Today, we’re announcing a new capability for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL that you can use to directly query operational data together with data stored in your data lake in Apache Iceberg and Apache Parquet formats, using your existing PostgreSQL applications and tools. By eliminating the need to extract, transform, and load (ETL) structured data from data lakes into your operational database, you can reduce operational complexity and simplify application development. You can also use Aurora PostgreSQL to query data from data lakes managed in Iceberg REST Catalog (IRC)-compatible catalogs, giving you access to data across a breadth of analytics systems without moving or duplicating it. Whether you’re powering real-time dashboards, enriching transactions with historical context, or building AI agents that reason over both live and archived data, you can now do it all through a single, familiar interface.

Previously, if your application needed to combine recent transactional data in Aurora with historical records stored in Amazon S3, a common approach was to build reverse ETL pipelines that duplicated data, increased infrastructure costs, and required ongoing engineering effort to keep everything synchronized. This challenge only grows as you increasingly embed AI agents into your applications, where it is impractical to predict and pre-replicate every dataset an agent might need.

DuckLabs, the team that maintains the DuckDB project, recently joined Amazon, and this capability is an example of how the efficiency of DuckDB is being integrated into our services. DuckDB is now embedded directly within Aurora PostgreSQL, so you can query live operational data (including uncommitted writes) alongside your data lake in a single query. Query processing stays within Aurora, with no additional network hops and no ETL pipelines that duplicate data. You can query Apache Iceberg tables managed through the AWS Glue Data Catalog, as well as Parquet and Iceberg data stored in Amazon S3 and S3 Tables. You do all of this using familiar PostgreSQL syntax and your existing applications and tools.

We’re excited to bring the speed and simplicity of DuckDB directly into Aurora PostgreSQL, so you and your agents can query and combine operational and Iceberg data using the familiar PostgreSQL applications, tools, and endpoints already in use. By building this capability around DuckDB, future improvements to the open source engine can continue to bring performance and functionality gains to Aurora and other AWS services.

What is new
This capability is supported on two Aurora PostgreSQL major versions: 17 (starting with 17.11) and 18 (starting with 18.6). To use it, you create an Aurora PostgreSQL cluster, attach an IAM role with the AuroraAnalytics feature, and enable the aurora_analytics extension. The IAM role is what gives Aurora access to your data in Amazon S3 and the AWS Glue Data Catalog. You then create foreign tables that point to your Iceberg or Parquet data in the data lake, and query them using familiar PostgreSQL syntax. You can complete this setup through the Amazon RDS console, or with any PostgreSQL client such as psql. The process is well documented in the Aurora PostgreSQL documentation.

You can query data across external IRC-compatible catalogs through AWS Glue Data Catalog federation. You register the external catalog once with Glue, and then create foreign tables for the tables you want to query, the same way you would for any Glue-native table. A single query can then join data stored in Aurora with Iceberg tables registered across multiple catalogs, so applications get a unified view without moving data or replacing your existing catalog investments.

Aurora also applies optimizations such as predicate pushdown and column pruning so that only the relevant data is read. This keeps queries efficient even as the underlying data grows. Frequently accessed data is also cached in your Aurora instance, so subsequent queries against the same data return faster. You can inspect this behavior per query using aurora_analytics_stat_statements(), which reports metrics such as rows scanned, bytes read from Amazon S3, and cache hits.

To see how direct querying works, I connected to my Aurora PostgreSQL database using psql and created the extension:

CREATE EXTENSION aurora_analytics;

For my walkthrough, I set up a simple financial scenario. I have a recent_transactions table in Aurora with the last 7 days of customer transactions, and a Parquet file in Amazon S3 containing 5 years of historical transaction data. To make Aurora aware of the historical data, I created a foreign table pointing at the Parquet file in S3:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE transaction_history ()
SERVER aurora_analytics_server
OPTIONS (
    location 's3://<my-bucket>/finance/transaction_history.parquet',
    format 'parquet'
);

Notice the empty parentheses in the CREATE FOREIGN TABLE statement. Aurora automatically reads the schema from the Parquet file metadata, so you do not need to define columns manually. For workloads with many tables, you can skip creating them one at a time: a single IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA statement bulk-creates foreign tables for every Iceberg or Parquet table in an AWS Glue Data Catalog database, inferring schemas automatically.

With both tables in place, I ran a single query that combines the recent operational data in Aurora with the historical data in S3:

SELECT merchant, category, amount, transaction_date, 'recent' AS source
FROM recent_transactions
WHERE customer_id = 'C-1001'
UNION ALL
SELECT merchant, category, amount, transaction_date, 'historical' AS source
FROM transaction_history
WHERE customer_id = 'C-1001'
  AND transaction_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '5 years'
ORDER BY transaction_date DESC
LIMIT 15;

The result shows both recent and historical transactions in a single result set. The 7 most recent rows come from Aurora, and the rest come directly from the Parquet file in S3. DuckDB handles the analytical scan of the Parquet data under the hood, while Aurora handles the operational data. That single query would have previously required a pipeline to move the historical data into the database first.

If a query pattern needs single-digit-millisecond latency, you can materialize data from the data lake into a native Aurora PostgreSQL table using familiar commands such as CREATE TABLE AS SELECT, INSERT INTO ... SELECT, or MERGE INTO. The materialized table lives in Aurora and is queried like any other PostgreSQL table, giving you a low-latency path for hot data without operating a separate ingestion pipeline. The read queries can run on any Aurora PostgreSQL instance in your cluster, whether the writer or a read replica, so you can offload analytical scans from your operational workload. The materialization commands write data into Aurora, so they run on the writer instance.

Get started today
Direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data from Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL is available today in all commercial AWS Regions and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, at no additional charge. You pay only for the incremental Aurora compute the queries consume and Amazon S3 request costs for reading data lake files.

To learn more, visit the Amazon Aurora features page, read the Aurora PostgreSQL documentation, or try it in the Amazon RDS console. We welcome your feedback through AWS re:Post or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Esra

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This week, the AWS IoT Device SDK for Swift reached general availability. As a member of the Swift Server Workgroup (SSWG), this one caught my attention. The SDK brings production-ready MQTT 5 connectivity, Device Shadow, Jobs, and fleet provisioning to Swift developers on macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Linux.

I’m curious to see what you will build with it. Swift on the server has matured over the past few years, and now it reaches IoT devices too. This connects to a broader trend of running Swift at the edge. WendyOS, for example, is an open-source operating system for physical AI that offers first-class Swift support for deploying apps to NVIDIA Jetson and Raspberry Pi hardware. Between server-side Swift, IoT, and edge computing, the language is showing up in places that would have surprised most people a few years ago.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news.

Headlines

Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports Bring Your Own Media — Customers who migrate SQL Server applications from on-premises environments can now reuse their existing Microsoft SQL Server licenses, including Software Assurance, through Microsoft’s License Mobility program on Amazon RDS. BYOM is integrated with AWS License Manager for tracking license usage and compliance. Read more.

Amazon Cognito now supports multi-Region replication — You can now synchronize user and machine identity data, including credentials, user pool configurations, and federation setups, to a secondary user pool in a standby Region in near real-time. In the event of a disruption in the primary Region, signed-in users continue accessing their applications without re-authenticating, and registered users can sign in with their existing credentials. Multi-Region replication is available as an add-on for user pools in Essentials or Plus feature tiers across 16 Regions. Read more.

GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and Codex from OpenAI are now generally available on Amazon Bedrock — You can now use GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.4 in production workloads on Amazon Bedrock and build with Codex for AI-powered software development, with the same security, governance, and operational controls you already use across AWS. GPT-5.5 is the most capable model from OpenAI, excelling at agentic coding, data analysis, and multi-step autonomous tasks. Codex is available through the Codex App, the Codex CLI, and IDE integrations with Visual Studio Code, JetBrains, and Xcode. Pricing matches OpenAI first-party rates, and usage counts toward existing AWS commitments. Read more.

Last week’s launches

Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Amazon Bedrock adds CloudWatch metrics for OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible APIs — You can now monitor inference traffic to the bedrock-mantle endpoint with CloudWatch metrics, including inference counts, input and output token totals, and client error counts at account, project, model, and project-and-model granularity.
• Amazon Bedrock launches a redesigned console optimized for OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible APIs — A refreshed console workflow with a model catalog, side-by-side comparison, project-based organization, and project-aware documentation with pre-filled code snippets.
• Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity now supports bring-your-own secrets with AWS Secrets Manager — Customers can now reference existing AWS Secrets Manager secret ARNs in AgentCore Identity Credential Providers, enabling full ownership of secrets governance including custom CMKs, tagging strategies, and automatic rotation.
• AWS Step Functions adds AgentCore-powered agentic reasoning step — You can now add AI agent reasoning steps to your Step Functions workflows through an integration with the managed harness in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. Run multiple agents in parallel or sequence, add human approval, and trace every agent decision.
• Amazon EKS and Amazon EKS Distro now support Kubernetes version 1.36 — Kubernetes 1.36 promotes User Namespaces to GA, introduces Mutating Admission Policies, In-Place Pod-Level Resources Vertical Scaling, and Resource Health Status reporting. Available in all Regions where EKS is available.
• Amazon ECS Managed Instances now supports AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia — You can now create an ECS Managed Instances capacity provider with Inferentia2, Trainium1, and Trainium2 instance types and have Amazon ECS automatically allocate all accelerator resources to your workload.
• Amazon Quick now supports VPC connectivity for MCP connections — Enterprise customers can now connect privately hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to Amazon Quick through VPC, enabling secure access to proprietary applications and internal tools without exposing them to the internet.
• AWS Cost and Usage Report 2.0 now supports Athena and Redshift integration — CUR 2.0 exports are automatically delivered in the optimal format for your chosen query engine, with supporting infrastructure templates, table definitions, and data loading instructions.
• Amazon Location Service announces public transit and intermodal routing — The Routes API now supports two new travel modes, Transit and Intermodal, to plan journeys combining public transportation with walking, driving, taxi, and rental segments across 13 Regions.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events

Learn more about AWS, browse and join upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events as well as AWS Summits and AWS Community Days. Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— seb

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: BYOM for Amazon RDS for SQL Server, AWS IoT Device SDK for Swift, and more (June 8, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Last week, what excited me most was the launch of the 2026 AWS AI & ML Scholars program by Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of AWS Agentic AI, to provide free AI education to up to 100,000 learners worldwide. The program has two phases: a Challenge phase where you’ll learn foundational generative AI skills, followed by a fully funded three-month Udacity Nanodegree for the top 4,500 performers. Anyone 18 or older can apply, with no prior AI or ML experience required. Applications close on June 24, 2026. Visit the AWS AI & ML Scholars webpage to learn more and apply.

I’m also excited about the start of AWS Summit season, kicking off with AWS Summit Paris on April 1, followed by London on April 22. AWS Summits are free in-person events where builders and innovators can learn about Cloud and AI, think big, and make new connections. Explore the AWS Summits near you and join us in person.

Now, let’s dive into this week’s AWS news…

Last week’s launches

Here are last week’s launches that caught my attention:

• Announcing Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database creation in seconds — Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now offers express configuration, a streamlined setup with preconfigured defaults that supports creating and connecting to a database in seconds. With just two clicks, you can launch an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database. You can modify certain settings during or after creation.
• Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now available with the AWS Free Tier — Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL is now available on the AWS Free Tier. If you’re new to AWS, you receive $100 in AWS credits upon sign-up and can earn an additional $100 in credits by using services like Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).
• Announcing Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless — With the new Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless, you can easily build, deploy, troubleshoot, and manage serverless applications using AI coding assistants like Kiro, Claude Code, and Cursor. This plugin extends AI assistants with structured capabilities by packaging skills, sub-agents, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers into one modular unit. It automatically loads the guidance and expertise you need throughout development to build production-ready serverless applications on AWS.
• Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports Kiro and Cursor IDEs as remote IDEs — You can now remotely connect from Kiro and Cursor IDEs to Amazon SageMaker Studio. This lets you use your existing Kiro and Cursor setup, including spec-driven development, conversational coding, and automated feature generation, while accessing the scalable compute resources of Amazon SageMaker Studio.
• Introducing visual customization capability in AWS Management Console — You can now customize your AWS Management Console with visual settings like account color and control which regions and services you see. Hiding unused regions and services helps you focus better and work faster by reducing cognitive load and unnecessary scrolling.
• Announcing Aurora DSQL connector to simplify building Ruby applications — You can now use the Aurora DSQL Connector for Ruby (pg gem) to easily build Ruby applications on Aurora DSQL. The Ruby Connector simplifies authentication and improves security by automatically generating tokens for each connection, eliminating the risks of traditional passwords while maintaining full compatibility with existing pg gem features.
• AWS Lambda increases the file descriptor limit for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances — AWS Lambda increases the file descriptor limit from 1,024 to 4,096, a 4x increase, for functions running on Lambda Managed Instances (LMI). You can now run I/O intensive workloads such as high-concurrency web services and file-heavy data processing pipelines without running into file descriptor limits.
• AWS Lambda now supports up to 32 GB of memory and 16 vCPUs for Lambda Managed Instances — AWS Lambda functions on Lambda Managed Instances now support up to 32 GB of memory and 16 vCPUs. You can run compute-intensive workloads like data processing, media transcoding, and scientific simulations without managing infrastructure. Plus, you can adjust the memory-to-vCPU ratio (2:1, 4:1, or 8:1) to fit your workload.
• Announcing Bidirectional Streaming API for Amazon Polly — Traditional text-to-speech APIs use a request-response pattern. The new Bidirectional Streaming API for Amazon Polly is designed for conversational AI applications that generate text or audio incrementally, like large language model (LLM) responses. This lets you start synthesizing audio before the full text is available.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on our News Blog channel and the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events

Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits — As I mentioned earlier, join AWS Summits in 2026 for free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), Bengaluru (April 23–24), Singapore (May 6), Tel Aviv (May 6), and Stockholm (May 7).
• AWS Community Days — Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include San Francisco (April 10) and Romania (April 23–24).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse the AWS Events and Webinars for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Prasad

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS AI/ML Scholars program, Agent Plugin for AWS Serverless, and more (March 30, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

At re:Invent 2025, Colin Lazier, vice president of databases at AWS, emphasized the importance of building at the speed of an idea—enabling rapid progress from concept to running application. Customers can already create production-ready Amazon DynamoDB tables and Amazon Aurora DSQL databases in seconds. He previewed creating an Amazon Aurora serverless database with the same speed, and customers have since requested quick access and speed to this capability.

