What's New

Windows with SQL Server Enterprise Edition is now available on t2.xlarge and t2.2xlarge instance types in AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD. Amazon EC2 T2 instances are the lowest-cost Amazon EC2 General Purpose instance type that provides a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline. T2 instances are ideal for a variety of general-purpose applications like micro-services, small and medium databases and product prototypes. 

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis, today announced the availability of a new metric - EngineCPUUtilization which provides access to the Redis process CPU utilization to gain better insights into your Redis workloads. As Redis is single threaded and uses just one CPU core at any given point in time, the new metric provides more precise visibility into the load of the Redis process itself.

Amazon EC2 X1 instances, designed for running large-scale, in-memory applications and in-memory databases in the AWS cloud, are now available in the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.

You can now develop your AWS Lambda functions using Node.js v8.10. In addition to the leveraging new features in Node.js v8.10 such as the new V8 6.0 engine, Lambda functions written in Node.js 8.10 can now use the async/await pattern to specify error or return values for the function execution. 

You can now tag your Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Snapshots at the time of creation. You can do this from the Amazon EC2 console or through the CreateSnapshot API. By tagging resources at the time of creation, you can eliminate the need to run custom tagging scripts after resource creation. 

You now have a number of new Amazon S3 features to augment data protection and simplify compliance in AWS China Regions including Default Encryption, encryption status in S3 Inventory reports, and additional object age groups in S3 Storage Class Analysis.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) has added new Amazon CloudWatch Events to notify customers when volume creation or deletion is accomplished. Instead of having to continuously poll describe-volume API to determine whether the volume has been created or deleted after issuing the command, customers can use these events to track the volume state. 

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) is now available to customers in AWS China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD. AWS SMS is an agentless service which makes it easier and faster for you to migrate thousands of on-premises workloads to AWS. It allows you to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes, making it easier for you to coordinate large-scale server migrations. 

Now, you can enable your applications and federated users in the AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet and the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD to complete longer running workloads in the AWS cloud using a single session by increasing the maximum session duration up to 12 hours for an IAM role. You can extend the maximum session duration for an IAM role to up to 12 hours using the IAM console or CLI. Once you increase the maximum session duration, users and applications assuming the IAM role can request temporary credentials that expire when the IAM role session expires.

Amazon RDS now supports MariaDB Server minor versions 10.0.34, 10.1.31 and 10.2.12 in in AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. These new versions include a number of fixes and functionality improvements for the MariaDB database engine.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) now supports Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) enabled EBS snapshots for Windows Server AMIs in the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by SINNET, and the AWS China (Ningxia) Regions, operated by NWCD.

With this launch, you can now take VSS-enabled EBS snapshots of your running Windows instances without the need to create custom scripts, or shutting down the instances. To read more about this capability go to the AWS documentation.

Amazon RDS now supports MySQL Community Edition minor versions 5.5.59, 5.6.39 and 5.7.21 in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. These new versions include a number of fixes and functionality improvements for the MySQL database engine.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances receive a two-minute notification when these instances are about to be reclaimed by Amazon EC2. Starting today, the two-minute warning for Spot Instances is available via Amazon CloudWatch Events CLI and will continue to be available by accessing the Instance Metadata service.  

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs provide pre-configured environments for machine learning developers and data scientists to quickly start experimenting with deep learning models. The AMIs now come with support for Chainer, a flexible and intuitive framework for neural networks. Chainer uses a "define-by-run" approach that enables developers to define their deep learning network architecture on the fly. Such dynamic computational graphs are especially helpful while working with recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and with inputs of variable length like in natural language processing. This release also includes PyTorch 0.3.1 and Apache MXNet 1.1 which provide performance enhancements and bug fixes.

You can find the Deep Learning AMI of your choice in the Quick Start section of the Step 1: Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the EC2 instance launch wizard. Also visit our Documentation guide for help with selecting the right AMI for your project, simple tutorials and more resources.

You can now launch R4, db.t2.xlarge, db.t2.2xlarge, and db.m4.16xlarge instances types when using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle in the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.

You can now provision Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts in the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated for your use. Dedicated Hosts can help you reduce costs by allowing you to use your existing server-bound software licenses, including Windows Server, SQL Server, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and can also help you meet license compliance requirements.

Introducing corporate bank redirect online payment method to AWS China. This is a popular method for corporations to pay and for merchants to collect payments from corporate clients in China. 

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

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

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs provide pre-configured environments for machine learning developers and data scientists to quickly start experimenting with deep learning models. The Conda-based Deep Learning AMI, which provides pre-installed pip packages of popular deep learning frameworks in separate virtual environments, now supports Caffe, includes TensorFlow version 1.4.1, Keras 2.1.2, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit 2.3.1, and Theano 1.0.

