Feb 2018

Powered by advanced deep learning technologies, Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. The Text-to-Speech service is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) region, Amazon’s isolated cloud region built for sensitive data and regulated workloads.

Amazon WorkDocs now allows you to specify a site-wide data retention policy for your users’ files and folders. Applying a data retention policy allows you to recover user-deleted files and folders that have been removed from user recycle bins, during the retention policy period. Retention policies are applicable to all files and folders in a WorkDocs site, and the retention policy can be adjusted from the default of 60 days to any value from 0 to 365 days. Using a data retention policy helps you to address your compliance and business policy requirements for retaining and disposing of your content.

Amazon Rekognition is now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions.

You can now configure the Auto Scaling of your endpoints from the Amazon SageMaker console, the AWS Auto Scaling API, and the AWS SDK, making capacity management easier. Using Amazon SageMaker, you can specify the number and type of instances per endpoint to provide the scale that you need for your inferences. If your inference volume changes, you can change the number and/or type of instances that back each endpoint to accommodate that change. By using Auto Scaling, you can automatically adjust your inference capacity to maintain predictable performance at a low cost. From the Amazon SageMaker console, you configure the minimum and maximum number of instances for your endpoint, and then select the throughput per instance. Amazon SageMaker will monitor your deployed models to automatically adjust the instance count and keep throughput within desired levels, in response to changes in application traffic. This makes it easier to manage models in production, and it can help reduce the cost of deployed models. 

Amazon GuardDuty has added twelve new threat detections, including nine AWS CloudTrail-based anomaly detections that identify highly suspicious activity in accounts utilizing the service. Customers can now detect sensitive API calls that change the security posture of an account, or attempt to undermine the ability to monitor AWS activities.

Today, we announce 3 new managed rule products on AWS WAF from F5 Networks. With this launch we now have 6 Sellers (F5 Networks, Imperva, Fortinet, Trend Micro, Alert Logic and TrustWave) with 14 managed rule products that you can subscribe to either via the AWS Marketplace or from within the AWS WAF Console.  

This Quick Start builds a highly available, secure global transit network on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud in about 10 minutes. It deploys Aviatrix Controller and Aviatrix Gateways in a central virtual private cloud (VPC) on AWS to manage routing between remote networks (spoke VPCs) in a hub-and-spoke model.

Powered by advanced deep learning technologies, Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. The Text-to-Speech service is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) region, Amazon’s isolated cloud region built for sensitive data and regulated workloads.

Starting today, AWS Batch is available in US West (N. California), Canada (Central) and Asia Pacific (Seoul) AWS Regions.

Today we are announcing an improved method for creating encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes at the same time as your Amazon EC2 instances launch. You can now specify a customer-managed customer master key (CMK) for the creation of encrypted data volumes when launching your EC2 instances. You no longer will have to separately create and attach additional EBS data volumes to your instances in order to use your customer-managed CMK for data encryption. This simplifies your workflow and reduces the time it takes before your instance is available for use with an additional encrypted EBS data volume. You can either use the Amazon EC2 Launch Wizard or the RunInstances API call to create encrypted Amazon EBS Volumes with your customer-managed CMK when launching your EC2 Instances.

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs now come with support for Chainer, a flexible and intuitive framework for neural networks. Chainer uses a "define-by-run" approach that enables developers to define their deep learning network architecture on the fly. Such dynamic computational graphs are especially helpful while working with recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and with inputs of variable length like in natural language processing. You can You can quickly get started with Chainer using our step-by-step tutorial. 

Amazon QuickSight now supports sharing of dashboards, analyses and datasets using Active Directory (AD) groups. This allows users to easily share these resources with multiple users within their QuickSight account with a single click. AD group support also allows increased security and easier compliance with corporate processes by delegating group management to existing AD permissions mechanisms. 

You can now use TensorFlow 1.5 and Apache MXNet 1.0 with the pre-built deep learning framework containers that are provided with Amazon SageMaker. Amazon SageMaker also now supports CUDA 9 drivers, for faster performance on Amazon SageMaker ml.p3 instances. Both updates to TensorFlow and MXNet provide improved performance features, among other details that can be found on the respective GitHub repositories for TensorFlow 1.5 and MXNet 1.0.0. 

