AWS Podcast Episode #746 Summary

Date: November 17, 2025
Hosts: Simon Elisha & Gillian Ford

Episode Overview

This episode, released during the highly active "pre:Invent" season, packs in a whirlwind of nearly 70 AWS updates spanning cloud infrastructure, AI, analytics, security, databases, networking, and more. Simon and Gillian break down major launches and enhancements, offering insights for builders, developers, and technical leaders. Special highlights include the new AWS Regional Planning Tool, the MCP Proxy for AWS, substantial database performance gains, and a broad array of upgrades across EC2, Bedrock, database services, networking, and observability. The hosts keep a lively, conversational tone, making complex announcements engaging and accessible.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool

Launch: The new Regional Planning Tool in Builder Center helps users compare AWS services, features, APIs, and resources across regions.
Forward-Looking: Provides a roadmap for when features/services will be available in specific regions.
Value: Assists in global cloud deployment planning, preventing project delays due to missing regional features.
Quote:
- “You can now see through this really cool interface. You know, region A, region B, what does that have?... It shows you a forward looking roadmap as well.” — Simon (01:16)

Knowledge Model Context Protocol Integration [01:50]

Enables LLM (Large Language Model) style queries about regional capabilities for AI-driven insights and solution suggestions.

[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS

Purpose: Connect MCP servers on AWS using IAM authentication and SIGV4 signing.
Security: Leverages existing AWS IAM for secure connection.
Open Source: Available on GitHub under Apache 2.0 license.

Quote:

“You can now connect these MCP servers on AWS using... IAM authentication and that SIGV4 signing ... just takes care of it for you, which is kind of cool.” — Simon (03:04)

[03:42] Significant Analytics & App Integration Updates

AWS Clean Rooms: Advanced config for SQL performance (custom Spark properties, compute sizing).
AWS Glue Schema Registry: Adds C support (on top of Java).
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams:
- “On demand advantaged mode”: Allows instant scaling up to 10GB or 10 million events/sec without overprovisioning [04:00].
  - “Customers can warm on demand streams to handle instant throughput increases...without having to over provision.” — Simon (04:12)
- Increases record size from 1MB → 10MB.
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless: FIPS-compliant endpoints for data plane APIs now live.

Application Integration

AWS End User Messaging (SMS): “Carrier Lookup” for better deliverability [05:11].
Step Functions: New metrics dashboard for workflow visibility at account/state machine level.
- “You can now view your usage and billing metrics in one place...” — Simon (05:30)

[06:17] Artificial Intelligence Announcements

Amazon Bedrock: Four new image editing tools (Outpaint, Fast Upscale, etc.).
- “[These tools] give creators precise control ... enabling them to transform concepts into finished products efficiently.” — Gillian (06:26)
AWS Marketplace: Flexible pricing, better AI agent deployment.
Amazon Bedrock Agent Core:
- Web bot Auth reduces CAPTCHAs for browser agents (preview).
- Direct code deployment options for agents.
Amazon SageMaker: Custom tags for project resources.

Nova Multimodal Embeddings [07:40]

Big Leap: First unified embedding model for text, docs, images, audio, video; up to 8,000 tokens, supports cross-modal retrieval.
Quote:
- “It is the first unified embedding model that supports text, documents, images, video and audio...” — Gillian (07:59)
12 Labs Marengo Embed 3.0: Advanced video understanding now available.
Web Grounding: Nova models can retrieve public info with citations for RAG use cases.

Business App & Contact Center

Amazon Connect: Trusted email aliases and agent scheduling.

[09:54] Compute & Serverless

Elastic Beanstalk: Adds Corretto 25 & Tomcat 11.
Serverless MCP Server: Lambda Event Source Mapping tools now AI-assisted.
- Translate high-level requirements into optimized ESM configs, SAM templates, validate VPC network topologies.
Amazon ECS:
- Non-root container support for EBS volumes.
- Supports linear/canary deployments in addition to blue/green.
  - “With linear deployments you can gradually shift traffic... The other option you have is the canary approach with bake time.” — Simon (12:25)
- Enhanced observability: envoy access logs.
- GA of R8A memory-optimized EC2 instances: 30% higher perf, 45% more memory bandwidth.
- Lightsail: Larger instance bundles.
- Deadline Cloud: More instance options for visual compute.