The Conda-based AMI also provides TensorFlow Serving for developers to quickly create an inference end-point for their TensorFlow models, as well as the TensorBoard visualization tool. The AMIs come with easy-to-follow MNIST-based tutorials for both TensorFlow Serving and TensorBoard. Apache MXNet users can benefit from the MXNet Model Server to quickly deploy an HTTP-based inference endpoint for their models.

The CUDA 9 Source Code AMI, which provides pre-installed deep learning frameworks and their source code in a shared python environment, now includes TensorFlow 1.5.0-rc0 version. This version of TensorFlow works with CUDA 9 and cuDNN 7, making it the first version of TensorFlow that leverages the computing power of NVidia Volta GPUs powering Amazon EC2 P3 instances. Since the version is still pre-release, test before you use it in production.

All the AWS Deep Learning AMIs for both Ubuntu and Amazon Linux platforms are updated with the latest NVidia GPU drivers and operating system versions that include security patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered earlier this month.

You can find the Deep Learning AMI of your choice in the Quick Start section of the Step 1: Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the EC2 instance launch wizard. Also visit our Documentation guide for help with selecting the right AMI for your project, simple tutorials and more resources.

AWS Config now supports Config rules in AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet. Config provides you with pre-built rules for evaluating the configuration of your AWS resources as well as software within managed instances, including Amazon EC2 instances and servers running on-premises. You can customize pre-built rules to evaluate your AWS resource configurations and configuration changes, or create your own custom rules that define your internal best practices and guidelines for resource configurations. Using Config, you can assess your resource configurations and resource changes for compliance against the built-in or custom rules.

To learn more about AWS Config rules, visit here. 

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) is now available to customers in AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet. AWS Server Migration Service is an agentless service which makes it easier and faster for you to migrate thousands of on-premises workloads to AWS. AWS SMS allows you to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes, making it easier for you to coordinate large-scale server migrations. 

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) now supports Docker version 17.09.01-ce. The Amazon ECS-optimized Amazon Machine Image (AMI) now includes the ECS Agent 1.16.2 as well as Docker version 17.09.01-ce. 

Starting today, Amazon RDS Read Replicas for MySQL and MariaDB now support Multi-AZ deployments in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. Combining Read Replicas with Multi-AZ enables you to build a resilient disaster recovery strategy and simplify your database engine upgrade process. 

Starting today you can easily create a new Amazon RDS for MySQL database instance from a backup of your existing MySQL database in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. This includes MySQL databases running on Amazon EC2 or outside of AWS services. This is done by creating a backup of using the Percona XtraBackup tool and uploading the resulting files to an Amazon S3 bucket. You then create a new Amazon RDS DB Instance from the backup files in Amazon S3, directly through the RDS Console or AWS Command Line Interface. 

You can now launch R4, db.t2.xlarge, db.t2.2xlarge, and db.m4.16xlarge instances types in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD, when using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for PostgreSQL. 

You can now publish logs from your RDS for MySQL and MariaDB databases to CloudWatch Logs. Supported logs include general log, slow query log, audit log, and error log. Publishing these logs to CloudWatch Logs allows you to maintain continuous visibility into database activity, query performance, and errors in your RDS for MySQL and MariaDB databases. For example, you can set up CloudWatch Alarms to notify you on frequent restarts which are recorded in the error log. Similarly, alarms for events recorded in general or audit logs can be created to alert on unwanted changes made to your databases. You may also create alarms to monitor the slow query log and enable timely detection of long-running queries.

Amazon EC2 simplified the Spot pricing by moving to a model which delivers low, predictable prices that adjust gradually, based on long-term trends in supply and demand. You will continue to save up to 90% off the On-Demand instances price and you will continue to pay the Spot price that's in effect at the beginning of each instance-hour for your running instance. 

We are excited to announce that Amazon EC2 Spot instances - low cost EC2 instances - are now available in AWS China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD. Spot instances are ideal for fault tolerant or stateless workloads such as big data & analytics, containers & stateless web servers, batch, high performance computing, CI/CD and test workloads. 

Launch Templates are now available in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet. Launch Templates is a new capability that enables a new way to templatize your launch requests. Launch Templates streamline and simplify the launch process for Auto Scaling, Spot Fleet, Spot, and On-Demand instances. 

You can now launch R4, db.t2.xlarge, db.t2.2xlarge, and db.m4.16xlarge instances types when using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for MySQL and MariaDB in the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet. 

We are excited to announce a significant change to AWS IoT pricing that will go into effect January 1, 2018. Previously, AWS IoT charged for the use of connectivity, messaging, Thing Shadow, Thing Registry, and Rules Engine under a bundled pricing plan. The new plan unbundles pricing by charging for these components independently. This allows you to tailor costs around your specific workload, and ensures you only pay for what you use. 

The Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) service scheduler now includes logic that throttles how often tasks are restarted if they repeatedly fail to launch. 

Amazon Virtual Cloud (VPC) now provides customers ability to tag Elastic IPs. With tagging support, customers can add Key and Value metadata to search, filter and organize their Elastic IPs. Tagging for Elastic IPs is available through the AWS Console and CLI. 

The AWS Deep Learning AMIs are now available in the AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet, providing fully-configured virtual environments for AI developers and data scientists to quickly start experimenting with deep learning models.

Several enhancements have been made to the functionality and user experience of the Amazon SNS console in the AWS China (Beijing) region, operated by Sinnet. Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a flexible, fully managed pub/sub messaging and mobile notifications service for coordinating the delivery of messages to subscribing endpoints and clients. These improvements to the SNS console have made navigation and categorization of information easier, and allow you to now view up to 100,000 SNS topics, subscriptions and endpoints. You also can now run data validation for items such as resource names, ARNs and policies. 

Now, you can add additional protection to your AWS accounts in the AWS China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet and AWS China (Ningxia) Region operated by NWCD, by enabling virtual multi-factor authentication (MFA) when you sign in to the AWS Management Console. By setting up a virtual MFA, you will be required to provide a second factor of authentication during every sign-in to protect your account from unauthorized access in case your username and password has been compromised. Before you begin setting up your virtual MFA, you will need to download an application that you can use to host the virtual MFA devices. You can configure your virtual MFA on your Security Credentials tab by using the downloaded application.

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co. Ltd. (NWCD), a cloud services provider in China, today announced a strategic technology partnership and the launch of the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. NWCD operates and provides services from the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, in full compliance with Chinese regulations. Founded in 2015, NWCD is a licensed datacenter and cloud services provider, based in Ningxia, China. NWCD joins Sinnet, the operator of the AWS China (Beijing) Region, as AWS’s second operating partner in China. Through these relationships, AWS provides its industry-leading technology, guidance, and expertise to NWCD and Sinnet, while NWCD and Sinnet operate and provide AWS Cloud services to local customers. While the cloud services offered in both AWS China Regions are the same as those available in other AWS Regions, the AWS China Regions are isolated from all other AWS Regions and operated by AWS’s Chinese partners separately from all other AWS Regions. Customers using the AWS China Regions enter into customer agreements with Sinnet in Beijing and NWCD in Ningxia, rather than with AWS. Existing customers can choose the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and/or the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD, by selecting either AWS China Region directly from the Management Console, while new customers can request an account at www.amazonaws.cn to begin using either AWS China Region.

Amazon RDS for MariaDB now supports MariaDB minor versions 10.1.26 and 10.0.32. These new versions include a number of fixes and functionality improvements for the MariaDB database engine.

You can now use message filtering on Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to build simpler and more streamlined pub/sub architectures. Message filtering enables Amazon SNS topic subscribers to selectively receive only a subset of the messages they are interested in, as opposed to receiving all messages published to a topic. This new approach removes the design complexity of implementing message filtering logic in your subscribers, or message routing logic in your publisher systems. 

You can now log the execution activity of your AWS Lambda functions with AWS CloudTrail Lambda data events. Previously, you could only log Lambda management events, which provide information on when and by whom a function was created, modified, or deleted. Now, you can also record Lambda data events and get additional details on when and by whom an Invoke API call was made and which Lambda function was executed. All Lambda data events are delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket and Amazon CloudWatch Events, which allows you to respond to events recorded by CloudTrail. For example, you can quickly determine which Lambda functions were executed in the past three days and identify the source of the Invoke API calls. You can take immediate action to restrict Invoke API calls to known users or roles if you detect inappropriate Lambda activity.

You can turn on logging for AWS Lambda data events using the AWS CloudTrail console, AWS CLI, and SDKs. You can view and select which Lambda functions get logged by creating a new trail or editing an existing trail.

Please visit AWS CloudTrail documentation page for more information.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports Microsoft SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2016 SP1 CU5 for Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise Editions on the Windows Operating Systems. You can now leverage SQL Server 2017 features such as GraphDB, Automatic Plan Correction, and Resumable Index Rebuilds on your Amazon RDS SQL Server Instances.

Starting today, you can create Amazon RDS database instances for MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and PostgreSQL database engines with up to 16TB of storage. Existing database instances can also be scaled up to 16TB storage without any downtime.

