Tag: SysAdmin

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M7i instances powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids) are available in the Europe (Milan) region. These custom processors, available only on AWS, offer up to 15% better performance over comparable x86-based Intel processors utilized by other cloud providers. M7i deliver up to 15% better price-performance compared to M6i. M7i instances are a great choice for workloads that need the largest instance sizes or continuous high CPU usage, such as gaming servers, CPU-based machine learning (ML), and video-streaming. M7i offer larger instance sizes, up to 48xlarge, and two bare metal sizes (metal-24xl, metal-48xl). These bare-metal sizes support built-in Intel accelerators: Data Streaming Accelerator, In-Memory Analytics Accelerator, and QuickAssist Technology that are used to facilitate efficient offload and acceleration of data operations and optimize performance for workloads.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 now offers Microsoft applications with licenses included, providing customers with the flexibility to run these applications on AppStream 2.0 fleets. As part of this launch, AppStream 2.0 provides Microsoft Office, Visio, and Project 2021/2024 in both Standard and Professional editions. Each is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for On-Demand and Always-On fleets. Administrators can dynamically control applications availability by adding or removing applications from AppStream 2.0 images and fleets. End users benefit from a seamless experience, accessing Microsoft applications that are fully integrated with their business applications within their AppStream 2.0 sessions. This helps in ensuring that users can work efficiently with both Microsoft and business applications in a unified environment, eliminating the need for switching between different platforms or services. To get started, create an AppStream custom image by launching an

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces the general availability of Volume Clones for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), our high-performance block storage service. This new capability allows you to instantly create and access point-in-time copies of EBS volumes within the same Availability Zone (AZ), accelerating software development workflows and enhancing operational agility. Customers use Amazon EBS volumes as durable block storage attached to Amazon EC2 instances. With Amazon EBS Volume Clones, you can instantly create copies of volumes and access the copied volumes with single-digit millisecond latency. Amazon EBS Volume Clones enables rapid creation of test and development environments from production volumes, eliminating manual copy workflows. Additionally, Volume Clones integrates with the Amazon EBS Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver, simplifying storage management for containerized applications. Amazon EBS Volume Clones is available in all

AWS for Fluent Bit announces version 3.0.0, based on Fluent Bit version 4.1.0 and Amazon Linux 2023. Container logging using AWS for Fluent Bit is now more performant and more feature-rich for AWS customers, including those using Amazon Elastic Container Services (Amazon ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). AWS for Fluent Bit enables Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS customers to collect, process, and route container logs to destinations including Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon Data Firehose, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, and Amazon S3 without changing application code. AWS for Fluent Bit 3.0.0 upgrades the Fluent Bit version to 4.1.0, and upgrades the base image to Amazon Linux 2023. These updates deliver access to the latest Fluent Bit features, significant performance improvements, and enhanced security. New features include native OpenTelemetry

Amazon Route 53 Profiles now supports AWS PrivateLink. Customers can now access and manage their Profiles privately, without going through the public internet. AWS PrivateLink provides private connectivity between VPCs, AWS services, and on-premises applications, securely over the Amazon network. When Route 53 Profiles is accessed via AWS PrivateLink, all operations, such as creating, deleting, editing, and listing of Profiles, can be handled via the Amazon private network.  Route 53 Profiles allows you to define a standard DNS configuration, in the form of a Profile, that may include Route 53 private hosted zone (PHZ) associations, Route 53 Resolver rules, and Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall rule groups, and apply this configuration to multiple VPCs in your account. Profiles can also be used to enforce DNS settings for your VPCs, with configurations for DNSSEC validations, R

Amazon MSK Connect is now available in ten additional AWS Regions: Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Europe (Milan), Europe (Zurich), Middle East (Bahrain), Middle East (UAE), Africa (Cape Town), and Israel (Tel Aviv). MSK Connect enables you to run fully managed Kafka Connect clusters with Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK). With a few clicks, MSK Connect allows you to easily deploy, monitor, and scale connectors that move data in and out of Apache Kafka and Amazon MSK clusters from external systems such as databases, file systems, and search indices. MSK Connect eliminates the need to provision and maintain cluster infrastructure. Connectors scale automatically in response to increases in usage and you pay only for the resources you use. With full compatibility with Kafka Connect, it is easy to migrate workloads without code changes. MSK Connect will support both Amazon MSK-managed and sel

AWS Transfer Family SFTP connectors can now connect to remote SFTP servers through your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This enables you to transfer files between Amazon S3 and any SFTP server, whether privately or publicly hosted, while leveraging the security controls and network configurations already defined in your VPC. By utilizing your NAT Gateways' bandwidth for file transfers over SFTP, you can achieve improved transfer performance and ensure compatibility with remote firewalls. AWS Transfer Family provides fully managed file transfers over SFTP, FTP, FTPS, AS2 and web-browser based interfaces. You can now use Transfer Family SFTP connectors to connect with SFTP servers that are only accessible from your VPC, including on-premises systems, external servers shared over private networks, or in-VPC servers. You can

Amazon Connect now provides configurable thresholds for schedule adherence, giving you more flexibility in how you track agent performance. You can define thresholds for how early or late agents start or end their shifts, as well as for individual activities. For example, agents can start their shift 5 minutes early and end 10 minutes late, or end their breaks 3 minutes late, without negatively impacting their adherence scores. You can further customize these thresholds for individual teams. For example, teams that handle contacts with long handle times can be given more flexibility in when they start their breaks. This launch enables managers to focus on true adherence violations and eliminates the impact of minor schedule deviations on agent performance, thus improving manager productivity and agent satisfaction. This feature is available in all AWS Reg

Starting today, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M8g instances are available in AWS Europe (Paris), Asia Pacific (Osaka), AWS Canada (Central), and AWS Middle East (Bahrain) regions. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors and deliver up to 30% better performance compared to AWS Graviton3-based instances. Amazon EC2 M8g instances are built for general-purpose workloads, such as application servers, microservices, gaming servers, midsize data stores, and caching fleets. These instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, which offloads CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software to enhance the performance and security of your workloads. AWS Graviton4-based Amazon EC2 instances deliver the best performance and energy efficiency for a broad range of workloads running on Amazon EC2. These instances offer larger instance sizes with up to 3x

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server now supports the latest General Distribution Release (GDR) updates for Microsoft SQL Server. This release includes support for Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP3+GDR KB5065226 (RDS version 13.00.6470.1.v1), SQL Server 2017 CU31+GDR KB5065225 (RDS version 14.00.3505.1.v1), SQL Server 2019 CU32+GDR KB5065222 (RDS version 15.00.4445.1.v1) and SQL Server 2022 CU21 KB5065865 (RDS version 16.00.4215.2.v1). The GDR updates address vulnerabilities described in CVE-2025-47997, CVE-2025-55227, CVE-2024-21907. For additional