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of a new express configuration for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, a streamlined database creation experience with preconfigured defaults designed to help you get started in seconds.

With only two clicks, you can have an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database ready to use in seconds. You have the flexibility to modify certain settings during and after database creation in the new configuration. For example, you can change the capacity range for the serverless instance at the time of create or add read replicas, modify parameter groups after the database is created. Aurora clusters with express configuration are created without an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) network and include an internet access gateway for secure connections from your favorite development tools – no VPN, or AWS Direct Connect required. Express configuration also sets up AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication for your administrator user by default, enabling passwordless database authentication from the beginning without additional configuration.

After it’s created, you have access to features available for Aurora PostgreSQL serverless, such as deploying additional read replicas for high availability and automated failover capabilities. This launch also introduces a new internet access gateway routing layer for Aurora. Your new serverless instance comes enabled by default with this feature, which allows your applications to connect securely from anywhere in the world through the internet using the PostgreSQL wire protocol from a wide range of developer tools. This gateway is distributed across multiple Availability Zones, offering the same level of high availability as your Aurora cluster.

Creating and connecting to Aurora in seconds means fundamentally rethinking how you get started. We launched multiple capabilities that work together to help you onboard and run your application with Aurora. Aurora is now available on AWS Free Tier, which you gain hands-on experience with Aurora at no upfront cost. After it’s created, you can directly query an Aurora database in AWS CloudShell or using programming languages and developer tools through a new internet accessible routing component for Aurora. With integrations such as v0 by Vercel, you can use natural language to start building your application with the features and benefits of Aurora.

Create an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database in seconds

To get started, go to the Aurora and RDS console and in the navigation pane, choose Dashboard. Then, choose Create with a rocket icon.

Review pre-configured settings in the Create with express configuration dialog box. You can modify the DB cluster identifier or the capacity range as needed. Choose Create database.

You can also use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs with the parameter --with-express-configuration to create both a cluster and an instance within the cluster with a single API call which makes it ready for running queries in seconds.To learn more, visit Creating an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster with express configuration.

Here is a CLI command to create the cluster:

$ aws rds create-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier channy-express-db 
    --engine aurora-postgresql 
    –-with-express-configuration

Your Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database should be ready in seconds. A success banner confirms the creation, and the database status changes to Available.

After your database is ready, go to the Connectivity & security tab to access three connection options. When connecting through SDKs, APIs, or third-party tools including agents, choose Code snippets. You can choose various programming languages such as .NET, Golang, JDBC, Node.js, PHP, PSQL, Python, and TypeScript. You can paste the code from each step into your tool and run the commands.

For example, the following Python code is dynamically generated to reflect the authentication configuration:

import psycopg2
import boto3

auth_token = boto3.client('rds', region_name='ap-south-1').generate_db_auth_token(DBHostname='channy-express-db-instance-1.abcdef.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com', Port=5432, DBUsername='postgres', Region='ap-south-1')

conn = None
try:
    conn = psycopg2.connect(
        host='channy-express-db-instance-1.abcdef.ap-south-1.rds.amazonaws.com',
        port=5432,
        database='postgres',
        user='postgres',
        password=auth_token,
        sslmode='require'
    )
    cur = conn.cursor()
    cur.execute('SELECT version();')
    print(cur.fetchone()[0])
    cur.close()
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Database error: {e}")
    raise
finally:
    if conn:
        conn.close()

Choose CloudShell for quick access to the AWS CLI which launches directly from the console. When you choose Launch CloudShell, you can see the command is pre-populated with relevant information to connect to your specific cluster. After connecting to the shell, you should see the psql login and the postgres => prompt to run SQL commands.

You can also choose Endpoints to use tools that only support username and password credentials, such as pgAdmin. When you choose Get token, you use an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) authentication token generated by the utility in the password field. The token is generated for the master username that you set up at the time of creating the database. The token is valid for 15 minutes at a time. If the tool you’re using terminates the connection, you will need to generate the token again.

Building your application faster with Aurora databases

At re:Invent 2025, we announced enhancements to the AWS Free Tier program, offering up to $200 in AWS credits that can be used across AWS services. You’ll receive $100 in AWS credits upon sign-up and can earn an additional $100 in credits by using services such as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Lambda, and Amazon Bedrock. In addition, Amazon Aurora is now available across a broad set of eligible Free Tier database services.

Developers are embracing platforms such as Vercel, where natural language is all it takes to build production-ready applications. We announced integrations with Vercel Marketplace to create and connect to an AWS database directly from Vercel in seconds and v0 by Vercel, an AI-powered tool that transforms your ideas into production-ready, full-stack web applications in minutes. It includes Aurora PostgreSQL, Aurora DSQL, and DynamoDB databases. You can also connect your existing databases created through express configuration with Vercel. To learn more, visit AWS for Vercel.

Like Vercel, we’re bringing our databases seamlessly into their experiences and are integrating directly with widely adopted frameworks, AI assistant coding tools, environments, and developer tools, all to unlock your ability to build at the speed of an idea.

We introduced Aurora PostgreSQL integration with Kiro powers, which developers can use to build Aurora PostgreSQL backed applications faster with AI agent-assisted development through Kiro. You can use Kiro power for Aurora PostgreSQL within Kiro IDE and from the Kiro powers webpage for one-click installation. To learn more about this Kiro Power, read Introducing Amazon Aurora powers for Kiro and Amazon Aurora Postgres MCP Server.

Now available

You can create an Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database in seconds today in all AWS commercial Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, visit the AWS Capabilities by Region.

You pay only for capacity consumed based on Aurora Capacity Units (ACUs) billed per second from zero capacity, which automatically starts up, shuts down, and scales capacity up or down based on your application’s needs. To learn more, visit the Amazon Aurora Pricing page.

Give it a try in the Aurora and RDS console and send feedback to AWS re:Post for Aurora PostgreSQL or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

The post Announcing Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL serverless database creation in seconds appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

AWS has reached its 20th anniversary! With a steady pace of innovation, AWS has grown to offer over 240 comprehensive cloud services and continues to launch thousands of new features annually for millions of customers. During this time, over 4,700 posts have been published on this blog—more than double the number since Jeff Barr wrote the 10th anniversary post.

AWS changed my life

Reflecting on what I was doing 20 years ago, I met Jeff in Seoul on March 13, 2006, when he came as the keynote speaker for the Korea NGWeb conference. At that time, Amazon was one of the first pioneers to initiate an API economy, introducing ecommerce API services. After the keynote speech, he returned home that evening, and I believe he wrote the Amazon S3 launch blog post on the flight back to the United States.

That short meeting with him brought significant changes to my life. He became my role model as a blogger, and I began building API-based services in my company and opening them to third-party developers. When I was a PhD student while taking a break from work, I realized that for individual researchers like me, AWS Cloud services are powerful tools for conducting large-scale research projects. After returning to work, my company became one of the first AWS customers in Korea in 2014. Countless developers—myself included—have embraced cloud computing and actively used its capabilities to accomplish what was previously impossible.

Over the past decade, the technology landscape has transformed dramatically. Deep learning emerged as a breakthrough in AI, evolving through generative AI based on large language models (LLMs) to today’s agentic AI technology. Jeff wrote, “When looking into the future, you need to be able to distinguish between flashy distractions and genuine trends, while remaining flexible enough to pivot if yesterday’s niche becomes today’s mainstream technology.” This principle guides how AWS approaches innovation—we start by listening to what customers truly need. The real trend isn’t pursuing every emerging technology, but rather reimagining solutions that address customers’ most critical challenges.

20 years of AWS

For the first 10 years, Jeff selected his favorite AWS launches and blog posts. Amazon S3, Amazon EC2 (2006), Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (2009), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift (2012), Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon Kinesis (2013), AWS Lambda (2014), and AWS IoT (2015).

While I also hate to play favorites, I want to choose some of my favorite AWS blog posts of the past decade.

• Deploying containers easily (2014) – Amazon Elastic Container Service makes it straightforward for you to run any number of containers across a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances using powerful APIs and other tools. In 2017, we launched Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service as a fully managed Kubernetes service and AWS Fargate as a serverless deployment option.
• High availability database at global scale (2017) – Amazon Aurora is a modern relational database service offering performance and high availability at scale. In 2018, we launched Amazon Aurora Serverless v1, and this serverless database evolved to Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 to scale down to zero. In 2025, we also launched Amazon Aurora DSQL is the fastest serverless distributed SQL database for always available applications.
• Machine learning (ML) at your fingertips (2017) – Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed end-to-end ML service that data scientists, developers, and ML experts can use to quickly build, train, and host machine learning models at scale. In 2024, we launched the next generation of Amazon SageMaker, a unified platform for data, analytics, and AI and introduced Amazon SageMaker AI to focus specifically on building, training, and deploying AI and ML models at scale.
• Best price performance for cloud workloads (2018) – We launched Amazon EC2 A1 instances powered by the first generation of Arm-based AWS Graviton Processors designed to deliver the best price performance for your cloud workloads. Last year, we previewed EC2 M9g instances powered by AWS Graviton5 processors. Over 90,000 AWS customers have reaped the benefits of Graviton supporting popular AWS services such as Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon EMR, and Amazon OpenSearch Service.
• Run AWS Cloud in your data center (2019) – AWS Outposts is a family of fully managed services delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. Now, AWS Outposts is available in a variety of form factors, from 1U and 2U Outposts servers to 42U Outposts racks, and multiple rack deployments. Customers such as DISH, Fanduel, Morningstar, Philips, and others use Outposts in workloads requiring low latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing, data residency, and application migration with local system interdependencies.
• Best price performance for ML workloads (2019) – We launched Amazon EC2 Inf1 instances powered by the first generation of AWS Inferentia chips designed to provide fast, low-latency inferencing. In 2022, we launched Amazon EC2 Trn1 instances powered by the first generation of AWS Trainium chips optimized for high performance AI training. Last year, we launched Amazon EC2 Trn3 UltraServers powered by Trainium3 to deliver the best token economics for next-generation generative AI applications. Customers such as Anthropic, Decart, poolside, Databricks, Ricoh, Karakuri, SplashMusic, and others are realizing performance and cost benefits of Trainium-based instances and UltraServers.
• Build your generative AI apps on AWS (2023) – Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers a choice of industry leading AI models along with a broad set of capabilities that you need to build generative AI applications, simplifying development with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Last year, we introduced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, an agentic platform for building, deploying, and operating effective agents securely at scale. Now, more than 100,000 customers worldwide choose Amazon Bedrock to deliver personalized experiences, automate complex workflows, and uncover actionable insights.
• Your AI coding companion (2023) – We launched Amazon CodeWhisperer as the industry’s first cloud-based AI coding assistant service. The service delivered code generation from comments, open-source code reference tracking, and vulnerability scanning capabilities. In 2024, we rebranded the service to Amazon Q Developer and expanded its features to include a chat-based assistant in the console, project-based code generation, and code transformation tools. In 2025, this service evolved into Kiro, a new agentic AI development tool that brings structure to AI coding through spec-driven development, taking projects from prototype to production. Recently, Kiro previewed an autonomous agent, a frontier agent that works independently on development tasks, maintaining context and learning from every interaction.
• Broaden your AI model choices (2024) – We launched Amazon Titan models further increasing cost-effective AI model choice for text and multimodal needs in Amazon Bedrock. At AWS re:Invent 2024, we announced Amazon Nova models that delivers frontier intelligence and industry leading price performance. Now Amazon Nova has a portfolio of AI offerings—including Amazon Nova models, Amazon Nova Forge, a new service to build your own frontier models; and Amazon Nova Act, a new service to build agents that automate browser-based UI workflows powered by a custom Amazon Nova 2 Lite model.

Build with AI: Your path forward

A decade ago, AWS responded to the emergence of deep learning by launching the broadest and deepest ML services, such as Amazon SageMaker, democratizing AI for a wide range of customers—from individual developers and startups to large enterprises—regardless of their technical expertise.

AI technology has advanced significantly, but building and deploying AI models and applications still remains complex for many developers and organizations. AWS offers the broadest selection of AI models through Amazon Bedrock, including leading providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI. By using our model training and inference infrastructure and responsible AI both practical and scalable, you can accelerate trusted AI innovation while maintaining control of your data and costs—all built on our global infrastructure’s operational excellence.

Reinvent your idea, keep on learning, build confidently with AI you can trust, and share your successes with us! New AWS customers receive up to $200 in credits to try AWS AI for free. If you’re a student, start building with Kiro for free using 1,000 credits per month for one year.

— Channy

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I joined AWS in 2021, and since then I’ve watched the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance family grow at a pace that still surprises me. From AWS Graviton-powered instances to specialized accelerated computing options, it feels like every few months there’s a new instance type landing that pushes performance boundaries further. As of February 2026, AWS offers over 1,160 Amazon EC2 instance types, and that number keeps climbing.

This week’s opening news is a good example: The general availability of Amazon EC2 M8azn instances. These are general purpose, high-frequency, high-network instances powered by fifth generation AMD EPYC processors, offering the highest maximum CPU frequency in the cloud at 5 GHz. Compared to the previous generation M5zn instances, M8azn instances deliver up to 2x compute performance, 4.3x higher memory bandwidth, and a 10x larger L3 cache. They also provide up to 2x networking throughput and up to 3x Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) throughput compared with M5zn.