Amazon ElastiCache now supports R4 node types. R4 nodes are optimized for latency sensitive and memory intensive workloads. They come in six sizes, providing 12.3GiB to 407GiB of available in-memory capacity. By setting up a 15-shard cluster for Redis, you can scale up to 6.1TiB of in-memory capacity. Likewise, for Memcached, you can set up a 20-node cluster to support up to 8.14 TiB in-memory workloads. Equipped with the Intel Broadwell processor, and improved networking, R4 node family offers superior performance over the popular R3 node family.

You can now call a Lambda Function in the SQL statement of your rule by calling a lambda function in the SELECT statement to enrich IoT message data with external services like weather, geo-location, and maps. You can also call a lambda function from the WHERE clause to evaluate a condition with context from external services. For example, you can evaluate if the reported device position lies inside or outside a geographic area by calling an external geo-fencing endpoint like HERE maps (sample) and then triggering an SNS Action if it lies outside the area.

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis introduces Online Cluster Resizing to add and remove shards from a running cluster. You can now dynamically scale-out or scale-in your Redis cluster workloads to adapt to changes in demand. ElastiCache will resize the cluster and redistribute hash slots uniformly across the new shard configuration, all while the cluster continues to stay online and serve requests. Additionally, for optimized processing, you can also rebalance a cluster and uniformly distribute the slot space, without changing the number of shards. 

We are excited to announce that Amazon EC2 Spot instances, low cost EC2 instances, are now available in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet.

Tasks running on Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS) can now take advantage of AWSVPC mode for container networking. This new mode allocates an elastic networking interface to each running task, providing a dynamic private IP address and internal DNS name. This simplifies container networking operations, allowing tasks to run with full networking features on AWS, just like EC2 instances. 

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to triggers and automatically manages the compute resources for you, making it easy to build applications that respond quickly to new information. AWS Lambda starts running your code within milliseconds of a trigger such as an image upload, in-app activity, website click, or output from a connected device. You can also use AWS Lambda to create new back-end services where compute resources are automatically triggered based on custom requests. With AWS Lambda you pay only for the requests served and the compute time required to run your code. Billing is metered in increments of 100 milliseconds, making it cost-effective and easy to scale automatically from a few requests per day to thousands per second. 

Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can create an API that acts as a “front door” for applications to access data, business logic, or functionality from your back-end services, such as workloads running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), code running on AWS Lambda, or any Web application. Amazon API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, authorization and access control, monitoring, and API version management. 

You can now launch Amazon Redshift clusters on our second-generation Dense Compute (DC2) nodes. DC2 is designed for demanding data warehousing workloads that require low latency and high throughput. They feature powerful Intel E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) CPUs, fast DDR4 memory, and NVMe-based solid state disks (SSDs). We’ve tuned Amazon Redshift to leverage the better CPU, network, and disk on DC2 nodes, providing up to twice the performance of DC1 at the same price. Our DC2.8xlarge instances now provide twice the memory per slice of data and an optimized storage layout with 30% better storage utilization. 

We are pleased to announce that Application Auto Scaling now supports scheduled scaling, which makes it possible to scale resources at specific preset times or intervals. Application Auto Scaling allows you to automatically scale resources for AWS services beyond Amazon EC2, including Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Spot Fleets, Amazon EMR Clusters, AppStream 2.0 fleets, and Amazon DynamoDB. 

In 2016, we introduced Convertible RIs which provide customers with the flexibility to change a RI’s instance type, OS, tenancy or payment option during its term. Today, we are announcing a support for splits & mergers to Convertible RIs.

Amazon Cognito Federated Identities is now available in the AWS China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet.

Amazon RDS for MySQL now supports MySQL Community Edition minor versions 5.5.57, 5.6.37 and 5.7.19 in all AWS Regions. These new versions include a number of fixes and functionality improvements for the MySQL database engine. 

We are excited to announce the availability of Amazon EC2 P3 instances, the next-generation of EC2 general-purpose GPU computing instances. P3 instances are powered by up to 8 of the latest-generation NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, and are ideal for computationally advanced workloads such as machine learning (ML), high performance computing (HPC), scientific computing and simulations, financial analytics, image and video processing, and data compression.  

Starting today, you can use cost allocation tags to manage your costs in Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS). You can now use tags to categorize your queues, so you can easily identify their purpose and track their costs. For example, you can use tags to identify all the Amazon SQS queues for a particular department, project, or application. Once you have tagged your Amazon SQS queues, you can sign up to include usage and cost details for particular tags in your AWS account bill. 

You can add or remove tags using the Amazon SQS management console, AWS Command Line Interface, or API. You can assign up to 50 tags, each consisting of a key and a value, per Amazon SQS queue.

Cost allocation tagging is now available in AWS China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet. For more information on using tagging with Amazon SQS, see Tagging your Amazon SQS Queues.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is announcing a configurable private ASN for its Direct Connect (DX) to enhance use of their Virtual Private Cloud. Users can now select a Private Autonomous System Number (or use the private ASN value provided) for the AWS half of the external BGP session using DX private Virtual Interface. Also, they can now view the AWS Console side ASN in the console or via APIs without downloading the router configuration details.