EC2 Auto Scaling

Warm pool now supports mixed instance policies.

Capacity Reservation Topology API

For AI/ML/HPC: Manage capacity, rank nodes, visualize reservation topology per account.

Amazon EKS

Split cost allocation data: import K8s labels as cost tags (up to 50 per pod).

[15:28] Database Updates

Aurora D SQL: FIPS i43 compliant endpoints.
CloudWatch Database Insights: Adds anomaly detection, on-demand analysis.
Amazon DocumentDB: New query planner—up to 10x faster queries!
- “That's incredible 10x I know, that's with the pause of admission.” — Simon (16:11)
DynamoDB Accelerator: PrivateLink support.
Elasticache & RDS: IPv4 & IPv6 support expanded.
Amazon RDS: Oracle now on R7i instances; MSSQL Dev now on Launch Wizard.

[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing

Advanced NET Data Provider: GA for RDS/Postgres/MySQL; faster failovers.
Amazon Workspaces: USB redirection for DCV workspaces.

[17:58] Gaming & IoT

Amazon Gamelift Servers: Telemetry metrics for SDKs/game engine plugins.
Gamelift Streams: Health notifications.
AWS IoT Greengrass: Adds system log forwarder, TPM 2.0; new open source AI Agent Context pack.

[19:06] Management & Governance

AWS Config: 42 new managed rules; 49 new resource types supported; evaluates tagging/security strategies.
Resource Explorer: +47 resource types.
Service Reference Info: SDK Operation to Action mapping—finally helps answer what IAM permissions are needed for an API.
- "I think every single person on the planet ... has gone through this problem." — Gillian (20:28)
CloudWatch: NVMe volume stats, app signals MCP Server for performance monitoring, AI-powered Canary debugging.
- “It debugs it with AI, deploys it with AI, it's AI all the way down.” — Simon (21:33)
Managed Service for Prometheus: Adds anomaly detection.

[22:12] Networking, Content Delivery & VPC

CloudFront: Now allows cross-account support for VPC Origins; IPv6 support for anycast static IPs.
DynamoDB Streams, Route 53 Resolver: PrivateLink, FIPS support.
VPC IPAM: Automates prefix list updates.
VPC Lattice: Supports custom domain names for resource configuration (layer 4 access).

[23:54] Security, Identity & Compliance

KMS: Adds Edwards Curve digital signature support—smaller key and signature sizes; good for IoT, blockchain.
- “This is a method for creating digital signatures using elliptic curves ... that's probably the extent that I will understand.” — Gillian (24:20)
Amazon Cognito:
- Removes machine-to-machine app client price dimension (now charged only for successful token requests).
- User Pools now support PrivateLink.
OCSF Ready Specialization: Recognizes AWS partners integrating with open security schema framework.

[26:42] Storage

AWS Backup: Single-action snapshot copy across regions/accounts for RDS, Aurora, Neptune, DocumentDB.
- “That's a single action. I mean, I think every person that uses AWS backup ... had that same thought.” — Gillian (28:55)
AWS Backup: Now supports KMS managed keys with air-gapped vaults.
Amazon EBS: New metrics—avg IOPS and throughput; default 1-minute granularity.
Amazon FSx: Now integrates with Secrets Manager for AD credentials.
Amazon S3:
- Conditional write for copy operations (helps avoid conflicts).
- S3 Table tagging for cost control.
- Mountpoint for S3 and CSI drivers add near real-time observability (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana).