Developers can now use push notifications in React Native apps by uploading developer credentials for iOS and Android in AWS Mobile Hub. The notifications to React Native apps can be sent by any push-service provider. In addition, customers using Amazon Pinpoint will benefit from built-in support for analytics, which provides valuable campaign information such as delivery rates and percentage of users opening the app after receiving the notification. 

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports PostgreSQL major version 10. PostgreSQL 10 includes various new features including native table partitioning, support for improved parallelism in query execution, ICU collation support, column group statistics, enhanced postgres_fdw extension, and many more. Additionally, this release includes an upgraded version of the PLV8 extension and will have huge pages enabled by default. 

The AWS Storage Gateway service has expanded the capabilities of its Tape Gateway virtual tape library (VTL), adding support for Dell EMC NetWorker v9 as a supported backup application. You can now easily switch from tape to cloud backups using the Tape Gateway with Dell EMC NetWorker v9, while preserving established backup management processes. Backup applications write data to a local Tape Gateway appliance on-premises, and the Storage Gateway service stores the backups in a cloud-based VTL that uses scalable, cost-effective, and secure Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier storage. 

This new Quick Start deploys a highly available Drupal architecture on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud in about 30 minutes. Deploying Drupal on AWS makes it easy to use AWS services to further enhance the performance and extend functionality of your content management framework. The deployment uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS). 

You can now copy your Amazon AppStream 2.0 images across AWS Regions. Using the same image across AWS Regions makes it simpler to manage global deployments of your applications on AppStream 2.0. By deploying your applications in AWS Regions closer to your users, you provide them with a more responsive experience.  

You can now use Apache Hadoop 2.8.3, Apache HBase 1.4.0, Apache Flink 1.4.0, Presto 0.188, and Presto integration with EMRFS on Amazon EMR release 5.12.0. Additionally, you can now use upgraded versions of Hue (4.1.0), Apache MXNet (1.0.0), and Apache Phoenix (4.13.0). Hadoop 2.8.3 is the first version of Hadoop 2.8.x supported in Amazon EMR and contains many improvements and bug fixes to YARN and HDFS. HBase 1.4.0 adds new features including support for binary row keys in the REST client and an optional new HFile block structure for faster random read performance. Flink 1.4.0 features several new features including a support for aggregation on streaming tables and enhancements to Flink SQL. Presto now supports using the EMR File System (EMRFS) to performantly access data in Amazon S3. This enables you to use EMRFS features like consistent view, S3 server-side and client-side encryption, and EMRFS authorization with Presto.  

Oracle Patch Set Updates contain critical security updates and other important updates. The January 2018 PSUs are now available for Amazon RDS for Oracle. To learn more about the Oracle PSUs supported on Amazon RDS, visit the Amazon RDS patch update documentation. 

Starting today, you can use AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) to enable users to find and get AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) credentials for multiple AWS accounts more easily. 

Today, we are pleased to announce that AWS DeepLens customers can now directly import models from Amazon SageMaker into AWS DeepLens. This improved integration makes model deployment much more efficient by consolidating the model import process down to a single click rather than the previous multi-step workflow, so that you can start generating predictions even faster. 

The Amazon WorkDocs web application has been redesigned to create a more productive collaboration experience for users. The new user interface allows users to better organize their files and makes it easier to share content with others. Users can now access common features, like editing, locking and unlocking files, viewing their favorites, and sharing content, all with a single click. They can also gain insights about how their files and folders are being used, and control who has access to their content quickly and easily. A new My Account panel gives users a central place to manage their profile and account settings  

Network Load Balancer can now distribute requests regardless of Availability Zone with the support of cross-zone load balancing. This feature allows Network Load Balancer to route incoming requests to applications that are deployed across multiple Availability Zones.

RI coverage tracks the number of running instance hours that are covered by RIs, which allows you to understand your RI coverage at a high level (e.g., across all running hours) or dive into detailed information by filtering for a particular set of accounts, instance types, regions, tags, and more. From there, you can use the insights gleaned from this data to optimize your RI purchases for cost efficiency (e.g., by identifying instance hours that are consistently running at on-demand rates and purchase matching RIs). 

AWS CodePipeline, a continuous integration and continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates, is now available in the Europe (Paris) Region. CodePipeline works with AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy and many third-party services to help you build, test, and deploy your code every time there is a code change, based on the release process model you define.

AWS Elemental MediaPackage is a video origination and just-in-time packaging service that allows video distributors to securely and reliably deliver streaming content at scale. This service functions independently or as part of AWS Media Services, a family of services that form the foundation of cloud-based video workflows and offer you the capabilities you need to create, package, and deliver video. 