 

This feature is available for use in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet.

Today we’re announcing enhancements to Amazon RDS Reserved Instances (RIs) in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, that make them more flexible and easier to use, helping you get the most out of your RI discount. RIs give you the option to reserve a database instance for a one or three year term, and in turn receive a significant discount compared to on-demand instance pricing.

We are excited to announce that Amazon EC2 usage of Linux based instances that are launched in On-Demand, Reserved and Spot form will be billed on one second increments, with a minimum of 60 seconds. 

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) now allows customers to expand their VPCs by adding secondary IPv4 address ranges (CIDRs) to their VPCs. Customers can add the secondary CIDR blocks to the VPC directly from the console or by using the CLI after they have created the VPC with the primary CIDR block. Similar to the primary CIDR block, secondary CIDR blocks are also supported by all the AWS services including Elastic Load Balancing and NAT Gateway.

AWS CloudFormation now allows you to protect a stack from being accidently deleted. You can enable termination protection on a stack when you create it. If you attempt to delete a stack with termination protection enabled, the deletion fails and the stack, including its status, will remain unchanged. To delete a stack you need disable termination protection. 

AWS CloudTrail S3 Data Events allow you to record API actions on Amazon S3 objects and receive detailed information such as the AWS account, IAM user role, and IP address of the caller, time of the API call, and other details. You can programmatically access and act upon the Data Events after they are delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket or to Amazon CloudWatch Events. For example, you can quickly reapply the original Access Control List (ACL) on an object if the ACL of an object is modified.

AWS Storage Gateway has added Commvault V11 as a supported backup application for use with its virtual tape library (VTL), the Tape Gateway. You can now use Commvault V11 and the Storage Gateway VTL to backup and archive application data to scalable, and cost-effective, secure Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier storage, while preserving established tape management processes.

Use Rollback Triggers to monitor the state of your application during the stack creation and update process. You can specify the alarms and the thresholds you want CloudFormation to monitor, and if any of the alarms are breached, CloudFormation rolls back the entire stack operation to the previous deployed state.

You can now create and manage lifecycle hooks for Auto Scaling Groups using the AWS management console. Previously, this functionality was only available through the AWS Application Programming Interface (API), Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS CloudFormation. In addition, creating lifecycle hooks is now more convenient as it can be done in the same step as creating your Auto Scaling Group using the ‘CreateAutoScalingGroup’ call through the AWS API and CLI.

You can now monitor bytes, packets, active connections and several other metrics for NAT Gateways via CloudWatch console and AWS CLI. You can setup CloudWatch Alarms to notify you of crossing thresholds. All metrics are provided with a 1 min frequency. For more information about the metrics, see Monitoring Your NAT Gateway with Amazon CloudWatch. 

We are excited to announce that you can now add horizontal annotations to your graphs and dashboards in CloudWatch. 

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) now allows customers to add a short description to individual security group rules. Using this functionality, customers can add details like when and why a certain security group rule was created or updated. This functionality simplifies management of security groups as customers no longer need to maintain this information outside of AWS using spreadsheets or documents.

You can now create Amazon RDS for SQL Server database instances with up to 16TB of storage, up from 4TB. The new storage limit is available when using the Provisioned IOPS and General Purpose (SSD) storage types. In addition, the range for the IOPS to Storage (GB) Ratio has been increased from 10:1 to 50:1.

You can now launch G3 instances, the latest generation of Amazon EC2 Accelerated Compute Instances. G3 instances make it easy to procure a powerful combination of GPU, CPU, and host memory for workloads such as 3D rendering, 3D visualizations, graphics-intensive remote workstations, video encoding, and virtual reality applications.

We are excited to announce that Amazon EC2 P2 instances are now available in AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet.

VPC Endpoints for DynamoDB enables you to have all network traffic between your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Amazon DynamoDB stay within the AWS cloud instead of traversing the public internet.

Amazon Virtual Cloud (VPC) now provides customers an opportunity to recover EIPs that they might have released accidentally. The released EIPs are available for recovery as long as they are not assigned to a different customer. The sooner customers try to recover their EIPs, the better are the chances of recovering them. Customers can recover their EIPs via CLI by using the allocate-address command and specifying the IP address using the --address parameter.

AWS CloudTrail Event History is now available to all customers. CloudTrail Event History (formerly known as API Activity History) lets you view, search, and download your recent AWS account activity. This allows you to gain visibility into your account actions taken through the AWS Management Console, SDKs, and CLI to enable governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account.