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

On Regional Planning Tool:
“You can now see through this really cool interface... It shows you a forward looking roadmap as well.” — Simon (01:16)
On Analytics/Streaming:
“Customers can warm on demand streams to handle instant throughput increases...without having to over provision.” — Simon (04:12)
On AI Unification:
“It is the first unified embedding model that supports text, documents, images, video and audio...” — Gillian (07:59)
On Cloud Improvements:
“It's just the little things, isn't it? ... all those answers I had for my SAE certification questions around the performance of these streams is now out of date.” — Simon (04:46)
On IAM Policy Mapping:
"I think every single person on the planet ... has gone through this problem." — Gillian (20:28)
On AI for Operations:
“It debugs it with AI, deploys it with AI, it's AI all the way down.” — Simon (21:33)

Useful Timestamps

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool & Knowledge Model Context Protocol
[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS
[03:42] Major Analytics & App Integration Updates
[06:17] AI Tools (Bedrock, Nova, SageMaker, Web Grounding)
[09:54] Compute/Serverless & Container Announcements
[15:28] Database/CloudWatch/DocumentDB Big Upgrades
[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing
[17:58] Gaming & IoT Greengrass
[19:06] Management, Governance, Observability
[22:12] Networking, VPC, CloudFront
[23:54] Security (KMS, Cognito, OCSF)
[26:42] Storage, Backup, and S3 New Features

Final Thoughts

The episode captures the fast-moving pace of AWS’s pre:Invent innovations—big focus on automation, regional awareness, AI-enablement, and developer/usability improvements. The hosts regularly emphasize the cumulative impact of these changes: “all those little things that keep getting better, even when we’re not doing anything about it” (Simon, 29:17). If you’re building, scaling, or optimizing on AWS, this episode is a must-listen for staying ahead.

Connect:

Gillian Ford: LinkedIn
Feedback: awspodcast@amazon.com

AWS Podcast Episode #746 Summary

Date: November 17, 2025
Hosts: Simon Elisha & Gillian Ford

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool

Launch: The new Regional Planning Tool in Builder Center helps users compare AWS services, features, APIs, and resources across regions.
Forward-Looking: Provides a roadmap for when features/services will be available in specific regions.
Value: Assists in global cloud deployment planning, preventing project delays due to missing regional features.
Quote:
- “You can now see through this really cool interface. You know, region A, region B, what does that have?... It shows you a forward looking roadmap as well.” — Simon (01:16)

Knowledge Model Context Protocol Integration [01:50]

Enables LLM (Large Language Model) style queries about regional capabilities for AI-driven insights and solution suggestions.

[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS

Purpose: Connect MCP servers on AWS using IAM authentication and SIGV4 signing.
Security: Leverages existing AWS IAM for secure connection.
Open Source: Available on GitHub under Apache 2.0 license.

Quote:

“You can now connect these MCP servers on AWS using... IAM authentication and that SIGV4 signing ... just takes care of it for you, which is kind of cool.” — Simon (03:04)

[03:42] Significant Analytics & App Integration Updates

AWS Clean Rooms: Advanced config for SQL performance (custom Spark properties, compute sizing).
AWS Glue Schema Registry: Adds C support (on top of Java).
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams:
- “On demand advantaged mode”: Allows instant scaling up to 10GB or 10 million events/sec without overprovisioning [04:00].
  - “Customers can warm on demand streams to handle instant throughput increases...without having to over provision.” — Simon (04:12)
- Increases record size from 1MB → 10MB.
Amazon OpenSearch Serverless: FIPS-compliant endpoints for data plane APIs now live.

Application Integration

AWS End User Messaging (SMS): “Carrier Lookup” for better deliverability [05:11].
Step Functions: New metrics dashboard for workflow visibility at account/state machine level.
- “You can now view your usage and billing metrics in one place...” — Simon (05:30)

[06:17] Artificial Intelligence Announcements

Amazon Bedrock: Four new image editing tools (Outpaint, Fast Upscale, etc.).
- “[These tools] give creators precise control ... enabling them to transform concepts into finished products efficiently.” — Gillian (06:26)
AWS Marketplace: Flexible pricing, better AI agent deployment.
Amazon Bedrock Agent Core:
- Web bot Auth reduces CAPTCHAs for browser agents (preview).
- Direct code deployment options for agents.
Amazon SageMaker: Custom tags for project resources.