AWS AppSync Preview introduces API key duration and has an expanded regional availability footprint now in the EU-West-1 (Ireland), AP-Northeast-1 (Tokyo), and AP-Southeast-2 (Sydney) regions.

Note    This Quick Start is no longer available. See https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart for our latest Quick Start catalog.

This new Quick Start automatically deploys CloudStax Cache for Redis in a customizable Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) cluster on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud in about 30 minutes. 

You can now directly add and edit files in an AWS CodeCommit repository through the service console, CLI, and SDKs. Previously, you needed to install and configure a Git client to add or edit files in a repository. Now, you can quickly add and edit any of your CodeCommit repositories using only your browser.

The AWS Serverless Application Repository enables you to discover, deploy, and share serverless applications for a wide variety of use cases, making it easier and faster to get started with serverless computing in the AWS cloud. 

Today, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is introducing support for using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service-linked roles, a new type of role that allows you to easily delegate permissions to AWS services. 

AWS OpsWorks Stacks event sources are now available in Amazon CloudWatch Events, which you can use to trigger events or notifications. 

Starting today, Inter-Region Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Peering is available in US West (Northern California), EU (London), EU (Paris), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central) and South America (São Paulo) Regions in addition to AWS US East (Northern Virginia), US East (Ohio), AWS EU (Ireland), US West (Oregon) Regions.

Amazon Inspector now enables you to run security assessments for Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures (CVE) and Runtime Behavior Analysis against your Amazon EC2 instances running Windows Server 2016. To run security assessments, simply install the Amazon Inspector Agent on the desired EC2 instance, configure your assessment in the Inspector console, and run your assessment. 

AWS Trusted Advisor now helps all customers better secure their data by providing the S3 Bucket Permissions check for free!

Amazon CloudFront announces the addition of a new Edge Location in Seoul, South Korea bringing the total number of Edge Locations in Seoul to four. The addition of this newest Edge Location continues to expand CloudFront's capacity within the region allowing us to serve greater volumes of web traffic.

We are excited to announce the release of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (Released February 2018) exam. This updated version of our AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Exam includes new services and architectural best practices, including the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework. The exam validates knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies. We recommend candidates have at least one year of hands-on experience designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable and distributed systems on AWS.  

We are hosting a beta for an updated version of our AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam. This beta exam is intended for individuals who have the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively develop and maintain applications on AWS. This new exam contains questions reflecting current AWS features, services, and best practices. Registration opens today and the beta exam is priced at 75 USD, which is 50% off the cost of the standard Developer Associate exam. You may take the beta exam from February 19 through March 16. Beta exam space is limited and registration will close when capacity is reached. Beta exam results are typically available 90 days (13 weeks) or less from the close of the beta exam. Individuals who pass the beta exam are eligible to receive a voucher to take the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam at 50% off (valid for 12 months). 

AWS GovCloud (US) joins 16 other regions where you can use Amazon Elasticsearch Service. With the addition of this region, Amazon Elasticsearch Service is now available in the following 17 regions globally: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), AWS GovCloud (US), Canada (Central), South America (Sao Paulo), EU (Ireland), EU (London), EU (Frankfurt), EU (Paris), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), and China (Ningxia), operated by NWCD.

Real-Time Insights on AWS Account Activity is a solution that can help you more easily monitor your AWS account activity in real-time. This solution automatically provisions the services necessary to record and visualize resource access and usage metrics for your AWS account(s). Real-Time Insights on AWS Account Activity is designed to provide a framework for visualizing metrics in real-time, allowing you to focus on adding new metrics rather than underlying infrastructure operations.  

Today, Amazon GameLift introduces FleetIQ and Spot instances. Spot instances offer customers access to spare AWS computing capacity at savings of up to 90% compared to On-Demand prices. You can achieve these savings while maintaining high game server availability with the use of FleetIQ, a new feature of Amazon GameLift Queues that places new sessions on game servers based on player latencies, instance prices, and Spot interruption rates. 

Today, we are excited to announce a new phonation tag that you can use with Amazon Polly, an API-based Text-to-Speech (TTS) service. With the new phonation Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tag, you can produce softer speech with any of the Amazon Polly voices. 