Previously, you could only view your account activity by setting up CloudTrail for your account. Now, you can view the past 7 days of CloudTrail Event History immediately through the AWS CloudTrail console and AWS CLI without setting up CloudTrail. You can still set up CloudTrail to deliver your CloudTrail events to Amazon S3, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and Amazon CloudWatch Events if you want to archive, analyze, and respond to changes in your AWS resources. Please visit AWS CloudTrail documentation page for more information.

You can now launch M4 instances when using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL Server in the China (Beijing) Region Operated by Sinnet. Amazon RDS is a managed database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.

You can now configure policies to automatically add (scale out) and terminate (scale in) nodes in your Amazon EMR cluster. Amazon EMR can programmatically scale out applications like Apache Spark and Apache Hive to utilize additional nodes for increased performance and scale in the number of nodes in your cluster to save costs when utilization is low. Your cluster can scale based on Amazon CloudWatch metrics provided by Amazon EMR, including YARN utilization metrics.

AWS CloudTrail now enables you to download CloudTrail account activity history from within the CloudTrail console. Previously, you could only analyze or share account activity offline by using the CloudTrail LookupEvents API, copying and pasting relevant information directly from the CloudTrail console, or searching the CloudTrail S3 bucket for the correct log files. Now, you can download your account activity to a CSV or JSON formatted files. You can use downloaded files to compare activity searches, analyze account activity with 3rd party tools, or to backup and store activity offline. Please visit AWS CloudTrail documentation page for more information.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) now allows customers to create a new default VPC directly from the console or by using the CLI. With this release, customers no longer need to contact AWS support if the default VPC has been deleted, as they can create a new default VPC by using this self-service feature. Customers can also take remedial actions against accidental deletion of default VPCs, by automating creation of a new default VPC using the API.

We are excited to announce that CloudWatch now supports High-Resolution Custom Metrics and Alarms, enabling you to monitor custom applications and infrastructure in near real-time, down to per-second resolution. 

You can now launch X1 instances, the latest generation of Amazon EC2 instances optimized to run large-scale, enterprise-class, in-memory applications. X1 instances are ideal to run in-memory databases such as SAP HANA and host memory intensive and latency sensitive workloads such as Apache Spark, and Presto. X1 instances are also ideal for generating real time analytics, processing giant graphs using Neo4j or Titan, or creating enormous caches.  

Starting today, when you create a new DynamoDB table using the AWS Management Console, the table will have Auto Scaling enabled by default.  DynamoDB Auto Scaling automatically adjusts read and write throughput capacity, in response to dynamically changing request volumes, with zero downtime. 

AWS Direct Connect is announcing general availability of Amazon CloudWatch monitoring for customers’ physical connections to the AWS (Beijing Region) Operated by Sinnet. AWS Direct Connect customers can now use Amazon CloudWatch Metrics to monitor their physical connections, and use Amazon CloudWatch Alarms to notify them of changes in their physical AWS Direct Connect connection and to trigger actions with the help of Amazon SNS topics.

AWS IoT is now available in the AWS China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet.

Auto Scaling now supports a new type of scaling policy called target tracking scaling policies that you can use to set up dynamic scaling for your application in just a few simple steps. Adding Auto Scaling to your application is one way to maximize the benefits of AWS. Auto Scaling helps you build systems that respond to changes in demand by automatically launching or terminating Amazon EC2 instances based on conditions that you define. This dynamic scaling helps to improve application availability and reduce costs. For example, you can use Auto Scaling to automatically launch EC2 instances for your Auto Scaling group when demand increases to help maintain performance, and terminate instances when demand drops to save money.

Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) and Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR) are now available in the China (Beijing) region operated by Sinnet.

Amazon ECS is a container management service for deploying and scaling Docker containers in production. Amazon ECR is a container registry for you to easily store, manage, and share large numbers of container images.

We are making a change to how we present CloudWatch charges in your AWS bill and Cost and Usage Reports, to make it easy for you to understand your monthly CloudWatch spend. These changes will be effective in all AWS Regions, including BJS operated by Sinnet, beginning July 2017.

You can now use Network Address Translation (NAT) Gateway in the China (Beijing) Region Operated by Sinnet. NAT Gateway is a highly available AWS managed service that makes it easy to connect to the Internet from instances within a private subnet in an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Previously, you needed to launch a NAT instance to enable NAT for instances in a private subnet.

Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL Server now allows you to easily stop and start your database instances. This makes it easy and affordable to use databases for development and test purposes, where the database is not required to be running all of the time.

Today we are announcing that Amazon EBS now supports cost allocation tags for EBS snapshots within the AWS Billing and Cost Management Dashboard. Using cost allocation tags, you can now classify snapshot costs to match the needs of your business for better transparency and visibility. You can use this feature to allocate snapshot costs to internal teams or to provide accurate reports for customer billing. With this additional information, you can better manage your snapshot costs.