Built on the AWS Nitro System using sixth generation Nitro Cards, M8azn instances target workloads such as real-time financial analytics, high-performance computing, high-frequency trading, CI/CD pipelines, gaming, and simulation modeling across automotive, aerospace, energy, and telecommunications. The instances feature a 4:1 ratio of memory to vCPU and are available in 9 sizes ranging from 2 to 96 vCPUs with up to 384 GiB of memory, including two bare metal variants. For more information visit the Amazon EC2 M8azn instance page.

Last week’s launches

Here are some of the other announcements from last week:

• Amazon Bedrock adds support for six fully managed open weights models – Amazon Bedrock now supports DeepSeek V3.2, MiniMax M2.1, GLM 4.7, GLM 4.7 Flash, Kimi K2.5, and Qwen3 Coder Next. These models span frontier reasoning and agentic coding workloads. DeepSeek V3.2 and Kimi K2.5 target reasoning and agentic intelligence, GLM 4.7 and MiniMax M2.1 support autonomous coding with large output windows, and Qwen3 Coder Next and GLM 4.7 Flash provide cost-efficient alternatives for production deployment. These models are powered by Project Mantle and provide out-of-the-box compatibility with OpenAI API specifications. With the launch, you can also use new open weight models–DeepSeek v3.2 , MiniMax 2.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next in Kiro, a spec-driven AI development tool.
• Amazon Bedrock expands support for AWS PrivateLink – Amazon Bedrock now supports AWS PrivateLink for the bedrock-mantle endpoint, in addition to existing support for the bedrock-runtime endpoint. The bedrock-mantle endpoint is powered by Project Mantle, a distributed inference engine for large-scale machine learning model serving on Amazon Bedrock. Project Mantle provides serverless inference with quality of service controls, higher default customer quotas with automated capacity management, and out-of-the-box compatibility with OpenAI API specifications. AWS PrivateLink support for OpenAI API-compatible endpoints is available in 14 AWS Regions. To get started, visit the Amazon Bedrock console or the OpenAI API compatibility documentation.
• Amazon EKS Auto Mode announces enhanced logging for managed Kubernetes capabilities – You can now configure log delivery sources using Amazon CloudWatch Vended Logs in Amazon EKS Auto Mode. This helps you collect logs from Auto Mode’s managed Kubernetes capabilities for compute autoscaling, block storage, load balancing, and pod networking. Each Auto Mode capability can be configured as a CloudWatch Vended Logs delivery source with built-in AWS authentication and authorization at a reduced price compared to standard CloudWatch Logs. You can deliver logs to CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Amazon Data Firehose destinations. This feature is available in all Regions where EKS Auto Mode is available.
• Amazon OpenSearch Serverless now supports Collection Groups – You can use new Collection Groups to share OpenSearch Compute Units (OCUs) across collections with different AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys. Collection Groups reduce overall OCU costs through a shared compute model while maintaining collection-level security and access controls. They also introduce the ability to specify minimum OCU allocations alongside maximum OCU limits, providing guaranteed baseline capacity at startup for latency-sensitive applications. Collection Groups are available in all Regions where Amazon OpenSearch Serverless is currently available.
• Amazon RDS now supports backup configuration when restoring snapshots – You can view and modify the backup retention period and preferred backup window before and during snapshot restore operations. Previously, restored database instances and clusters inherited backup parameter values from snapshot metadata and could only be modified after restore was complete. You can now view backup settings as part of automated backups and snapshots, and specify or modify these values when restoring, eliminating the need for post-restoration modifications. This is available for all Amazon RDS database engines (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Db2) and Amazon Aurora (MySQL-Compatible and PostgreSQL-Compatible editions) in all AWS commercial Regions and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions at no additional cost.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Upcoming AWS events

Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits – Join AWS Summits in 2026, free in-person events where you can explore emerging cloud and AI technologies, learn best practices, and network with industry peers and experts. Upcoming Summits include Paris (April 1), London (April 22), and Bengaluru (April 23–24).

AWS AI and Data Conference 2026 – A free, single-day in-person event on March 12 at the Lyrath Convention Centre in Ireland. The conference covers designing, training, and deploying agents with Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, and QuickSight, integrating them with AWS data services, and applying governance practices to operate them at scale. The agenda includes strategic guidance and hands-on labs for architects, developers, and business leaders.

AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders, featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs. Upcoming events include Ahmedabad (February 28), Slovakia (March 11), and Pune (March 21).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Esra

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon EC2 M8azn instances, new open weights models in Amazon Bedrock, and more (February 16, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Here are the notable launches and updates from last week that can help you build, scale, and innovate on AWS.

Last week’s launches

Here are the launches that got my attention this week.

Let’s start with news related to compute and networking infrastructure:

• Introducing Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances: These new Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors. These instances offer up to 43% higher performance and 3.3x more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation instances.
• AWS Network Firewall announces new price reductions: The service has added the hourly and data processing discounts on NAT Gateways that are service-chained with Network Firewall secondary endpoints. Additionally, AWS Network Firewall has removed additional data processing charges for Advanced Inspection, which enables Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection of encrypted network traffic.
• Amazon ECS adds Network Load Balancer support for Linear and Canary deployments: Applications that commonly use NLB, such as those requiring TCP/UDP-based connections, low latency, long-lived connections, or static IP addresses, can take advantage of managed, incremental traffic shifting natively from ECS when rolling out updates.
• AWS Config now supports 30 new resource types: These range across key services including Amazon EKS, Amazon Q, and AWS IoT. This expansion provides greater coverage over your AWS environment, enabling you to more effectively discover, assess, audit, and remediate an even broader range of resources.
• Amazon DynamoDB global tables now support replication across multiple AWS accounts: DynamoDB global tables are a fully managed, serverless, multi-Region, and multi-active database. With this new capability, you can replicate tables across AWS accounts and Regions to improve resiliency, isolate workloads at the account level, and apply distinct security and governance controls.
• Amazon RDS now provides an enhanced console experience to connect to a database: The new console experience provides ready-made code snippets for Java, Python, Node.js, and other programming languages as well as tools like the psql command line utility. These code snippets are automatically adjusted based on your database’s authentication settings. For example, if your cluster uses IAM authentication, the generated code snippets will use token-based authentication to connect to the database. The console experience also includes integrated CloudShell access, offering the ability to connect to your databases directly from within the RDS console.

Then, I noticed three news items related to security and how you authenticate on AWS:

• AWS Builder ID now supports Sign in with Apple: AWS Builder ID, your profile for accessing AWS applications including AWS Builder Center, AWS Training and Certification, AWS re:Post, AWS Startups, and Kiro, now supports sign-in with Apple as a social login provider. This expansion of sign-in options builds on the existing sign-in with Google capability, providing Apple users with a streamlined way to access AWS resources without managing separate credentials on AWS.
• AWS STS now supports validation of select identity provider specific claims from Google, GitHub, CircleCI and OCI: You can reference these custom claims as condition keys in IAM role trust policies and resource control policies, expanding your ability to implement fine-grained access control for federated identities and help you establish your data perimeters. This enhancement builds upon IAM’s existing OIDC federation capabilities, which allow you to grant temporary AWS credentials to users authenticated through external OIDC-compatible identity providers.
• AWS Management Console now displays Account Name on the Navigation bar for easier account identification: You now have an easy way to identify your accounts at a glance. You can now quickly distinguish between accounts visually using the account name that appears in the navigation bar for all authorized users in that account.
• Amazon CloudFront announces mutual TLS support for origins: Now with origin mTLS support, you can implement a standardized, certificate-based authentication approach that eliminates operational burden. This enables organizations to enforce strict authentication for their proprietary content, ensuring that only verified CloudFront distributions can establish connections to backend infrastructure ranging from AWS origins and on-premises servers to third-party cloud providers and external CDNs.

Finally, there is not a single week without news around AI :

• Claude Opus 4.6 now available in Amazon Bedrock: Opus 4.6 is Anthropic’s most intelligent model to date and a premier model for coding, enterprise agents, and professional work. Claude Opus 4.6 brings advanced capabilities to Amazon Bedrock customers, including industry-leading performance for agentic tasks, complex coding projects, and enterprise-grade workflows that require deep reasoning and reliability.
• Structured outputs now available in Amazon Bedrock: Amazon Bedrock now supports structured outputs, a capability that provides consistent, machine-readable responses from foundation models that adhere to your defined JSON schemas. Instead of prompting for valid JSON and adding extra checks in your application, you can specify the format you want and receive responses that match it—making production workflows more predictable and resilient.

Upcoming AWS events

Check your calendars so that you can sign up for this upcoming event:

AWS Community Day Romania (April 23–24, 2026): This community-led AWS event brings together developers, architects, entrepreneurs, and students for more than 10 professional sessions delivered by AWS Heroes, Solutions Architects, and industry experts. Attendees can expect expert-led technical talks, insights from speakers with global conference experience, and opportunities to connect during dedicated networking breaks, all hosted at a premium venue designed to support collaboration and community engagement.

If you’re looking for more ways to stay connected beyond this event, join the AWS Builder Center to learn, build, and connect with builders in the AWS community.

Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup.

— seb

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Opus 4.6 in Amazon Bedrock, AWS Builder ID Sign in with Apple, and more (February 9, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

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As a European citizen, I understand first-hand the importance of digital sovereignty, especially for our public sector organisations and highly regulated industries. Today, I’m delighted to share that the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is now generally available to all customers. We first announced our plans to build this new independent cloud infrastructure in 2023, and today it’s ready to meet the most stringent sovereignty requirements of European customers with a comprehensive set of AWS services.

Berlin, Brandenburg Gate at sunset

Meeting European sovereignty requirements

Organizations across Europe face increasingly complex regulatory requirements around data residency, operational control, and governance independence. Too often today, European organisations with the highest sovereignty requirements are stuck in legacy on-premises environments or offerings with reduced services and functionality. In response to this critical need, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is the only fully featured and independently operated sovereign cloud backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances, and legal protections. Public sector entities and businesses in highly regulated industries need cloud infrastructure that provides enhanced sovereignty controls that maintain the innovation, security, and reliability they expect from modern cloud services. These organisations require assurance that their data and operations remain under European jurisdiction, with clear governance structures and operational autonomy within the European Union (EU).

A new independent cloud infrastructure for Europe

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud represents a physically and logically separate cloud infrastructure, with all components located entirely within the EU. The first AWS Region in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is located in the state of Brandenburg, Germany, and is generally available today. This Region operates independently from existing AWS Regions. The infrastructure features multiple Availability Zones with redundant power and networking, designed to operate continuously even if connectivity with the rest of the world is interrupted.

We plan to extend the AWS European Sovereign Cloud footprint from Germany across the EU to support stringent isolation, in-country data residency, and low latency requirements. This will start with new sovereign Local Zones located in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal. In addition, you will be able to extend the AWS European Sovereign Cloud infrastructure with AWS Dedicated Local Zones, AWS AI Factories, or AWS Outposts in locations you select, including your own on-premises data centres.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud and its Local Zones provide enhanced sovereign controls through its unique operational model. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be operated exclusively by EU residents located in the EU. This covers activities such as day-to-day operations, technical support, and customer service. We’re gradually transitioning the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be operated exclusively by EU citizens located in the EU. During this transition period, we will continue to work with a blended team of EU residents and EU citizens located in the EU.

The infrastructure is managed through dedicated European legal entities established under German law. In October 2025, AWS appointed Stéphane Israël, an EU citizen residing in the EU, as managing director. Stéphane will be responsible for the management and operations of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, including infrastructure, technology, and services, as well as leading AWS broader digital sovereignty efforts. In January 2026, AWS also appointed Stefan Hoechbauer (Vice President, Germany and Central Europe, AWS) as a managing director of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. He will work alongside Stéphane Israel to lead the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

An advisory board comprised exclusively of EU citizens, and including two independent third-party representatives, provides additional oversight and expertise on sovereignty matters.

Enhanced data residency and control

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud provides comprehensive data residency assurances so you can meet the most stringent data residency requirements. As with our existing AWS Regions around the world, all your content remains within the Region you select unless you choose otherwise. Beyond content, customer-created metadata including roles, permissions, resource labels, and configurations also stays within the EU. The infrastructure features its own dedicated AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and billing system, all operating independently within European borders.

Technical controls built into the infrastructure prevent access to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud from outside the EU. The infrastructure includes a dedicated European trust service provider for certificate authority operations and uses dedicated Amazon Route 53 name servers. These servers will only use European Top-Level Domains (TLDs) for their own names. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud has no critical dependencies on non-EU personnel or infrastructure.

Security and compliance framework

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud maintains the same core security capabilities you expect from AWS, including encryption, key management, access governance, and the AWS Nitro System for compute isolation. This means your EC2 instances benefit from cryptographically verified platform integrity and hardware-enforced boundaries that prevent unauthorized access to your data without compromising on performance, giving you both the sovereignty controls and the computational power your workloads require. The infrastructure undergoes independent third-party audits, with compliance programs including ISO/IEC 27001:2013, SOC 1/2/3 reports, and Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) C5 attestation.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereign Reference Framework defines the specific sovereignty controls across governance independence, operational control, data residency, and technical isolation. This framework is available in AWS Artifact and provides end-to-end visibility through SOC 2 attestation.

Comprehensive service availability

You can access a broad range of AWS services in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud from launch, including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock for artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) workloads. For compute, you can use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and AWS Lambda. Container orchestration is available through Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). Database services include Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Storage options include Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), with networking through Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and security services including AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and AWS Private Certificate Authority. For an up-to-date list of services, refer to the AWS Capabilities matrix recently published on the AWS Builder Center.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is supported by AWS Partners who are committed to helping you meet your sovereignty requirements. Partners including Adobe, Cisco, Cloudera, Dedalus, Esri, Genesys, GitLab, Mendix, Pega, SAP, SnowFlake, Trend Micro, and Wiz are making their solutions available in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, providing you with the tools and services you need across security, data analytics, application development, and industry-specific workloads. This broad partner support helps you build sovereign solutions that combine AWS services with trusted partner technologies.

