images, now supports wildcard patterns in lifecycle policies and simplifies IAM role creation. You can now use wildcard patterns to manage images from multiple recipes within a single lifecycle policy, and create IAM roles with pre-populated default permissions directly from the console. Previously, you had to create separate lifecycle policies for each new recipe or manually select individual recipes, making it difficult to scale as new recipes were added. Now with wildcard pattern support, you can specify patterns like my-recipe-1.x.x to automatically apply lifecycle policies to all matching recipes—including new recipes created in the future. Additionally, creating IAM roles for lifecycle management previously required manually configuring the required permissions. Now when creating a new role in the console, EC2 Image Builder automatically popul

Amazon Application Recovery Controller (ARC) Region switch helps customers orchestrate the failover of their multi-Region applications to achieve a bounded recovery time in the event of a Regional impairment. It automates multi-Region disaster recovery, reducing engineering effort and eliminating operational overhead when recovering applications across multiple AWS accounts and Regions. Region switch now includes three new capabilities: post-recovery workflows, native RDS execution blocks, and AWS provider for Terraform support. Post-recovery workflows. Disaster recovery doesn't end when customers failover to a standby Region. After orchestrating a failover or failback, customers must prepare the other Region for the next recovery event. Today, this requires manual coordination of scaling, recreating read replicas, and validating configurations. Post-recovery workflows help customers automate these preparation steps. With this launch, post-recovery workflows support

Amazon Bedrock batch inference now supports the Converse API as a model invocation type, enabling you to use a consistent, model-agnostic input format for your batch workloads. Previously, batch inference required model-specific request formats using the InvokeModel API. Now, when creating a batch inference job, you can select Converse as the model invocation type and structure your input data using the standard Converse API request format. Output for Converse batch jobs follows the Converse API response format. With this feature, you can use the same unified request format for both real-time and batch inference, simplifying prompt management and reducing the effort needed to switch between models. You can configure the Converse model invocation type through both the Amazon Bedrock console and the API. This capability is available in all AWS Regions that support Amazon Bedrock batch inference. To get started, see

AWS Network Firewall now integrates with Amazon EventBridge to provide real-time notifications for firewall state changes and configuration updates. This new capability enables you to monitor critical firewall operations including firewall configuration updates and endpoint status modifications across your network security infrastructure. You gain immediate visibility into changes affecting AWS Managed Rules, Partner Managed Rules, and firewall configurations. With EventBridge integration, you gain enhanced visibility into your firewall operations in real-time. You can build automated workflows to send notifications through Amazon SNS, create tickets in your IT service management (ITSM) systems, or integrate with third-party security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. This integration helps you maintain better operational awareness of your network security infrastructure and respond quickly to configuration changes or potential issues. AWS Network F

Amazon CloudWatch now supports customizing destination log group names when creating CloudWatch log centralization rules. Organizations managing logs across multiple accounts can now use attributes to organize centralized logs into meaningful hierarchies — by account ID, region, organizational unit, or other AWS Organizations metadata — that match how their organization operates and what their compliance requirements demand. You can define a destination log group name structure using attributes that CloudWatch Logs automatically replaces with actual values when logs are copied. For example, using the pattern ${source.accountId}/${source.region}/${source.logGroup} creates destination log groups like 123456789012/us-east-1/cloudtrail/managementevent, making it easy to identify which account and region logs originated from. You can use attributes, including source account ID, region, log group name, organization ID, organizational unit ID, root ID, and the full organization

AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) now supports a resource share configuration that allows you to maintain resource sharing continuity when accounts move between AWS Organizations. With the new RetainSharingOnAccountLeaveOrganization parameter and corresponding ram:RetainSharingOnAccountLeaveOrganization condition key, security administrators can configure resource shares to retain access when accounts leave the organization and enforce consistent policies across their organization using Service Control Policies (SCPs). This capability helps organizations undergoing mergers, acquisitions, or restructuring maintain access to shared resources like Route53 Resolver Rules, Transit Gateways, and IPAM pools without disruption. Security teams can use SCPs to enforce the RetainSharingOnAccountLeaveOrganization configuration organization-wide. When enabled, RAM treats organization accounts as external accounts, requiring explicit invitation acceptance and preserv

Starting today, AWS customers based in the United Kingdom can use Bacs Direct Debit to pay for their AWS services. This new feature provides a convenient and automated way to manage your cloud spend directly from your GBP-based bank account. Customers can securely connect any personal or business bank account that supports the Bacs standard. Previously, AWS only  accepted credit or debit cards and EUR-based bank accounts in the UK. During sign-up, customers can choose "Bacs Direct Debit" from the AWS sign-up page, select their bank, and authenticate using their bank's mobile app or online banking credentials. This securely verifies ownership and links the bank account to the AWS account. By default, this account will be used for future AWS invoices. Existing customers can add Bacs Direct Debit by navigating to the Payment Preferences page in the AWS Billing console. They choose "Add payment method," select "Bacs Direct Debit," and follow the same ba

Amazon OpenSearch Service has enhanced Cluster Insights with two new insights — Cluster Overload and Suboptimal Sharding Strategy. Suboptimal Sharding Strategy provides instant visibility into shard imbalances that cause uneven workload distribution, while Cluster Overload surfaces elevated cluster resource utilization that can lead to request throttling or rejections. Both insights come with details of affected resources along with actionable mitigation recommendations. Previously, identifying resource constraints and shard imbalances required manually correlating multiple metrics and logs, making it difficult to detect issues early. With these new insights, you can proactively monitor cluster health and take timely action. Suboptimal Sharding Strategy detects shard imbalances caused by indices with too few shards relative to the number of data nodes, or by shards carrying disproportionately large amounts

Oracle Database@AWS is now available in EU-West-1 (Dublin), starting with one Availability Zone (AZ). Oracle Database@AWS enables customers to access database services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) managed Oracle Exadata systems within AWS data centers. As a result, customers can easily migrate their on-premises Oracle Exadata and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) applications to a like-for-like environment on AWS, and also benefit from integrations with AWS services such as AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for data encryption and AWS CloudWatch for monitoring. With expansion to the Dublin region, customers with data residency requirements in that region can migrate their on-premises Oracle Exadata and RAC applications to AWS. With this expansion, Oracle Database@AWS services are now available in eight Regions: US-East-1 (N. Virginia), US-West-2 (Oregon), US-East-2 (Ohio), CA-Central-1 (Canada Central), EU-Central-1 (Frankfurt), EU-West-1 (Dublin), AP-Northeast-