You can now record configuration changes to AWS WAF RuleGroups with AWS Config. AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits, and a RuleGroup is a collection of predefined rules that you can add to a web ACL. Using Config, you can track historical changes to the rules and metrics associated with your WAF RuleGroups.  

Starting today, you can use Amazon WorkSpaces Application Manager (WAM) to deploy your applications to Amazon WorkSpaces running Windows 10. Amazon WAM gives your users on-demand access to centrally managed desktop applications, and applications available through the Amazon Marketplace for Desktop Apps. Amazon WAM uses application virtualization technology to simplify application provisioning and provide fine grain controls to IT administrators, all from within the Amazon WorkSpaces console. With this update, you can now use Amazon WAM on WorkSpaces running Windows 7 or Windows 10.

AWS CodeStar, which helps you quickly develop, build, and deploy applications on AWS, is now available in the Asia Pacific (Seoul) Region. CodeStar provides a unified user interface, enabling you to easily manage your software development activities in one place. With CodeStar, you can set up your entire continuous delivery toolchain in minutes, allowing you to start releasing code faster. CodeStar also integrates with AWS Cloud9, a cloud-based IDE, for writing, running, and debugging code with just a browser.

Note    This Quick Start is no longer available. See https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart for our latest Quick Start catalog.

This new Quick Start automatically deploys CloudStax FireCamp into a customizable environment on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud in about 30 minutes. 

Amazon Cloud Directory is now available in the EU (Frankfurt) Region.

You can now export and import your Amazon Lex chatbot schema to simplify the process of replicating your chatbot for development and deployment. 

AWS AppSync Preview introduces new GraphQL features to enhance application development and removes the whitelist-only access to use the service. 

Today, DAX announced the SDKs for Python and .NET, support for new T2 instances in all supported regions. T2 instances provide a baseline level of CPU performance and can be more cost-effective for test and development workloads or production applications that require smaller caches. DAX is now general availability in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) and Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions. DAX is already available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), and South America (São Paulo) Regions.

Network Load Balancer, designed to handle millions of requests per second while maintaining ultra-low latencies, is now available in the AWS EU (Paris) Region. Network Load Balancer is optimized to handle volatile traffic patterns while using a single static IP address per Availability Zone. It operates at connection level (Layer 4), routing connections to Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses based on IP protocol data. It also preserves the client-side source IP, allowing applications to see the IP address of the client that can then be used by applications for further processing. 

Today Amazon WorkMail launched support for the MAPI over HTTP protocol for Microsoft Outlook for Windows. This protocol improves connection stability between Microsoft Outlook and Amazon WorkMail. This provides users a faster overall connection to Amazon WorkMail, and a more responsive experience.

Microsoft Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013, and Outlook 2010 with the latest service packs will automatically switch to the MAPI over HTTP protocol the next time they are opened. Users with Microsoft Outlook 2007 will continue to connect to Amazon WorkMail using the RPC over HTTP protocol.

In December 2017, we announced that Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and AWS Storage Gateway resources will have longer identifiers to support the ongoing growth of Amazon Web Services. Starting today, you can opt in to using longer IDs using APIs or the AWS Management Console.

You can now set up Service Auto Scaling using target tracking policies for your containerized services directly from the Amazon ECS console. With target tracking, you select a load metric for your service, such as “Average CPU Utilization” or “Request Count Per Target”, set the target value, and Auto Scaling adjusts the number of running tasks for your service to maintain the target value.

Today AWS Direct Connect has landed a second site in Paris at Equinix PA3, Paris, France following the region launch in December 2017. It will be found on the Management Console under the EU (Paris) Region. AWS Direct Connect also launched its first site in Taiwan at Chief Telecom LY, Taipei. In the Management Console, Taipei is located in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region. With global access enabled for AWS Direct Connect, these sites can reach AWS resources in any global AWS region using global public VIFs and Direct Connect Gateway. 

Today, Amazon GameLift introduces backfill functionality for FlexMatch, a powerful matchmaking service that enables you to match players together based on rules you define. Whether you choose to build your matches based on player skill, latency, or some other custom criteria, FlexMatch allows you to build robust and flexible matchmaking pipelines to suit your desired gaming experience. 

You can now log all your API calls to AWS Shield through AWS CloudTrail, the AWS service that records API calls for your account and delivers log files to your Amazon S3 bucket. CloudTrail logs can be used to enable security analysis, track changes to your AWS resources, and aid in compliance auditing. Integrating AWS Shield and CloudTrail lets you determine which requests were made to the AWS Shield API, the source IP address from which each request was made, who made the request, when it was made, and more. 