Significant investment in European infrastructure

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is backed by a €7.8 billion investment in infrastructure, jobs creation, and skills development. This investment is expected to contribute €17.2 billion to the European economy through 2040 and support roughly 2,800 full-time equivalent jobs annually in local businesses.

Some technical details

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is available to all customers, regardless of where they are located. You can access the infrastructure using the partition name aws-eusc and the Region name eusc-de-east-1. A partition is a group of AWS Regions. Each AWS account is scoped to one partition.

The infrastructure supports all standard AWS access methods including the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, and the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), making it straightforward to integrate into your existing workflows and automation. After having created a new root account for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud partition, you start by creating new IAM identities and roles specific to this infrastructure, giving you complete control over access management within the European sovereign environment.

Getting started

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud provides European organisations with enhanced sovereignty controls whilst maintaining access to AWS innovation and capabilities. You can contract for services through Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, with pricing in EUR and billing in any of the eight currencies we support today. The infrastructure uses familiar AWS architecture, service portfolio, and APIs, making it straightforward to build and migrate applications.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud addendum contains the additional contractual commitments for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

For me as a European, this launch represents the AWS commitment to meeting the specific needs of our continent and providing the cloud capabilities that drive innovation across industries. I invite you to find out more about the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and how it can help your organisation meet its sovereignty requirements. Read Overview of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to learn more about the design goals and approach, sign up for a new account, and plan for the deployment of your first workload today.

— seb

German version

Start der AWS European Sovereign Cloud

Als Bürger Europas weiß ich aus eigener Erfahrung, wie wichtig digitale Souveränität ist, insbesondere für unsere öffentlichen Einrichtungen und stark regulierten Branchen. Ich freue mich, Ihnen heute mitteilen zu können, dass die AWS European Sovereign Cloud nun für alle Kunden allgemein verfügbar ist. Wir haben unsere Pläne zum Aufbau dieser neuen unabhängigen Cloud-Infrastruktur erstmals im Jahr 2023 vorgestellt. Heute ist diese Infrastruktur bereit, mit einem umfassenden Angebot an AWS-Services die strengsten Souveränitätsanforderungen europäischer Kunden zu erfüllen.

Berlin, Brandenburger Tor bei Sonnenuntergang

Erfüllung europäischer Souveränitätsanforderungen

Organisationen in ganz Europa sehen sich mit zunehmend komplexen regulatorischen Anforderungen in Bezug auf Datenresidenz, operative Kontrolle und Unabhängigkeit der Governance konfrontiert. Europäische Organisationen mit höchsten Souveränitätsanforderungen sind heutzutage allzu oft in veralteten lokalen Umgebungen oder Angeboten mit eingeschränkten Services und Funktionen gefangen. Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud ist die Antwort auf diesen dringenden Bedarf. Sie ist die einzige unabhängig betriebene souveräne Cloud mit vollem Funktionsumfang, die durch strenge technische Kontrollen, Souveränitätszusicherungen und rechtlichen Schutz abgesichert ist. Einrichtungen des öffentlichen Sektors und Unternehmen in stark regulierten Branchen benötigen eine Cloud-Infrastruktur, die erweiterte Souveränitätskontrollen bietet und gleichzeitig die von modernen Cloud-Services erwartete Innovation, Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit gewährleistet. Diese Organisationen benötigen die Zusicherung, dass ihre Daten und Aktivitäten unter europäischer Zuständigkeit bleiben, mit klaren Governance-Strukturen und operativer Autonomie innerhalb der Europäischen Union (EU).

Eine neue unabhängige Cloud-Infrastruktur für Europa

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud ist eine physisch und logisch getrennte Cloud-Infrastruktur, deren Komponenten sich vollständig innerhalb der EU befinden. Die erste AWS-Region in der AWS European Sovereign Cloud befindet sich im deutschen Bundesland Brandenburg und ist ab heute allgemein verfügbar. Diese Region arbeitet unabhängig von bestehenden AWS-Regionen. Die Infrastruktur umfasst mehrere Availability Zones mit redundanter Stromversorgung und Netzwerkverbindung, die auch bei einer Unterbrechung der Verbindung zum Rest der Welt einen kontinuierlichen Betrieb gewährleisten.

Wir beabsichtigen, die Präsenz der AWS European Sovereign Cloud von Deutschland aus EU-weit auszuweiten, um strenge Anforderungen hinsichtlich Isolierung, Datenresidenz innerhalb einzelner Länder und geringer Latenz zu erfüllen. Dies beginnt mit neuen souveränen Local Zones in Belgien, den Niederlanden und Portugal. Darüber hinaus können Sie die Infrastruktur der AWS European Sovereign Cloud mit dedizierten AWS Local Zones, AWS AI Factories oder AWS Outposts an Standorten Ihrer Wahl, einschließlich Ihrer eigenen lokalen Rechenzentren, erweitern.

Dank ihres einzigartigen Betriebsmodells bieten die AWS European Sovereign Cloud und ihre Local Zones erweiterte Souveränitätskontrollen. Der Betrieb der AWS European Sovereign Cloud wird ausschließlich von EU-Bürgern mit Wohnsitz in der EU sichergestellt. Dies umfasst Aktivitäten wie den täglichen Betrieb, den technischen Support und den Kundenservice. Wir stellen die AWS European Sovereign Cloud schrittweise so um, dass als Betriebspersonal ausschließlich EU-Bürger mit Wohnsitz in der EU zum Einsatz kommen. Während dieser Übergangsphase werden wir weiterhin mit einem gemischten Team aus in der EU ansässigen Personen und in der EU lebenden EU-Bürgern arbeiten.

Die Infrastruktur wird durch spezielle europäische juristische Personen nach deutschem Recht verwaltet. Im Oktober 2025 berief AWS Stéphane Israël, einen in der EU ansässigen EU-Bürger, zum Geschäftsführer. Stéphane wird für das Management und den Betrieb der AWS European Sovereign Cloud verantwortlich zeichnen. Dies umfasst die Bereiche Infrastruktur, Technologie und Services sowie die Federführung bei den breit angelegten Initiativen von AWS auf dem Gebiet der digitalen Souveränität. Im Januar 2026 ernannte AWS zudem Stefan Hoechbauer (Vice President, Germany and Central Europe, AWS) zum Geschäftsführer der AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Er wird gemeinsam mit Stéphane Israel die Leitung der AWS European Sovereign Cloud innehaben.

Ein Beirat, dem ausschließlich EU-Bürger, einschließlich zwei unabhängigen externen Vertretern, angehören, fungiert als zusätzliche Kontrollinstanz und bringt Fachwissen in Fragen der Souveränität ein.

Verbesserte Datenresidenz und -kontrolle

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud bietet umfassende Garantien hinsichtlich der Datenresidenz, sodass Sie selbst die strengsten Anforderungen in diesem Bereich erfüllen können. Wie auch bei unseren bestehenden AWS-Regionen weltweit verbleiben alle Ihre Inhalte in der von Ihnen ausgewählten Region, sofern Sie keine anderen Einstellungen vornehmen. Neben den Inhalten verbleiben auch die vom Kunden erstellten Metadaten, einschließlich Rollen, Berechtigungen, Ressourcenbezeichnungen und Konfigurationen, innerhalb der EU. Die Infrastruktur verfügt über ein eigenes AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) und ein eigenes Abrechnungssystem – beides wird innerhalb der europäischen Grenzen unabhängig betrieben.

In die Infrastruktur integrierte technische Kontrollen verhindern den Zugriff auf die AWS European Sovereign Cloud von außerhalb der EU. Die Infrastruktur umfasst einen dedizierten europäischen Trust Service Provider für Zertifizierungsstellen und nutzt dedizierte Amazon-Route-53-Namenserver. Diese Server verwenden ausschließlich europäische Top-Level-Domains (TLDs) für ihre eigenen Namen. Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud unterliegt keinen kritischen Abhängigkeiten hinsichtlich Personal oder Infrastruktur außerhalb der EU.

Sicherheits- und Compliance-Framework

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud bietet dieselben zentralen Sicherheitsfunktionen, die Sie von AWS erwarten. Dazu gehören Verschlüsselung, Schlüsselverwaltung, Zugriffskontrolle und das AWS Nitro System für die Isolierung von Rechenressourcen. Dies bedeutet, dass Ihre EC2-Instanzen von einer kryptografisch verifizierten Plattformintegrität und hardwaregestützten Grenzen profitieren, die unbefugten Zugriff auf Ihre Daten verhindern, ohne die Leistung zu beeinträchtigen. So erhalten Sie sowohl die Souveränitätskontrollen als auch die Rechenleistung, die Ihre Workloads erfordern. Die Infrastruktur wird unabhängigen Audits durch Dritte unterzogen. Die Compliance-Programme umfassen ISO/IEC 27001:2013, SOC-1/2/3-Berichte und das C5-Zertifikat des Bundesamtes für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI).

Das AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereign Reference Framework definiert spezifische Souveränitätskontrollen in den Bereichen Governance-Unabhängigkeit, operative Kontrolle, Datenresidenz und technische Isolierung. Dieses Framework ist in AWS Artifact verfügbar und bietet durch SOC-2-Zertifizierung durchgängige Transparenz.

Umfassende Serviceverfügbarkeit

Von Beginn an steht Ihnen in der AWS European Sovereign Cloud eine breite Palette von AWS-Services zur Verfügung – darunter Amazon SageMaker und Amazon Bedrock für Workloads im Bereich Künstliche Intelligenz und Machine Learning (KI/ML). Für die Rechenleistung stehen Ihnen Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) und AWS Lambda zur Verfügung. Die Container-Orchestrierung ist über den Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) und den Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) verfügbar. Zu den Datenbank-Services gehören Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB und Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Die Speicheroptionen umfassen Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) und Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) mit Vernetzung über Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) und Sicherheits-Services wie AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) und AWS Private Certificate Authority. Eine aktuelle Liste der Services finden Sie in der AWS-Funktionsmatrix, die kürzlich im AWS Builder Center veröffentlicht wurde.

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud wird von AWS-Partnern unterstützt, die es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht haben, Ihnen bei der Erfüllung Ihrer Souveränitätsanforderungen zur Seite zu stehen. Partner wie Adobe, Cisco, Cloudera, Dedalus, Esri, Genesys, GitLab, Mendix, Pega, SAP, SnowFlake, Trend Micro und Wiz stellen ihre Lösungen in der AWS European Sovereign Cloud zur Verfügung und bieten Ihnen die Tools und Services, die Sie in den Bereichen Sicherheit, Datenanalyse, Entwicklung von Anwendungen und branchenspezifische Workloads benötigen. Dank dieser umfassenden Unterstützung durch Partner können Sie eigenständige Lösungen, die AWS-Services mit bewährten Partnertechnologien kombinieren, entwickeln.

Erhebliche Investitionen in die europäische Infrastruktur

Hinter der AWS European Sovereign Cloud steht eine Investition in Höhe von 7,8 Milliarden Euro in Infrastruktur, die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen und die Entwicklung von Kompetenzen. Diese Investition wird bis 2040 voraussichtlich 17,2 Milliarden Euro zur europäischen Wirtschaftsleistung beitragen und jährlich rund 2 800 Vollzeitstellen in lokalen Unternehmen sichern.

Einige technische Details

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud steht allen Kunden zur Verfügung, unabhängig davon, wo sie sich befinden. Sie können mit dem Partitionsnamen aws-eusc und dem Regionsnamen eusc-de-east-1 auf die Infrastruktur zugreifen. Eine Partition ist eine Gruppe von AWS-Regionen. Jedes AWS-Konto ist auf eine Partition beschränkt.

Die Infrastruktur unterstützt alle gängigen AWS-Zugriffsmethoden, einschließlich der AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs und der AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), sodass sie sich problemlos in Ihre bestehenden Workflows und Automatisierungsprozesse integrieren lässt. Nachdem Sie ein neues Root-Konto für die Partition der AWS European Sovereign Cloud erstellt haben, beginnen Sie mit der Erstellung neuer IAM-Identitäten und -Rollen, die speziell für diese Infrastruktur vorgesehen sind. Dadurch erhalten Sie die vollständige Kontrolle über die Zugriffsverwaltung innerhalb der europäischen souveränen Umgebung.

Erste Schritte

Die AWS European Sovereign Cloud bietet europäischen Organisationen erweiterte Souveränitätskontrollen und gewährleistet gleichzeitig den Zugriff auf die Innovationen und Funktionen von AWS. Sie können Services über Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL in Auftrag geben. Die Preise werden in Euro angegeben und die Abrechnung erfolgt in einer der acht Währungen, die wir derzeit unterstützen. Die Infrastruktur basiert auf der bekannten AWS-Architektur, dem AWS-Serviceportfolio und den AWS-APIs, wodurch die Entwicklung und Migration von Anwendungen vereinfacht wird.

Der AWS European Sovereign Cloud Addendum enthält die zusätzlichen vertraglichen Verpflichtungen für die AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Für mich als Europäer symbolisiert dieser Launch das Engagement von AWS, den spezifischen Anforderungen unseres Kontinents gerecht zu werden und Cloud-Funktionen bereitzustellen, die Innovationen in allen Branchen vorantreiben. Ich lade Sie ein, mehr über die AWS European Sovereign Cloud zu erfahren und zu entdecken, wie sie Ihrer Organisation dabei helfen kann, ihre Souveränitätsanforderungen zu erfüllen. Lesen Sie die Übersicht über die AWS European Sovereign Cloud und erfahren Sie mehr über die Designziele und den Ansatz. Registrieren Sie sich für ein neues Konto und planen Sie noch heute die Bereitstellung Ihrer ersten Workload.