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is now available in the China (Beijing) Region operated by Sinnet.

Today we are announcing the general availability of the new Amazon S3 console to all users. The new Amazon S3 console provides a new user interface, a streamlined user experience, and introduces user interface support for two new S3 features – object-level tagging and storage analytics. Many S3 users having been experiencing the new Amazon S3 console by opting-in as part of our original launch of the new Amazon S3 console on 29th, November 2016. Now all S3 users get this experience without any additional work. 

You can now define AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to provide control over which Auto Scaling resources users can access, and the actions that they are permitted to perform on these resources. Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability and allows you to scale your Amazon EC2 capacity up or down automatically according to conditions you define. You can use Auto Scaling to help ensure that you are running your desired number of Amazon EC2 instances. With resource-level permissions, you can enable different users within an organization, such as application developers and IT specialists, to access and modify Launch Configurations and Auto Scaling groups with appropriately configured permissions.

Amazon EC2 now offers SQL Server Enterprise Edition in the AWS China (Beijing) Region Operated by Sinnet running on any instance type with a minimum of 4 vCPUs, including M4, R4, and several other instance types. You can now launch SQL Server Enterprise on Windows Server 2012R2 and Windows Server 2016 operating systems.

AWS CodeDeploy is now available in the China (Beijing) AWS region.

We are excited to announce that Amazon ElastiCache now supports enhanced Redis Backup and Restore with Cluster Resizing. In October 2016, we launched support for Redis Cluster with Redis 3.2.4. In addition to scaling your Redis workloads across up to 15 shards with 3.5TiB of data, it also allowed creating cluster-level backups, which contain snapshots of each of the cluster’s shards. With this launch, we are adding the capability to restore a backup into a Redis Cluster with a different number of shards and slot distribution, allowing you to resize your Redis workload. ElastiCache will parse the Redis key space across the backup’s individual snapshots, and redistribute the keys in the new Cluster according to the requested number of shards and hash slots. Your new cluster can be either larger or smaller in size, as long as the data fits in the selected configuration.

Today, we are announcing enhancements to Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs) that make them more flexible and easy to use, helping you get the most out of your RI discount.

Today we are introducing the Elastic Volumes feature for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). This new capability allows you to modify configurations of live volumes with a simple API call or a few console clicks. Elastic Volumes makes it easy to dynamically increase capacity, tune performance, and change the type of any new or existing current generation volume with no downtime or performance impact. You can streamline and automate changes using Amazon CloudWatch with AWS Lambda where available (AWS Lambda is not available in the Beijing Region as of the date of this post). With Amazon EBS you can provision the capacity and performance you need today with the confidence that you can make modifications in the future as your business needs change.

We are excited to announce support for 1G and 10G Link Aggregation Groups (LAG). Customers in AWS China (Beijing Region), operated by Sinnet can start using LAG to link existing connections on the same AWS device, or request new connections. Users who wish to purchase multiple ports, but treat them like a single managed connection can now use our LAG feature to do just this. In addition to ordering and managing bundles, you can now see when your ports fall on the same router so you can manage your network availability.

CloudWatch announced the extension of metric retention from 14 days to 15 months, free of charge. CloudWatch has already stored at least 2 months of all existing metrics, which customers can begin using immediately to analyze seasonality, monthly trends and in the future, year-over-year comparisons and forecasts.

We happily announce that an EC2 price reduction will go in to effect on December 1, 2016, just in time to make your holiday season just a little bit more cheerful! Our engineering investments, coupled with our scale and our time-tested ability to manage our capacity, allow us to identify and pass on the cost savings to you.

We are reducing prices for C4, M4, and T2 instances, depending on platform (Linux, RHEL, SUSE, Windows, and so forth). Price cuts apply across all AWS Regions. For example:

• AWS China (BJS) region, operated by SINNET, reduces the price of M4 and T2 instances up to 10%, and C4 instances up to 5%.
  

As always, you do not need to take any action in order to benefit from the reduction in On-Demand prices. If you are using billing alerts or our newly revised budget feature, you may want to consider revising your thresholds downward as appropriate.

AWS China (BJS) region operated by SINNET

 

We are reducing the base price of CloudWatch Metrics from 3.11 CNY per metric per month to 2.00 CNY per metric per month, a 36% reduction in price. In addition, we are introducing new volume-based tiered pricing with even lower prices per metric, with savings up to 96%. These take effect in AWS China (BJS) region, operated by Sinnet, beginning December 1st, 2016.