Nova Multimodal Embeddings [07:40]

Big Leap: First unified embedding model for text, docs, images, audio, video; up to 8,000 tokens, supports cross-modal retrieval.
Quote:
- “It is the first unified embedding model that supports text, documents, images, video and audio...” — Gillian (07:59)
12 Labs Marengo Embed 3.0: Advanced video understanding now available.
Web Grounding: Nova models can retrieve public info with citations for RAG use cases.

Business App & Contact Center

Amazon Connect: Trusted email aliases and agent scheduling.

[09:54] Compute & Serverless

Elastic Beanstalk: Adds Corretto 25 & Tomcat 11.
Serverless MCP Server: Lambda Event Source Mapping tools now AI-assisted.
- Translate high-level requirements into optimized ESM configs, SAM templates, validate VPC network topologies.
Amazon ECS:
- Non-root container support for EBS volumes.
- Supports linear/canary deployments in addition to blue/green.
  - “With linear deployments you can gradually shift traffic... The other option you have is the canary approach with bake time.” — Simon (12:25)
- Enhanced observability: envoy access logs.
- GA of R8A memory-optimized EC2 instances: 30% higher perf, 45% more memory bandwidth.
- Lightsail: Larger instance bundles.
- Deadline Cloud: More instance options for visual compute.

EC2 Auto Scaling

Warm pool now supports mixed instance policies.

Capacity Reservation Topology API

For AI/ML/HPC: Manage capacity, rank nodes, visualize reservation topology per account.

Amazon EKS

Split cost allocation data: import K8s labels as cost tags (up to 50 per pod).

[15:28] Database Updates

Aurora D SQL: FIPS i43 compliant endpoints.
CloudWatch Database Insights: Adds anomaly detection, on-demand analysis.
Amazon DocumentDB: New query planner—up to 10x faster queries!
- “That's incredible 10x I know, that's with the pause of admission.” — Simon (16:11)
DynamoDB Accelerator: PrivateLink support.
Elasticache & RDS: IPv4 & IPv6 support expanded.
Amazon RDS: Oracle now on R7i instances; MSSQL Dev now on Launch Wizard.

[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing

Advanced NET Data Provider: GA for RDS/Postgres/MySQL; faster failovers.
Amazon Workspaces: USB redirection for DCV workspaces.

[17:58] Gaming & IoT

Amazon Gamelift Servers: Telemetry metrics for SDKs/game engine plugins.
Gamelift Streams: Health notifications.
AWS IoT Greengrass: Adds system log forwarder, TPM 2.0; new open source AI Agent Context pack.

[19:06] Management & Governance

AWS Config: 42 new managed rules; 49 new resource types supported; evaluates tagging/security strategies.
Resource Explorer: +47 resource types.
Service Reference Info: SDK Operation to Action mapping—finally helps answer what IAM permissions are needed for an API.
- "I think every single person on the planet ... has gone through this problem." — Gillian (20:28)
CloudWatch: NVMe volume stats, app signals MCP Server for performance monitoring, AI-powered Canary debugging.
- “It debugs it with AI, deploys it with AI, it's AI all the way down.” — Simon (21:33)
Managed Service for Prometheus: Adds anomaly detection.

[22:12] Networking, Content Delivery & VPC

CloudFront: Now allows cross-account support for VPC Origins; IPv6 support for anycast static IPs.
DynamoDB Streams, Route 53 Resolver: PrivateLink, FIPS support.
VPC IPAM: Automates prefix list updates.
VPC Lattice: Supports custom domain names for resource configuration (layer 4 access).

[23:54] Security, Identity & Compliance

KMS: Adds Edwards Curve digital signature support—smaller key and signature sizes; good for IoT, blockchain.
- “This is a method for creating digital signatures using elliptic curves ... that's probably the extent that I will understand.” — Gillian (24:20)
Amazon Cognito:
- Removes machine-to-machine app client price dimension (now charged only for successful token requests).
- User Pools now support PrivateLink.
OCSF Ready Specialization: Recognizes AWS partners integrating with open security schema framework.