— seb

French version

Ouverture de l’AWS European Souvereign Cloud

En tant que citoyen européen, je mesure personnellement l’importance de la souveraineté numérique, en particulier pour nos organisations du secteur public et les industries fortement réglementées. Aujourd’hui, j’ai le plaisir d’annoncer que l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est désormais disponible pour l’ensemble de nos clients. Nous avions annoncé pour la première fois notre projet de construction de cette nouvelle infrastructure cloud indépendante en 2023, et elle est aujourd’hui prête à répondre aux exigences de souveraineté les plus strictes des clients européens, avec un large ensemble de services AWS.

Berlin, porte de Brandebourg au coucher du soleil

Répondre aux exigences européennes en matière de souveraineté

Partout en Europe, les organisations sont confrontées à des exigences réglementaires de plus en plus complexes en matière de résidence des données, de contrôle opérationnel et d’indépendance de la gouvernance. Trop souvent aujourd’hui, les organisations européennes ayant les besoins de souveraineté les plus élevés se retrouvent contraintes de rester sur des environnements sur site, ou de recourir à des offres cloud aux services et fonctionnalités limités. Pour répondre à cet enjeu critique, l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est le seul cloud souverain entièrement fonctionnel, exploité de manière indépendante, et reposant sur des contrôles techniques robustes, des garanties de souveraineté et des protections juridiques solides. Les acteurs du secteur public et les entreprises des secteurs fortement réglementés ont besoin d’une infrastructure cloud offrant des contrôles de souveraineté renforcés, sans renoncer à l’innovation, à la sécurité et à la fiabilité attendues des services cloud modernes. Ces organisations doivent avoir l’assurance que leurs données et leurs opérations restent sous juridiction européenne, avec des structures de gouvernance claires et une autonomie opérationnelle au sein de l’Union européenne (UE).

Une nouvelle infrastructure cloud indépendante pour l’Europe

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud repose sur une infrastructure cloud physiquement et logiquement distincte, dont l’ensemble des composants est situé exclusivement au sein de l’UE. La première région AWS de l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est implantée dans le Land de Brandebourg, en Allemagne, et est disponible dès aujourd’hui. Cette région fonctionne de façon indépendante par rapport aux autres régions AWS existantes. L’infrastructure comprend plusieurs zones de disponibilité, avec des systèmes redondants d’alimentation et de réseau, conçus pour fonctionner en continu même en cas d’interruption de la connectivité avec le reste du monde.

Nous prévoyons d’étendre l’empreinte de l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud depuis l’Allemagne à l’ensemble de l’UE, afin de répondre aux exigences strictes d’isolation, de résidence des données dans certains pays et de faible latence. Cette extension débutera avec de nouvelles Local Zones souveraines situées en Belgique, aux Pays-Bas et au Portugal. En complément, vous pourrez étendre l’infrastructure de l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud à l’aide des AWS Dedicated Local Zones, des AWS AI Factories ou d’AWS Outposts, dans les sites de votre choix, y compris au sein de vos propres centres de données sur site.

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud et ses Local Zones offrent des contrôles de souveraineté renforcés grâce à un modèle opérationnel unique. L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est exploité exclusivement par des résidents de l’UE basés dans l’UE. Cela couvre notamment les opérations quotidiennes, le support technique et le service client. Nous sommes en train d’opérer une transition progressive afin que l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud soit exploité exclusivement par des citoyens de l’UE résidant dans l’UE. Durant cette période de transition, nous continuons de travailler avec une équipe mixte composée de résidents de l’UE et de citoyens de l’UE basés dans l’UE.

L’infrastructure est gérée par des entités juridiques européennes dédiées, établies conformément au droit allemand. En octobre 2025, AWS a nommé Stéphane Israël, citoyen de l’UE résidant dans l’UE, au poste de directeur général. Stéphane est responsable de la gestion et de l’exploitation de l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, couvrant l’infrastructure, la technologie et les services, ainsi que de la direction des initiatives plus larges d’AWS en matière de souveraineté numérique. En janvier 2026, AWS a également nommé Stefan Hoechbauer (Vice-président, Allemagne et Europe centrale, AWS) comme directeur général de l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Il travaillera aux côtés de Stéphane Israël pour piloter l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Un conseil consultatif, composé exclusivement de citoyens de l’UE et incluant deux représentants indépendants, apporte un niveau supplémentaire de supervision et d’expertise sur les questions de souveraineté.

Résidence des données et contrôle renforcés

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud fournit des garanties complètes en matière de résidence des données afin de répondre aux exigences les plus strictes. Comme dans les régions AWS existantes à travers le monde, l’ensemble de vos contenus reste dans la région que vous sélectionnez, sauf indication contraire de votre part. Au-delà des contenus, les métadonnées créées par les clients — telles que les rôles, les autorisations, les étiquettes de ressources et les configurations — restent également au sein de l’UE. L’infrastructure dispose de son propre système dédié de AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) et de facturation, opérant de manière totalement indépendante à l’intérieur des frontières européennes.

Des contrôles techniques intégrés à l’infrastructure empêchent tout accès à l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud depuis l’extérieur de l’UE. L’infrastructure comprend un prestataire européen de services de confiance dédié pour les opérations d’autorité de certification et utilise des serveurs de noms Amazon Route 53 dédiés. Ces serveurs n’utilisent que des domaines de premier niveau (TLD) européens pour leurs propres noms. L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud ne présente aucune dépendance critique vis-à-vis de personnels ou d’infrastructures situés en dehors de l’UE.

Cadre de sécurité et de conformité

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud conserve les capacités de sécurité fondamentales attendues d’AWS, notamment le chiffrement, la gestion des clés, la gouvernance des accès et le système AWS Nitro pour l’isolation des charges de calcul. Concrètement, vos instances EC2 bénéficient d’une intégrité de plateforme vérifiée cryptographiquement et de frontières matérielles, empêchant tout accès non autorisé à vos données sans compromis sur les performances. Vous bénéficiez ainsi à la fois des contrôles de souveraineté et de la puissance de calcul nécessaires à vos charges de travail. L’infrastructure fait l’objet d’audits indépendants réalisés par des tiers, et s’inscrit dans des programmes de conformité incluant ISO/IEC 27001:2013, les rapports SOC 1/2/3, ainsi que l’attestation C5 de l’Office fédéral allemand pour la sécurité de l’information (BSI).

Le AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereign Reference Framework définit précisément les contrôles de souveraineté couvrant l’indépendance de la gouvernance, le contrôle opérationnel, la résidence des données et l’isolation technique. Ce cadre est disponible dans AWS Artifact et offre une visibilité de bout en bout via une attestation SOC 2.

Disponibilité étendue des services

Dès son lancement, l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud donne accès à un large éventail de services AWS, notamment Amazon SageMaker et Amazon Bedrock pour les charges de travail d’intelligence artificielle et de machine learning (IA/ML). Pour le calcul, vous pouvez utiliser Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) et AWS Lambda. L’orchestration de conteneurs est disponible via Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) et Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). Les services de bases de données incluent Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB et Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Les options de stockage comprennent Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) et Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), avec des capacités réseau via Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) et des services de sécurité tels que AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) et AWS Private Certificate Authority. Pour obtenir la liste la plus à jour des services disponibles, consultez la matrice des capacités AWS récemment publiée sur l’AWS Builder Center.

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est supporté par de nombreux partenaires AWS engagés à vous aider à répondre à vos exigences de souveraineté. Des partenaires tels qu’Adobe, Cisco, Cloudera, Dedalus, Esri, Genesys, GitLab, Mendix, Pega, SAP, SnowFlake, Trend Micro et Wiz rendent leurs solutions disponibles sur l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, vous offrant ainsi les outils et services nécessaires dans les domaines de la sécurité, de l’analyse de données, du développement applicatif et des charges de travail spécifiques à certains secteurs industriels. Cet ensemble de partenaires vous permet de construire des solutions souveraines combinant les services AWS et des technologies de partenaires de confiance.

Un investissement majeur dans l’infrastructure européenne

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud s’appuie sur un investissement de 7,8 milliards d’euros dans l’infrastructure, la création d’emplois et le développement des compétences. Cet investissement devrait contribuer à hauteur de 17,2 milliards d’euros à l’économie européenne d’ici 2040 et soutenir environ 2.800 emplois équivalent temps plein par an au sein des entreprises locales.

Quelques détails techniques

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud est accessible à tous les clients, quel que soit leur lieu d’implantation. Vous pouvez accéder à l’infrastructure en utilisant le nom de partition aws-eusc et le nom de région eusc-de-east-1. Une partition correspond à un ensemble de régions AWS. Chaque compte AWS est rattaché à une seule partition.

L’infrastructure prend en charge toutes les méthodes d’accès AWS standards, y compris la console de gestion AWS, les AWS SDKs et la AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), ce qui facilite son intégration dans vos flux de travail et vos automatisations existants. Après avoir créé un nouveau compte racine pour la partition AWS European Sovereign Cloud, vous commencez par définir de nouvelles identités et rôles IAM spécifiques à cette infrastructure, vous donnant un contrôle total sur la gestion des accès au sein de l’environnement souverain européen.

Pour commencer

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud offre aux organisations européennes des contrôles de souveraineté renforcés tout en leur permettant de continuer à bénéficier de l’innovation et des capacités d’AWS. Vous pouvez contractualiser les services via Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, avec une tarification en euros et une facturation possible dans l’une des huit devises que nous prenons en charge aujourd’hui. L’infrastructure repose sur une architecture, un portefeuille de services et des API AWS familiers, ce qui simplifie le développement et la migration des applications.

L’avenant AWS European Sovereign Cloud précise les engagements contractuels supplémentaires propres à l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

En tant qu’Européen, ce lancement illustre l’engagement d’AWS à répondre aux besoins spécifiques de notre continent et à fournir les capacités cloud qui stimulent l’innovation dans tous les secteurs. Je vous invite à découvrir l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud et à comprendre comment il peut aider votre organisation à satisfaire ses exigences de souveraineté. Consultez Overview of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (en anglais) pour en savoir plus sur les objectifs de conception et l’approche retenue, créez un nouveau compte et planifiez dès aujourd’hui le déploiement de votre première charge de travail.

— seb

Italian version

Lancio di AWS European Sovereign Cloud

Come cittadino europeo, conosco benissimo l’importanza della sovranità digitale, in particolare per le nostre organizzazioni del settore pubblico e dei settori altamente regolamentati. Oggi sono lieto di annunciare che AWS European Sovereign Cloud è ora generalmente disponibile per tutti i clienti. Abbiamo annunciato per la prima volta i nostri piani per la creazione di questa nuova infrastruttura cloud indipendente nel 2023. Finalmente oggi è pronta a soddisfare i più rigorosi requisiti di sovranità dei clienti europei con un set completo di servizi AWS.

Berlino, Porta di Brandeburgo al tramonto

Soddisfare i requisiti di sovranità europea

Le organizzazioni di tutta Europa devono far fronte a requisiti normativi sempre più complessi in materia di residenza dei dati, controllo operativo e indipendenza della governance. Troppo spesso, le organizzazioni europee con i più elevati requisiti di sovranità sono bloccate a causa di offerte o ambienti on-premises legacy con funzionalità e servizi ridotti. In risposta a questa esigenza fondamentale, l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud rappresenta l’unico cloud sovrano con funzionalità complete e a gestione autonoma. supportato da solidi controlli tecnici, garanzie di sovranità e protezioni legali. Gli enti pubblici e le aziende di settori altamente regolamentati necessitano di un’infrastruttura cloud che fornisca controlli di sovranità avanzati che garantiscano l’innovazione, la sicurezza e l’affidabilità che si aspettano dai moderni servizi cloud. Queste organizzazioni devono essere certe che i propri dati e le proprie operazioni restino sotto la giurisdizione europea, con chiare strutture di governance e autonomia operativa nell’ambito dell’Unione europea (UE).

Una nuova infrastruttura cloud indipendente per l’Europa

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud rappresenta un’infrastruttura cloud separata fisicamente e logicamente, con tutti i componenti situati interamente all’interno dell’UE. La prima Regione AWS nell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, situata nello stato di Brandeburgo (Germania) e ora disponibile a livello generale, opera indipendentemente dalle Regioni AWS esistenti. L’infrastruttura presenta diverse zone di disponibilità con risorse di alimentazione e rete ridondanti, progettate per funzionare continuamente anche in caso di interruzione della connettività con il resto del mondo.

Abbiamo intenzione di estendere la presenza dell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud dalla Germania all’intera UE per supportare i rigorosi requisiti di isolamento, residenza dei dati all’interno di un determinato Paese e bassa latenza. Inizieremo con nuove zone locali sovrane situate in Belgio, nei Paesi Bassi e in Portogallo. Inoltre, sarà possibile estendere l’infrastruttura AWS European Sovereign Cloud con Zone locali AWS dedicate, AWS AI Factories o AWS Outposts in posizioni selezionate, inclusi i data center on-premises.

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud e le relative zone locali forniscono controlli sovrani avanzati tramite un modello operativo esclusivo. L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud sarà gestito esclusivamente da residenti UE che si trovano nell’UE. Ciò copre attività come operazioni quotidiane, supporto tecnico e servizio clienti. Stiamo gradualmente trasformando l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud in modo che sia gestito esclusivamente da cittadini UE che si trovano nell’UE. Durante questo periodo di transizione, continueremo a lavorare con un team misto di residenti e cittadini comunitari che si trovano nell’UE.

L’infrastruttura è gestita da entità giuridiche europee dedicate, costituite secondo il diritto tedesco. Nell’ottobre 2025, AWS ha assegnato l’incarico di managing director a Stéphane Israël, cittadino comunitario residente nell’UE. Sarà responsabile della gestione e delle operazioni dell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, inclusi infrastruttura, tecnologia e servizi, oltre a guidare le più ampie iniziative di sovranità digitale di AWS. Nel gennaio 2026, AWS ha inoltre nominato managing director dell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud Stefan Höchbauer (vicepresidente, Germania ed Europa centrale, AWS). Collaborerà con Stéphane Israël per guidare l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Un comitato consultivo composto esclusivamente da cittadini comunitari, inclusi due rappresentanti terzi indipendenti, fornirà ulteriore supervisione e competenza in materia di sovranità.