You can now query task metadata and container-level Docker statistics for tasks that are launched using the awsvpc network mode. This gives you a straightforward way to get environmental data such as task, container, and image ID, as well as check the status and health of running containers and tasks.

Starting today, you can migrate your existing application users to Amazon Cognito user pools more easily. User pools are managed user directories that can scale to hundreds of millions of users. Now, you can migrate users automatically the next time they log into your application while enabling users to continue using their existing passwords. 

Amazon Connect customers can now use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) when using an Amazon Lex chatbot in their contact center, allowing them to personalize conversations with end users by modifying the chatbot voice. Using SSML tags, you can customize and control aspects of speech, such as pronunciation, volume, and speech rate. 

You can now define a response for your Amazon Lex chatbot directly from the AWS Management Console. A response consists of messages dynamically selected from a group of pre-defined messages, populated by the developer. Messages in these message groups can be simple text, or you can use custom markup. In addition, you can also display a response card as part of the response. The responses capability simplifies building dynamic conversations with Amazon Lex.  In addition, you can use Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) in a text response.

The PostgreSQL-compatible edition of Amazon Aurora is now available in 10 regions. With the addition of the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region, you have a new option for database placement, availability, and scalability. 

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs now come with TensorFlow 1.5, and Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit 2.4, with support for NVIDIA CUDA 9 and cuDNN 7 drivers. AMI users can now take advantage of the mixed precision training on the V100 Volta GPUs powering EC2 P3 instances. In our earlier tests for TensorFlow 1.5 on Volta, training the ResNet-50 benchmark with synthetic ImageNet data in FP16 mode on a p3.8xlarge instance was 1.8x times faster than training with TensorFlow 1.4.1.  

Amazon DynamoDB encryption at rest helps you secure your application data in Amazon DynamoDB tables further using AWS-managed encryption keys stored in AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Encryption at rest is fully transparent to the user with all DynamoDB queries working seamlessly on encrypted data. With this new capability, it has never been easier to use DynamoDB for security-sensitive applications with strict encryption compliance and regulatory requirements. 

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) for easing workload migration to AWS is now available in the AWS EU (London) Region. 

Starting today, Amazon Inspector is available to customers in the US East (Ohio) region. With the addition of this region, Inspector is available in US East (Northern Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Northern California), US West (Oregon), EU (Frankfurt), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). 

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments address the high availability requirements of enterprise-grade production workloads. Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Multi-AZ in the Asia Pacific (Singapore) region. This new option leverages SQL Server Mirroring technology, with additional improvements.

Today, AWS announced the ability to filter load balancers and target groups by tags in the Elastic Load Balancing Console. Tag-based filtering enables you to view only the load balancers and target groups that you are responsible for monitoring. It also reduces chances of making configuration changes to a wrong load balancer or target group not owned by your group. For example, if you have tagged your development stage load balancers as Stage: Dev and production stage load balancers as Stage: Prod, you can filter on tag Stage: Prod to view only the production stage load balancers. 

The Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress enables you to easily voice your website content – so readers can listen to news and articles directly from the site. Jointly developed with our partner, WP Engine, this sample plugin also enables you to publish podcasts directly from your site and make them available for listeners who are on-the-go. 

AWS Elemental MediaTailor is a content personalization and monetization service that lets you serve video with targeted ads to viewers while maintaining broadcast quality-of-service in multiscreen video applications. This service functions independently or as part of AWS Media Services, a family of services that form the foundation of cloud-based video workflows and offer you the capabilities you need to create, package, and deliver streaming video.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert, a file-based video processing service, is now available in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region. AWS Elemental MediaConvert allows video providers with any size content library to easily and reliably transcode on-demand content for broadcast and multiscreen delivery. The service functions independently or as part of AWS Media Services, a family of services that form the foundation of cloud-based workflows and offer you the capabilities you need to create, package, and deliver video. 

AWS Elemental MediaStore is a video origination and storage service that offers the high performance, predictable low latency, and immediate consistency required for live streaming media combined with the security and durability AWS offers across its services. It offers an inexpensive method for pass-through and low-latency segmented content delivery, with pay-as-you-go pricing. 

Beginning today, you have more options to securely connect your devices to AWS IoT Core. You can use MQTT with certificate based client authentication on port 443. Previously this combination of protocol and authentication mechanism was only supported on port 8883. 