[26:42] Storage

AWS Backup: Single-action snapshot copy across regions/accounts for RDS, Aurora, Neptune, DocumentDB.
- “That's a single action. I mean, I think every person that uses AWS backup ... had that same thought.” — Gillian (28:55)
AWS Backup: Now supports KMS managed keys with air-gapped vaults.
Amazon EBS: New metrics—avg IOPS and throughput; default 1-minute granularity.
Amazon FSx: Now integrates with Secrets Manager for AD credentials.
Amazon S3:
- Conditional write for copy operations (helps avoid conflicts).
- S3 Table tagging for cost control.
- Mountpoint for S3 and CSI drivers add near real-time observability (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana).

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

On Regional Planning Tool:
“You can now see through this really cool interface... It shows you a forward looking roadmap as well.” — Simon (01:16)
On Analytics/Streaming:
“Customers can warm on demand streams to handle instant throughput increases...without having to over provision.” — Simon (04:12)
On AI Unification:
“It is the first unified embedding model that supports text, documents, images, video and audio...” — Gillian (07:59)
On Cloud Improvements:
“It's just the little things, isn't it? ... all those answers I had for my SAE certification questions around the performance of these streams is now out of date.” — Simon (04:46)
On IAM Policy Mapping:
"I think every single person on the planet ... has gone through this problem." — Gillian (20:28)
On AI for Operations:
“It debugs it with AI, deploys it with AI, it's AI all the way down.” — Simon (21:33)

Useful Timestamps

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool & Knowledge Model Context Protocol
[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS
[03:42] Major Analytics & App Integration Updates
[06:17] AI Tools (Bedrock, Nova, SageMaker, Web Grounding)
[09:54] Compute/Serverless & Container Announcements
[15:28] Database/CloudWatch/DocumentDB Big Upgrades
[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing
[17:58] Gaming & IoT Greengrass
[19:06] Management, Governance, Observability
[22:12] Networking, VPC, CloudFront
[23:54] Security (KMS, Cognito, OCSF)
[26:42] Storage, Backup, and S3 New Features

Final Thoughts

Connect:

Gillian Ford: LinkedIn
Feedback: awspodcast@amazon.com

#746: AWS Regional Planning Tool, MCP Proxy for AWS, and Lots More!!!

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Summary

AWS Podcast Episode #746 Summary

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool

Knowledge Model Context Protocol Integration [01:50]

[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS

[03:42] Significant Analytics & App Integration Updates

Application Integration

[06:17] Artificial Intelligence Announcements

Nova Multimodal Embeddings [07:40]

Business App & Contact Center

[09:54] Compute & Serverless

EC2 Auto Scaling

Capacity Reservation Topology API

Amazon EKS

[15:28] Database Updates

[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing

[17:58] Gaming & IoT

[19:06] Management & Governance

[22:12] Networking, Content Delivery & VPC

[23:54] Security, Identity & Compliance

[26:42] Storage

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

Useful Timestamps

Final Thoughts

Summary

AWS Podcast Episode #746 Summary

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:58] AWS Regional Planning Tool

Knowledge Model Context Protocol Integration [01:50]

[02:26] MCP Proxy for AWS

[03:42] Significant Analytics & App Integration Updates

Application Integration

[06:17] Artificial Intelligence Announcements

Nova Multimodal Embeddings [07:40]

Business App & Contact Center

[09:54] Compute & Serverless

EC2 Auto Scaling

Capacity Reservation Topology API

Amazon EKS

[15:28] Database Updates

[17:33] Developer Tools & End User Computing

[17:58] Gaming & IoT

[19:06] Management & Governance

[22:12] Networking, Content Delivery & VPC

[23:54] Security, Identity & Compliance

[26:42] Storage

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

Useful Timestamps

Final Thoughts