Ottimizzazione del controllo e della residenza dei dati

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud offre garanzie complete sulla residenza dei dati in modo da poter soddisfare i requisiti più rigorosi in materia. Come per le nostre Regioni AWS esistenti a livello mondiale, tutti i contenuti restano all’interno della Regione selezionata, a meno che non si scelga diversamente. Oltre ai contenuti, anche i metadati creati dai clienti, tra cui ruoli, autorizzazioni, etichette delle risorse e configurazioni, restano nell’ambito dell’UE. L’infrastruttura è dotata di un proprio sistema AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) e di fatturazione dedicato, completamente gestito in modo indipendente all’interno dei confini europei.

I controlli tecnici integrati nell’infrastruttura impediscono l’accesso all’AWS European Sovereign Cloud dall’esterno dell’UE. L’infrastruttura include un provider di servizi fiduciari europeo dedicato per le operazioni delle autorità di certificazione e utilizza nameserver Amazon Route 53 dedicati. Questi server utilizzeranno solo domini di primo livello (TLD) europei per i propri nomi. L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud non ha dipendenze fondamentali da personale o infrastrutture non UE.

Framework di sicurezza e conformità

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud mantiene le stesse funzionalità di sicurezza di base di AWS, tra cui crittografia, gestione delle chiavi, governance degli accessi e AWS Nitro System per l’isolamento computazionale. Ciò significa che le istanze EC2 beneficiano dell’integrità della piattaforma verificata a livello di crittografia e dei limiti imposti dall’hardware che impediscono l’accesso non autorizzato ai dati senza compromettere le prestazioni, offrendo i controlli di sovranità e la potenza di calcolo richiesti dai carichi di lavoro. L’infrastruttura è sottoposta ad audit di terze parti indipendenti, con programmi di conformità che includono ISO/IEC 27001:2013, report SOC 1/2/3 e attestazione C5 dell’Ufficio Federale per la Sicurezza Informatica (BSI).

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Sovereign Reference Framework definisce i controlli di sovranità specifici in termini di indipendenza della governance, controllo operativo, residenza dei dati e isolamento tecnico. Questo framework è disponibile in AWS Artifact e fornisce visibilità end-to-end tramite l’attestazione SOC 2.

Disponibilità completa del servizio

Dal momento del lancio, sarà possibile accedere a un’ampia gamma di servizi AWS nell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, tra cui Amazon SageMaker e Amazon Bedrock per carichi di lavoro di intelligenza artificiale e machine learning (IA/ML). Per i calcoli, è possibile utilizzare Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) e AWS Lambda. L’orchestrazione di container è disponibile tramite Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) e Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). I servizi di database includono Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB e Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Le opzioni di storage includono Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) e Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), con connessione in rete tramite Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) e servizi di sicurezza tra cui Servizio AWS di gestione delle chiavi (AWS KMS) e Autorità di certificazione privata AWS (AWS Private CA). Per un elenco aggiornato dei servizi, è possibile consultare l’elenco delle funzionalità AWS pubblicato di recente su AWS Builder Center.

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud è supportato dai partner AWS, che aiutano a soddisfare i propri requisiti di sovranità. Partner come Adobe, Cisco, Cloudera, Dedalus, Esri, Genesys, GitLab, Mendix, Pega, SAP, SnowFlake, Trend Micro e Wiz stanno rendendo disponibili le loro soluzioni nell’AWS European Sovereign Cloud, fornendo gli strumenti e i servizi necessari per la sicurezza, l’analisi dei dati, lo sviluppo di applicazioni e i carichi di lavoro specifici del settore. Questo ampio supporto dei partner aiuta a creare soluzioni sovrane che combinano i servizi AWS con tecnologie di partner affidabili.

Investimenti significativi nelle infrastrutture europee

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud è sostenuto da un investimento di 7,8 miliardi di euro destinati a infrastrutture, creazione di posti di lavoro e sviluppo delle competenze. Si prevede che questo investimento contribuirà con 17,2 miliardi di euro all’economia europea fino al 2040 e sosterrà circa 2.800 posti di lavoro equivalenti a tempo pieno all’anno nelle aziende locali.

Alcuni dettagli tecnici

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud è disponibile per tutti i clienti, indipendentemente da dove si trovino. È possibile accedere all’infrastruttura utilizzando il nome della partizione aws-eusc e il nome della Regione eusc-de-east-1. Una partizione è un gruppo di Regioni AWS. Ogni account AWS è associato a una partizione.

L’infrastruttura supporta tutti i metodi di accesso AWS standard, tra cui la Console di gestione AWS, gli SDK AWS e l’interfaccia della linea di comando AWS (AWS CLI), semplificando l’integrazione nell’automazione e nei flussi di lavoro esistenti. Dopo aver creato un nuovo account root per la partizione Di AWS European Sovereign Cloud, si inizia creando nuove identità e ruoli IAM specifici per questa infrastruttura, che consentiranno di avere il controllo completo sulla gestione degli accessi all’interno dell’ambiente sovrano europeo.

Nozioni di base

L’AWS European Sovereign Cloud fornisce alle organizzazioni europee controlli di sovranità avanzati pur mantenendo l’accesso all’innovazione e alle funzionalità di AWS. È possibile contrattare servizi tramite Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, con prezzi in EUR e fatturazione in una delle otto valute supportate oggi. L’infrastruttura utilizza l’architettura AWS, il portafoglio di servizi e le API tradizionali, semplificando la creazione e la migrazione delle applicazioni.

L’addendum di AWS European Sovereign Cloud include gli impegni contrattuali aggiuntivi per l’AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Per me come europeo, questo lancio rappresenta l’impegno di AWS per soddisfare le esigenze specifiche del nostro continente e fornire le funzionalità cloud che guidano l’innovazione in tutti i settori. Invito tutti a scoprire di più sull’AWS European Sovereign Cloud e su come può aiutare le organizzazioni a soddisfare i requisiti di sovranità. Nella Panoramica di AWS European Sovereign Cloud sono disponibili maggiori informazioni sugli obiettivi e sull’approccio di progettazione, creare un nuovo account  e pianificare l’implementazione del primo carico di lavoro oggi stesso.

— seb

Spanish version

Apertura de AWS European Sovereign Cloud

Como ciudadano europeo, comprendo de primera mano la importancia de la soberanía digital, especialmente para las organizaciones de nuestro sector público y las industrias altamente reguladas. Hoy me complace anunciar que la AWS European Sovereign Cloud ya está disponible de forma generalizada para todos los clientes. Anunciamos por primera vez nuestros planes de crear esta nueva infraestructura de nube independiente en 2023, y hoy está lista para cumplir los requisitos de soberanía más estrictos de los clientes europeos con un exhaustivo conjunto de servicios de AWS.

Berlín, Puerta de Brandeburgo al atardecer

Cumplimiento de los requisitos de soberanía europeos

Las organizaciones de toda Europa se enfrentan a unos requisitos normativos cada vez más complejos en relación con la residencia de los datos, el control operativo y la independencia de la gobernanza. Hoy en día, con demasiada frecuencia, las organizaciones europeas con los requisitos de soberanía más estrictos se ven atrapadas en entornos locales heredados u ofertas con servicios y funcionalidades reducidos. En respuesta a esta necesidad crítica, la AWS European Sovereign Cloud es la única nube soberana independiente con todas las características que está respaldada por sólidos controles técnicos, garantías de soberanía y protecciones legales. Las entidades del sector público y las empresas de industrias altamente reguladas necesitan una infraestructura en la nube que proporcione controles de soberanía mejorados que mantengan la innovación, la seguridad y la fiabilidad que se esperan de los servicios modernos en la nube. Estas organizaciones necesitan la garantía de que sus datos y operaciones permanecen bajo la jurisdicción europea, con estructuras de gobernanza claras y autonomía operativa dentro de la Unión Europea (UE).

Una nueva infraestructura de nube independiente para Europa

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud es una infraestructura de nube separada de manera física y lógica, en la que todos los componentes están ubicados íntegramente dentro de la UE. La primera región de AWS de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud se encuentra en el estado de Brandeburgo (Alemania) y ya está disponible para el público en general. Esta región opera de forma independiente de las regiones de AWS existentes. La infraestructura cuenta con varias zonas de disponibilidad con fuentes de alimenacion y redes redundantes, diseñadas para funcionar de forma continua incluso si se interrumpe la conectividad con el resto del mundo.

Tenemos previsto ampliar la presencia de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud de Alemania a toda la UE para cumplir los requisitos de aismlamiento estrictos, residencia de los datos dentro del país y baja latencia. Esto comenzará con nuevas zonas locales soberanas ubicadas en Bélgica, los Países Bajos y Portugal. Además, podrá ampliar la infraestructura de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud con zonas locales dedicadas de AWS, AWS AI Factories o AWS Outposts en las ubicaciones que elija, incluidos sus propios centros de datos locales.

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud y sus zonas locales proporcionan controles soberanos mejorados a través de su modelo operativo único. La AWS European Sovereign Cloud será operada exclusivamente por residentes de la UE ubicados en la UE. Abarca actividades como las operaciones diarias, la asistencia técnica y el servicio de atención al cliente. Estamos realizando una transición gradual de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud para que se opere exclusivamente por ciudadanos de la UE ubicados en la UE. Durante este período de transición, seguiremos trabajando con un equipo mixto de residentes de la UE y ciudadanos de la UE ubicados en la UE.

La infraestructura se administra a través de entidades jurídicas europeas especializadas constituidas en el marco de la legislación alemana. En octubre de 2025, AWS nombró director general a Stéphane Israël, ciudadano de la UE que reside en la UE. Stéphane será responsable de la administración y las operaciones de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud, lo que incluye la infraestructura, la tecnología y los servicios, además de liderar los esfuerzos más amplios de AWS en materia de soberanía digital. En enero de 2026, AWS también nombró a Stefan Hoechbauer (vicepresidente de AWS para Alemania y Europa Central) director general de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Stefan dirigirá la AWS European Sovereign Cloud junto con Stéphane Israël.

Un consejo consultivo compuesto exclusivamente por ciudadanos de la UE, que incluye a dos representantes independientes externos, proporciona supervisión y experiencia adicional en materia de soberanía.

Mejor control y residencia de datos

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud ofrece amplias garantías de residencia de datos para que pueda cumplir los requisitos más estrictos en materia de residencia de datos. Al igual que ocurre con nuestras regiones de AWS existentes en todo el mundo, todo el contenido permanece dentro la región que elija, a menos que decida lo contrario. Además del contenido, los metadatos creados por los clientes, incluidos los roles, los permisos, las etiquetas de recursos y las configuraciones, también permanecen dentro de la UE. La infraestructura cuenta con su propio sistema dedicado de AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) y facturación, que funciona de forma independiente dentro de las fronteras europeas.

Los controles técnicos integrados en la infraestructura impiden el acceso a la AWS European Sovereign Cloud desde fuera de la UE. La infraestructura incluye un proveedor de servicios de confianza europeo dedicado para las operaciones de las autoridades de certificación y utiliza servidores de nombres de Amazon Route 53 dedicados. Estos servidores solo usarán dominios de nivel superior europeos para sus propios nombres. La AWS European Sovereign Cloud no tiene dependencias críticas de personal o infraestructura fuera de la UE.

Marco de seguridad y cumplimiento

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud mantiene las mismas capacidades de seguridad básicas que cabe esperar de AWS, como el cifrado, la administración de claves, la gobernanza del acceso y AWS Nitro System para el aislamiento de la computación. Esto significa que sus instancias de EC2 se benefician de la integridad de la plataforma verificada criptográficamente y de los límites impuestos por el hardware que impiden el acceso no autorizado a sus datos sin comprometer el rendimiento, lo que le proporciona tanto los controles de soberanía como la potencia computacional que requieren sus cargas de trabajo. La infraestructura se somete a auditorías independientes externas, con programas de cumplimiento que incluyen la norma ISO/IEC 27001:2013, informes SOC 1/2/3 y la certificación C5 de la Oficina Federal de Seguridad de la Información.

El marco de referencia de soberanía de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud define los controles de soberanía específicos en relación con la independencia de la gobernanza, el control operativo, la residencia de datos y el aislamiento técnico. Este marco está disponible en AWS Artifact y proporciona visibilidad total a través de la certificación SOC 2.

Disponibilidad total del servicio

Puede acceder a una amplia variedad de servicios de AWS en la AWS European Sovereign Cloud desde su lanzamiento, incluidos Amazon SageMaker y Amazon Bedrock para cargas de trabajo de inteligencia artificial y machine learning. Para el procesamiento, puede usar Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) y AWS Lambda. La orquestación de contenedores está disponible a través de Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) y Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). Los servicios de bases de datos incluyen Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB y Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Dispone de opciones de almacenamiento como Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) y Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), con redes a través de Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) y servicios de seguridad como AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) y AWS Private Certificate Authority. Para obtener una lista actualizada de los servicios, consulte la matriz de capacidades de AWS que se ha publicado recientemente en AWS Builder Center.

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud cuenta con el respaldo de los socios de AWS, que se comprometen a ayudarle a cumplir sus requisitos de soberanía. Socios como Adobe, Cisco, Cloudera, Dedalus, Esri, Genesys, GitLab, Mendix, Pega, SAP, SnowFlake, Trend Micro y Wiz ofrecen sus soluciones en la AWS European Sovereign Cloud, lo que le proporciona las herramientas y los servicios que necesita en materia de seguridad, análisis de datos, desarrollo de aplicaciones y cargas de trabajo específicas del sector. Este amplio apoyo de los socios le ayuda a crear soluciones soberanas que combinan los servicios de AWS con tecnologías de socios de confianza.