You can now use the Amazon WorkMail API to programmatically receive Exchange Web Services (EWS) push notifications when events occur in your mailboxes, such as email delivery or calendar updates. This enables your services, applications, and workflows to respond in real-time to events in your mailboxes. For example, you can create a workflow that uses EWS push notifications with AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon Comprehend to analyze the sentiment of your incoming email. Visit our GitHub page for sample code to get started.

The AWS Instance Scheduler is a solution that enables customers to easily configure custom start and stop schedules for their Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS instances. The solution is easy to deploy and can help reduce operational costs for both development and production environments. Customers who use this solution to run instances during regular business hours can save up to 70% compared to running those instances 24 hours a day.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Change Data Capture (CDC), allowing replication to various database targets. CDC is supported on all versions of Enterprise Edition, and on SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later for Standard Edition. To see how to enable and disable CDC, please visit our documentation. 

The MySQL 5.7-compatible edition of Amazon Aurora is now generally available. It offers enhancements such as JSON support, spatial indexes, and generated columns, and is up to 5x faster than MySQL 5.7. 

AWS Systems Manager now allows you to specify repositories (repos) for Linux in the patch baseline, apply non-OS security updates through patching, and patch SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). 

Beginning today, you can use the Amazon Route 53 Auto Naming APIs to create CNAME records when you register instances of your microservices, and your microservices can discover the CNAMEs by querying DNS for the service name. Additionally, you can use the Amazon Route 53 Auto Naming APIs to create Route 53 alias records that route traffic to Amazon Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs). 

We are excited to announce the new ListShards API which makes it easier for your Kinesis Data Streams KCL applications to scale. Many Kinesis Data Streams customers use the KCL to process records from their data streams. Starting in version 1.9.0 or later, key KCL API functions now use the ListShards API, which supports a 10x higher call rate limit compared to the DescribeStream API, which was used for these functions in earlier KCL versions.

Amazon Connect is now one of the AWS services under ISO Compliance for the ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 standards. AWS maintains certifications through extensive audits of its controls to ensure that information security risks that affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of company and customer information are appropriately managed. You can download copies of the AWS ISO certificates and use them to jump-start your own certification efforts: AWS ISO 9001 certificate, AWS ISO 27001 certificate, AWS ISO 27017 certificate, and AWS ISO 27018 certificate.

AWS Direct Connect provides private, high bandwidth connectivity between customers’ network and AWS Cloud. The traffic sent over AWS Direct Connect connection stays within AWS private network instead of traversing the public internet.

Version 0.2 of Model Server for Apache MXNet (MMS), an open source library for Apache MXNet, is now available for packaging and serving deep learning models for inference at scale. You can use MMS to serve ONNX models created with any ONNX-supporting deep learning framework, such as PyTorch, Caffe2, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, or Chainer. ONNX, the Open Neural Network Exchange format, is a community initiative driven by AWS, Facebook, and Microsoft, with growing support across additional deep learning frameworks and platforms. To get started serving ONNX models, see MMS ONNX Serving documentation. 

Starting today, Amazon GuardDuty makes continuous security monitoring and threat detection easier with two multi-account feature enhancements. First, GuardDuty has increased the number of possible associated accounts from 100 to 1,000 member accounts. Second, GuardDuty administrators can now manage custom threat intelligence lists in the GuardDuty master account and apply updates in up to 1,000 member accounts. In addition, customers can manage all GuardDuty account configurations for up to 1,000 member accounts from a single, security-owned GuardDuty master account. 

Starting today, M5 instances are available in the AWS US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Canada (Central) Regions, in addition to AWS US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Europe (London), Europe (Paris) and EU (Ireland) Regions.

Starting today, C5 instances are available in the AWS US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Canada (Central) Regions, in addition to AWS US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Europe (London), Europe (Paris) and EU (Ireland) Regions.

AWS X-Ray SDK for .NET version 2.0.0 (beta) enables developers to record and emit information from within their applications to the AWS X-Ray service. This version supports .NET Core 2.0. You can get started in minutes using the repository on Github. 

Now you can use Amazon Cloud Directory to manage hierarchical data for applications that are subject to System & Organization Control (SOC), ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, or ISO 9001 compliance.

Amazon Aurora Parallel Query improves the performance of large analytic queries by pushing processing down to the Aurora storage layer, spreading processing across hundreds of nodes.