Inversión importante. en la infraestructura europea

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud está respaldada por una inversión de 7.800 millones de EUR en infraestructura, creación de empleo y desarrollo de habilidades. Se espera que esta inversión aporte 17.200 millones de EUR a la economía europea para 2040 y ayude a crear el equivalente a aproximadamente 2.800 puestos de trabajo a tiempo completo por año en empresas locales.

Algunos detalles técnicos

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud está disponible para todos los clientes, independientemente de dónde se encuentren. Puede acceder a la infraestructura utilizando el nombre de partición aws-eusc y el nombre de región eusc-de-east-1. Una partición es un grupo de regiones de AWS. Cada cuenta de AWS tiene limitado su alcance a una sola partición.

La infraestructura admite todos los métodos de acceso estándar de AWS, como la Consola de administración de AWS, los AWS SDK y la Interfaz de la línea de comandos de AWS (AWS CLI), lo que facilita la integración en sus flujos de trabajo y automatización existentes. Tras crear una nueva cuenta raíz para la partición de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud, primero deberá crear nuevas identidades y roles de IAM específicos para esta infraestructura, lo que le permitirá tener un control total sobre la administración del acceso en el entorno soberano europeo.

Cómo empezar

La AWS European Sovereign Cloud proporciona a las organizaciones europeas controles de soberanía mejorados, al tiempo que mantiene el acceso a la innovación y las capacidades de AWS. Puede contratar los servicios a través de Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, con precios en EUR y facturación en cualquiera de las ocho divisas que admitimos actualmente. La infraestructura utiliza la arquitectura, la cartera de servicios y las API habituales de AWS, lo que facilita la creación y la migración de aplicaciones.

La adenda de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud contiene los compromisos contractuales adicionales para la AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Para mí, como europeo, este lanzamiento representa el compromiso de AWS de satisfacer las necesidades específicas de nuestro continente y proporcionar las capacidades en la nube que impulsan la innovación en todos los sectores. Le invito a descubrir más sobre la AWS European Sovereign Cloud y cómo puede ayudar a su organización a cumplir sus requisitos de soberanía. Lea la descripción general de la AWS European Sovereign Cloud para obtener más información sobre los objetivos y el enfoque del diseño, regístrese para obtener una nueva cuenta y planifique hoy mismo el despliegue de su primera carga de trabajo.

— seb

The post Opening the AWS European Sovereign Cloud appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Managing database environments demands a balance of resource efficiency and scalability. Organizations need flexible options across their entire database lifecycle, spanning development, testing, and production workloads with diverse storage and compute requirements.

To address these needs, we’re announcing four new capabilities for Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to help customers optimize their costs as well as improve efficiency and scalability for their Amazon RDS for Oracle and Amazon RDS for SQL Server databases. These enhancements include SQL Server Developer Edition support and expanded storage capabilities for both RDS for Oracle and RDS for SQL Server. Additionally, you can have CPU optimization options for RDS for SQL Server on M7i and R7i instances, which offer price reductions from previous generation instances and separately billed licensing fees.

Let’s explore what’s new.

SQL Server Developer Edition support

SQL Server Developer Edition is now available on RDS for SQL Server, offering a free SQL Server edition that includes all the Enterprise Edition functionalities. Developer Edition is licensed specifically for non-production workloads, so you can build and test applications without incurring SQL Server licensing costs in your development and testing environments.

This release brings significant cost savings to your development and testing environments, while maintaining consistency with your production configurations. You’ll have access to all Enterprise Edition features in your development environment, making it easier to test and validate your applications. Additionally, you’ll benefit from the full suite of Amazon RDS features, including automated backups, software updates, monitoring, and encryption capabilities throughout your development process.

To get started, upload your SQL Server binary files to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and use them to create your Developer Edition instance. You can migrate existing data from your Enterprise or Standard Edition instances to Developer Edition instances using built-in SQL Server backup and restore operations.

M7i/R7i instances on RDS for SQL Server with support for optimize CPU

You can now use M7i and R7i instances on Amazon RDS for SQL Server to achieve several key benefits. These instances offer significant cost savings over previous generation instances. You also get improved transparency over your database costs with licensing fees and Amazon RDS DB instances costs billed separately.

RDS for SQL Server M7i/R7i instances offer up to 55% lower costs compared to previous generation instances.

Using the optimize CPU capability on these instances, you can customize the number of vCPUs on license-included RDS for SQL Server instances. This enhancement is particularly valuable for database workloads that require high memory and input/output operations per second (IOPS), but lower vCPU counts

This feature provides substantial benefits for your database operations. You can significantly reduce vCPU-based licensing costs while maintaining the same memory and IOPS performance levels your applications require. The capability supports higher memory-to-vCPU ratios and automatically disables hyperthreading while maintaining instance performance. Most importantly, you can fine-tune your CPU settings to precisely match your specific workload requirements, providing optimal resource utilization.

To get started, select SQL Server with an M7i or R7i instance type when creating a new database instance. Under Optimize CPU select Configure the number of vCPUs and set your desired vCPU count.

Additional storage volumes for RDS for Oracle and SQL Server

Amazon RDS for Oracle and Amazon RDS for SQL Server now support up to 256 TiB storage size, a fourfold increase in storage size per database instance, through the addition of up to three additional storage volumes.

The additional storage volumes provide extensive flexibility in managing your database storage needs. You can configure your volumes using both io2 and gp3 volumes to create an optimal storage strategy. You can store frequently accessed data on high-performance Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) volumes while keeping historical data on cost-effective General Purpose SSD (gp3) volumes, which balances performance and cost. For temporary storage needs, such as month-end processing or data imports, you can add storage volumes as needed. After these operations are complete, you can empty the volumes and then remove them to reduce unnecessary storage costs.

These storage volumes offer operational flexibility with zero downtime and you can add or remove additional storage volumes without interrupting your database operations. You can also scale up multiple volumes in parallel to quickly meet growing storage demands. For Multi-AZ deployments, all additional storage volumes are automatically replicated to maintain high availability.

You can add storage volumes to new or existing database instances through the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or AWS SDKs.

Let me show you a quick example. I’ll add a storage volume to an existing RDS for Oracle database instance.

First, I navigate to the RDS console, then to my RDS for Oracle database instance detail page. I look under Configuration and I find the Additional storage volumes section.

You can add up to three additional storage volumes and each must be named according to a naming convention. Storage volumes can’t have the same name and you must choose between rdsdbdata2, rdsdbdata3, and rdsdbdata4. For RDS for Oracle database instances, I can add additional storage volumes to the database instance with the primary storage volume size of 200 GiB or higher.

I’m going to add two volumes, so I choose Add additional storage volume and then fill in all the required information. I choose rdsdbdata2 as the volume name and give it 12000 GiB of allocated storage with 60000 provisioned IOPS on an io2 storage type. For my second additional storage volume, rdsdbdata3, I choose to have 2000 GiB on gp3 with 15000 provisioned IOPS.

After confirmation, I wait for Amazon RDS to process my request and then my additional volumes are available.

You can also use the AWS CLI to add volumes during creation of database instances or when modifying them.

Things to know

These capabilities are now available in all commercial AWS Regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions where Amazon RDS for Oracle and Amazon RDS for SQL Server are offered.

You can learn more about each of these capabilities in the Amazon RDS documentation for Developer Edition, optimize CPU, additional storage volumes for RDS for Oracle and additional storage volumes for RDS for SQL Server.

To learn more about the unbundled pricing structure for M7i and R7i instances on RDS for SQL Server, visit the Amazon RDS for SQL Server pricing page.

To get started with any of these capabilities, go to the Amazon RDS console or learn more by visiting the Amazon RDS documentation.

The post New capabilities to optimize costs and improve scalability on Amazon RDS for SQL Server and Oracle appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Since Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Savings Plans, customers have been able to lower the cost of running sustained workloads while maintaining the flexibility to manage usage across accounts, resource types, and AWS Regions. Today, we’re extending this flexible pricing model to AWS managed database services with the launch of Database Savings Plans, which help customers reduce database costs by up to 35% when they commit to a consistent amount of usage ($/hour) over a 1-year term. Savings automatically apply each hour to eligible usage across supported database services, and any additional usage beyond the commitment is billed at on-demand rates.

As organizations build and manage data-driven and AI applications, they often use different database services, engines and deployment types, including instance-based and serverless options, to meet evolving business needs. Database Savings Plans provide the flexibility to choose how workloads run while maintaining cost efficiency. If customers are in the middle of a migration or modernization effort, they can switch database engines and adjust deployment types, such as from provisioned to serverless as part of ongoing cost optimization, while continuing to receive discounted rates. If a customer’s business expands globally, they can also shift usage across AWS Regions and continue to benefit from the same commitment. By applying a consistent hourly commitment, customers can maintain predictable spend even as usage patterns evolve and analyze coverage and utilization using familiar cost management tools.

New Savings Plans

Each plan defines where pricing applies, the range of available discounts, and the level of flexibility provided across supported database engines, instance families, sizes, deployment options, or AWS Regions.

The hourly commitment automatically applies to all eligible usage regardless of Region, with support for Amazon Aurora, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility), Amazon Neptune, Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra), Amazon Timestream, and AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS). As new eligible database offerings, instance types, or Regions become available, Savings Plans will automatically apply to that usage.

Discounts vary by deployment model and service type. Serverless deployments provide up to 35% savings compared to on-demand rates. Provisioned instances across supported database services deliver up to 20% savings. For Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces, on-demand throughput workloads receive up to 18% savings, and provisioned capacity offers up to 12%. Together, these savings help customers optimize costs while maintaining consistent coverage for database usage. To learn more about the pricing and eligible usage, visit the Database Savings Plans pricing page.

Purchasing Database Savings Plans

AWS Billing and Cost Management Console helps you choose Savings Plans and guides you through the purchase process. You can get started from the AWS Management Console or use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) and the API. There are two ways to evaluate Database Savings Plans purchases, in the Recommendations view and in the Purchase Analyzer.

Recommendations – are automatically generated from your recent on-demand usage. To reach the Recommendations view in the Billing and Cost Management console, choose Savings and Commitments, Savings Plans, and Recommendations in the navigation pane. In the Recommendations view, select Database Savings Plans and configure the Recommendation options. AWS Savings Plans recommendations analyze your historical on-demand usage to identify the hourly commitment that delivers the highest overall savings.

The Purchase Analyzer – is designed for modeling custom commitment levels. If you want to purchase a different amount than the recommended commitment on the Purchase Analyzer page, select Database Savings Plans and configure Lookback period and Hourly commitment to simulate alternative commitment levels and see the projected impact on Cost, Coverage, and Utilization.

This way is preferred if your purchasing strategy includes smaller, incremental commitments over time or if you expect future usage changes that could affect your ideal purchase amount.

After reviewing the recommendations or running simulations in Savings Plans Recommendations or Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer, choose Add to cart to proceed with your chosen commitment. If you prefer to purchase directly, you can also navigate to the Purchase Savings Plans page. The console updates estimated discounts and coverage in real time as you adjust each setting, so you can evaluate the impact before completing your order.

You can learn more about how to choose and purchase Database Saving Plans by visiting the Savings Plans User Guide documents.

Now available

Database Savings Plans are available in all AWS Regions outside of China. Give them a try and start shaping your database strategy with more flexibility and predictable costs.

– Betty

The post Introducing Database Savings Plans for AWS Databases appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Earlier this year in May, we announced the general availability of AWS Transform for .NET, the first agentic AI service for modernizing .NET applications at scale. During the early adoption period of the service, we received valuable feedback indicating that, in addition to .NET application modernization, you would like to modernize SQL Server and legacy UI frameworks. Your applications typically follow a three-tier architecture—presentation tier, application tier, and database tier—and you need a comprehensive solution that can transform all of these tiers in a coordinated way.

Today, based on your feedback, we’re excited to announce AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization, to offload complex, tedious modernization work across the Windows application stack. You can now identify application and database dependencies and modernize them in an orchestrated way through a centralized experience.

AWS Transform accelerates full-stack Windows modernization by up to five times across application, UI, database, and deployment layers. Along with porting .NET Framework applications to cross-platform .NET, it migrates SQL Server databases to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition with intelligent stored procedure conversion and dependent application code refactoring. For validation and testing, AWS Transform deploys applications to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux or Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), and provides customizable AWS CloudFormation templates and deployment configurations for production use. AWS Transform has also added capabilities to modernize ASP.NET Web Forms UI to Blazor.

There is much to explore, so in this post I’ll provide the first look at AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization capabilities across all layers.

Create a full-stack Windows modernization transformation job

AWS Transform connects to your source code repositories and database servers, analyzes application and database dependencies, creates modernization waves, and orchestrates full-stack transformations for each wave.

To get started with AWS Transform, I first complete the onboarding steps outlined in the getting started with AWS Transform user guide. After onboarding, I sign in to the AWS Transform console using my credentials and create a job for full-stack Windows modernization.

After creating the job, I complete the prerequisites. Then, I configure the database connector for AWS Transform to securely access SQL Server databases running on Amazon EC2 and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). The connector can connect to multiple databases within the same SQL Server instance.

Next, I set up a connector to connect to my source code repositories.

Furthermore, I have the option to choose if I would like AWS Transform to deploy the transformed applications. I choose Yes and provide the target AWS account ID and AWS Region for deploying the applications. The deployment option can be configured later as well.

After the connectors are set up, AWS Transform connects to the resources and runs the validation to verify IAM roles, network settings, and related AWS resources.

After the successful validation, AWS Transform discovers databases and their associated source code repositories. It identifies dependencies between databases and applications to create waves for transforming related components together. Based on this analysis, AWS Transform creates a wave-based transformation plan.

Assessing database and dependent applications

For the assessment, I review the databases and source code repositories discovered by AWS Transform and choose the appropriate branches for code repositories. AWS Transform scans these databases and source code repositories, then presents a list of databases along with their dependent .NET applications and transformation complexity.

I choose the target databases and repositories for modernization. AWS Transform analyzes these selections and generates a comprehensive SQL Modernization Assessment Report with a detailed wave plan. I download the report to review the proposed modernization plan. The report includes an executive summary, wave plan, dependencies between databases and code repositories, and complexity analysis.

Wave transformation at scale

The wave plan generated by AWS Transform consists of four steps for each wave. First, it converts the SQL Server schema to PostgreSQL. Second, it migrates the data. Third, it transforms the dependent .NET application code to make it PostgreSQL compatible. Finally, it deploys the application for testing.

Before converting the SQL Server schema, I can either create a new PostgreSQL database or choose an existing one as the target database.

After I choose the source and target databases, AWS Transform generates conversion reports for my review. AWS Transform converts the SQL Server schema to PostgreSQL-compatible structures, including tables, indexes, constraints, and stored procedures.

For any schema that AWS Transform can’t automatically convert, I can manually address them in the AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) console. Alternatively, I can fix them in my preferred SQL editor and update the target database instance.

After completing schema conversion, I have the option to proceed with data migration, which is an optional step. AWS Transform uses AWS DMS to migrate data from my SQL Server instance to the PostgreSQL database instance. I can choose to perform data migration later, after completing all transformations, or work with test data by loading it into my target database.

The next step is code transformation. I specify a target branch for AWS Transform to upload the transformed code artifacts. AWS Transform updates the codebase to make the application compatible with the converted PostgreSQL database.

With this release, AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization supports only codebases in .NET 6 or later. For codebases in .NET Framework 3.1+, I first use AWS Transform for .NET to port them to cross-platform .NET. I’ll expand on this in a following section.

After the conversion is completed, I can view the source and target branches along with their code transformation status. I can also download and review the transformation report.

Modernizing .NET Framework applications with UI layer

One major feature we’re releasing today is the modernization of UI frameworks from ASP.NET Web Forms to Blazor. This is added to existing support for modernizing model-view-controller (MVC) Razor views to ASP.NET Core Razor views.

As mentioned previously, if I have a .NET application in legacy .NET Framework, then I continue using AWS Transform for .NET to port it to cross-platform .NET. For legacy applications with UIs built on ASP.NET Web Forms, AWS Transform now modernizes the UI layer to Blazor along with porting the backend code.

AWS Transform for .NET converts ASP.NET Web Forms projects to Blazor on ASP.NET Core, facilitating the migration of ASP.NET websites to Linux. The UI modernization feature is enabled by default in AWS Transform for .NET on both the AWS Transform web console and Visual Studio extension.

During the modernization process, AWS Transform handles the conversion of ASPX pages, ASCX custom controls, and code-behind files, implementing them as server-side Blazor components rather than web assembly. The following project and file changes are made during the transformation:

Other new features in AWS Transform for .NET

Along with UI porting, AWS Transform for .NET has added support for more transformation capabilities and enhanced developer experience. These new features include the following:

• Port to .NET 10 and .NET Standard – AWS Transform now supports porting to .NET 10, the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) release, which was released on November 11, 2025. It also supports porting class libraries to .NET Standard, a formal specification for a set of APIs that are common across all .NET implementations. Furthermore, AWS Transform is now available with AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio 2026.
• Editable transformation report – After the assessment is complete, you can now view and customize the transformation plan based on your specific requirements and preferences. For example, you can update package replacement details.
• Real-time transformation updates with estimated remaining time – Depending on the size and complexity of the codebase, AWS Transform can take some time to complete the porting. You can now track transformation updates in real-time along with the estimated remaining time.
• Next steps markdown – After the transformation is complete, AWS Transform now generates a next steps markdown file with the remaining tasks to complete the porting. You can use this as a revised plan to repeat the transformation with AWS Transform or use AI code-companions to complete the porting.

Things to know

Some more things to know are:

• AWS Regions – AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization is generally available today in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. For Regional availability and future roadmap, visit the AWS Capabilities by Region.
• Pricing – Currently, there is no added charge for Windows modernization features of AWS Transform. Any resources you create or continue to use in your AWS account using the output of AWS Transform are billed according to their standard pricing. For limits and quotas, refer to the AWS Transform User Guide.
• SQL Server versions supported – AWS Transform supports the transformation of SQL Server versions from 2008 R2 through 2022, including all editions (Express, Standard, and Enterprise). SQL Server must be hosted on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 in the same Region as AWS Transform.
• Entity Framework versions supported – AWS Transform supports the modernization of Entity Framework versions 6.3 through 6.5 and Entity Framework Core 1.0 through 8.0.
• Getting started – To get started, visit AWS Transform for full-stack Windows modernization User Guide.

– Prasad

The post AWS Transform announces full-stack Windows modernization capabilities appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Today, we’re announcing virtual private cloud (VPC) encryption controls, a new capability of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) that helps you audit and enforce encryption in transit for all traffic within and across VPCs in a Region.

Organizations across financial services, healthcare, government, and retail face significant operational complexity in maintaining encryption compliance across their cloud infrastructure. Traditional approaches require piecing together multiple solutions and managing complex public key infrastructure (PKI), while manually tracking encryption across different network paths using spreadsheets—a process prone to human error that becomes increasingly challenging as infrastructure scales.

Although AWS Nitro based instances automatically encrypt traffic at the hardware layer without affecting performance, organizations need simple mechanisms to extend these capabilities across their entire VPC infrastructure. This is particularly important for demonstrating compliance with regulatory frameworks such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which require proof of end-to-end encryption across environments. Organizations need centralized visibility and control over their encryption status, without having to manage performance trade-offs or complex key management systems.

VPC encryption controls address these challenges by providing two operational modes: monitor and enforce. In monitor mode, you can audit the encryption status of your traffic flows and identify resources that allow plaintext traffic. The feature adds a new encryption-status field to VPC flow logs, giving you visibility into whether traffic is encrypted using Nitro hardware encryption, application-layer encryption (TLS), or both.

After you’ve identified resources that need modification, you can take steps to implement encryption. AWS services, such as Network Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Fargate tasks, will automatically and transparently migrate your underlying infrastructure to Nitro hardware without any action required from you and with no service interruption. For other resources, such as the previous generation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, you will need to switch to modern Nitro based instance types or configure TLS encryption at application level.

You can switch to enforce mode after all resources have been migrated to encryption-compliant infrastructure. This migration to encryption-compliant hardware and communication protocols is a prerequisite for enabling enforce mode. You can configure specific exclusions for resources such as internet gateways or NAT gateways, that don’t support encryption (because the traffic flows outside of the AWS network).

Other resources must be encryption-compliant and can’t be excluded. After activation, enforce mode provides that all future resources are only created on compatible Nitro instances, and unencrypted traffic is dropped when incorrect protocols or ports are detected.

Let me show you how to get started

For this demo, I started three EC2 instances. I use one as a web server with Nginx installed on port 80, serving a clear text HTML page. The other two are continuously making HTTP GET requests to the server. This generates clear text traffic in my VPC. I use the m7g.medium instance type for the web server and one of the two clients. This instance type uses the underlying Nitro System hardware to automatically encrypt in-transit traffic between instances. I use a t4g.medium instance for the other web client. The network traffic of that instance is not encrypted at the hardware level.

To get started, I enable encryption controls in monitor mode. In the AWS Management Console, I select Your VPCs in the left navigation pane, then I switch to the VPC encryption controls tab. I choose Create encryption control and select the VPC I want to create the control for.

Each VPC can have only one VPC encryption control associated with it, creating a one-to-one relationship between the VPC ID and the VPC encryption control Id. When creating VPC encryption controls, you can add tags to help with resource organization and management. You can also activate VPC encryption control when you create a new VPC.

I enter a Name for this control. I select the VPC I want to control. For existing VPCs, I have to start in Monitor mode, and I can turn on Enforce mode when I’m sure there is no unencrypted traffic. For new VPCs, I can enforce encryption at the time of creation.

Optionally, I can define tags when creating encryption controls for an existing VPC. However, when enabling encryption controls during VPC creation, separate tags can’t be created for VPC encryption controls—because they automatically inherit the same tags as the VPC. When I’m ready, I choose Create encryption control.

Alternatively, I can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI):

aws ec2 create-vpc-encryption-control --vpc-id vpc-123456789

Next, I audit the encryption status of my VPC using the console, command line, or flow logs:

aws ec2 create-flow-logs 
  --resource-type VPC 
  --resource-ids vpc-123456789 
  --traffic-type ALL 
  --log-destination-type s3 
  --log-destination arn:aws:s3:::vpc-flow-logs-012345678901/vpc-flow-logs/ 
  --log-format '${flow-direction} ${traffic-path} ${srcaddr} ${dstaddr} ${srcport} ${dstport} ${encryption-status}'
{
    "ClientToken": "F7xmLqTHgt9krTcFMBHrwHmAZHByyDXmA1J94PsxWiU=",
    "FlowLogIds": [
        "fl-0667848f2d19786ca"
    ],
    "Unsuccessful": []
}

After a few minutes, I see this traffic in my logs:

flow-direction traffic-path srcaddr dstaddr srcport dstport encryption-status
ingress - 10.0.133.8 10.0.128.55 43236 80 1 # <-- HTTP between web client and server. Encrypted at hardware-level
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.133.8 80 43236 1
ingress - 10.0.133.8 10.0.128.55 36902 80 1
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.133.8 80 36902 1
ingress - 10.0.130.104 10.0.128.55 55016 80 0 # <-- HTTP between web client and server. Not encrypted at hardware-level
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.130.104 80 55016 0
ingress - 10.0.130.104 10.0.128.55 60276 80 0
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.130.104 80 60276 0

• 10.0.128.55 is the web server with hardware-encrypted traffic, serving clear text traffic at application level.
• 10.0.133.8 is the web client with hardware-encrypted traffic.
• 10.0.130.104 is the web client with no encryption at the hardware level.

The encryption-status field tells me the status of the encryption for the traffic between the source and destination address:

• 0 means the traffic is in clear text
• 1 means the traffic is encrypted at the network layer (Level 3) by the Nitro system
• 2 means the traffic is encrypted at the application layer (Level7, TCP Port 443 and TLS/SSL)
• 3 means the traffic is encrypted both at the application layer (TLS) and the network layer (Nitro)
• “-” means VPC encryption controls are not enabled, or AWS Flow Logs don’t have the status information.

The traffic originating from the web client on the instance that isn’t Nitro based (10.0.130.104), is flagged as 0. The traffic initiated from the web client on the Nitro- ased instance (10.0.133.8) is flagged as 1.

I also use the console to identify resources that need modification. It reports two nonencrypted resources: the internet gateway and the elastic network interface (ENI) of the instance that isn’t based on Nitro.

I can also check for nonencrypted resources using the CLI:

aws ec2 get-vpc-resources-blocking-encryption-enforcement --vpc-id vpc-123456789

After updating my resources to support encryption, I can use the console or the CLI to switch to enforce mode.

In the console, I select the VPC encryption control. Then, I select Actions and Switch mode.

Or the equivalent CLI:

aws ec2 modify-vpc-encryption-control --vpc-id vpc-123456789 --mode enforce

How to modify the resources that are identified as nonencrypted?

All your VPC resources must support traffic encryption, either at the hardware layer or at the application layer. For most resources, you don’t need to take any action.

AWS services accessed through AWS PrivateLink and gateway endpoints automatically enforce encryption at the application layer. These services only accept TLS-encrypted traffic. AWS will automatically drop any traffic that isn’t encrypted at the application layer.

When you enable monitor mode, we automatically and gradually migrate your Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, AWS Fargate clusters, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) clusters to hardware that inherently supports encryption. This migration happens transparently without any action required from you.

Some VPC resources require you to select the underlying instances that support modern Nitro hardware-layer encryption. These include EC2 Instances, Auto Scaling groups, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases (including Amazon DocumentDB), Amazon ElastiCache node-based clusters, Amazon Redshift provisioned clusters, EKS clusters, ECS with EC2 capacity, MSK Provisioned, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Amazon EMR. To migrate your Redshift clusters, you must create a new cluster or namespace from a snapshot.

If you use newer-generation instances, you likely already have encryption-compliant infrastructure because all recent instance types support encryption. For older-generation instances that don’t support encryption-in transit, you’ll need to upgrade to supported instance types.

Things to know when using AWS Transit Gateway

When your VPCs with encryption controls enabled are connected via a Transit Gateway, you’ll need to manually activate encryption controls on the Transit Gateway to encrypt traffic between the VPCs. This can be done using the AWS console, the modify-transit-gateway command or API. Enabling encryption on an existing Transit Gateway won’t disrupt the traffic flowing between VPCs attached to the Transit Gateway.

When a Transit Gateway and its attached VPCs have encryption controls in enforce mode (with no exclusions), traffic is encrypted end-to-end.

When creating a Transit Gateway through AWS CloudFormation with encryption support enabled, you need one additional AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission: ec2:ModifyTransitGateway. This permission is required because CloudFormation uses a two-step process to create a Transit Gateway. It first creates the Transit Gateway with basic configuration, then calls ModifyTransitGateway to enable encryption support. Without this permission, your CloudFormation stack will fail during creation when attempting to apply the encryption configuration, even if you’re only performing what appears to be a create operation.

Pricing and availability

You can start using VPC encryption controls today in these AWS Regions: US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central), Canada West (Calgary), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Zurich), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), and South America (São Paulo).

VPC encryption controls is free of cost until March 1, 2026. The VPC pricing page will be updated with details as we get closer to that date.

To learn more, visit the VPC encryption controls documentation or try it out in your AWS account. I look forward to hearing how you use this feature to strengthen your security posture and help you meet compliance standards.

— seb

The post Introducing VPC encryption controls: Enforce encryption in transit within and across VPCs in a Region appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.