We’re excited to announce new features to the growing portfolio of Amazon S3 Storage Management capabilities to help you better analyze and manage your storage. Today’s release includes:

You can now launch R4 instances, the next generation of Amazon EC2 Memory Optimized instances, featuring a larger instance size, a new Intel Broadwell processor, improved networking and EBS performance, and cheaper on per GiB of RAM compared to R3 instances. R4 instances are well-suited for memory-intensive, latency-sensitive workloads like Business Intelligence (BI), data mining & analysis, in-memory databases, distributed web scale in-memory caching, and applications performing real-time processing of unstructured big data.

You can now launch the t2.xlarge and t2.2xlarge, the newest Amazon EC2 burstable-performance instances. The t2.xlarge features 16 GiB of memory and 4 vCPU, and the t2.2xlarge features 32 GiB of memory and 8 vCPU. These two new instances provide burstable-performance options for larger workloads. As with other T2 instances, t2.xlarge and t2.2xlarge are well suited for workloads that require a consistent baseline performance with the ability to burst. T2 instances are backed by Intel Xeon processors with clock speeds up to 3.3 GHz.

You can now use RIs that apply discounts regionally and purchase Convertible RIs in the AWS China (Beijing) region.

The Amazon CloudWatch Events service is now available in the China (Beijing) region.

You can now launch D2 instances, the latest generation of Amazon EC2 Dense-storage instances. D2 instances are designed for workloads that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets, such as Hadoop distributed computing, massively parallel processing data warehousing, and log processing applications.

AWS Config is now available in the China (Beijing) region. AWS Config is a fully managed service that gives you an inventory of your AWS resources, notifies you when the configurations of your resources change, and lets you audit the history of the configurations for those resources to enable security and governance.

We are excited to announce the availability of the m4.16xlarge, the largest instance size in the latest generation of EC2 General Purpose instances, featuring 64 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory. The m4.16xlarge offers a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and is a good choice for many applications including databases, data processing tasks, cluster computing, and web servers that require high computational horsepower or memory size.

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), in collaboration with Beijing Sinnet Technology Co. Ltd. (“Sinnet”), announced that the AWS China (Beijing) Region is generally available to customers from datacenters in China that are being operated by Sinnet. Through this collaboration, AWS provides technology, guidance, and expertise to Sinnet while Sinnet operates and delivers AWS Cloud services. Specifically designed for the AWS Beijing Region, this expanded partnership with Sinnet, which commenced on Aug. 1, 2016, represents AWS’s commitment to bring best-in-class cloud services to customers looking to run workloads from datacenters in China. Developers, start-ups, enterprises, government organizations, and non-profits based in China or internationally can leverage the AWS China (Beijing) Region to run their technology applications from infrastructure in China, based on the same technology as AWS’s global service and operated locally by Sinnet.

Users can sign up to start using the AWS Beijing Region at: http://www.amazonaws.cn/en/sign-up

Amazon Connect Technology Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd. (“Amazon”) and Beijing Sinnet Technology Co. Ltd. (“Sinnet”) are announcing a broader operating relationship. This new partnership is specifically designed for the Beijing Region and represents a further example of AWS’s commitment to making our best-in-class cloud service available to customers wishing to run workloads from datacenters in China. Beginning 1 August, AWS Cloud services in the Beijing Region will be operated and provided by Sinnet. AWS will continue to provide technology, guidance, and expertise to Sinnet. Please note that there will be no price changes as part of this transition, nor will there be changes to the AWS Cloud services experience. Additionally, customers of the AWS Beijing region can expect a simplified billing process.

Questions and Answers

1. Q: Why is AWS broadening the operating relationship with Sinnet?

A: Chinese telecom regulations for operators of cloud services continue to evolve. By partnering with Sinnet, AWS is able to make its Beijing Region cloud services available to customers in a way that complies with these regulations, while still offering the same best-in-class standards offered in other AWS Regions. At the same time, we are simplifying elements of our billing and fapiao processes.

2. Q: Is this model compliant with applicable telecom regulations?

A: Yes, the new operating model is compliant with all current applicable telecom regulations.

3. Q: What is the operating relationship with Sinnet?

A: Beginning 1 August, AWS Cloud services from the Beijing Region will be operated and provided by Sinnet, with AWS continuing to provide technology, guidance, and expertise to Sinnet. This new operating model will apply to all existing customers and new customers running in the Beijing Region. Under the new operating model, Sinnet will enter into the customer agreement with customers, issue bills and fapiaos, and receive payment for AWS services.

4. Q: Sinnet was already an important partner of AWS in China. How is this new model different from the earlier one?

A: In the earlier model, Sinnet was AWS’s IDC partner in Beijing, which meant that they provided AWS customers IDC services, as well as billed for those services. AWS provided and billed for IT and software services. In the new model, Sinnet will provide and bill for both IDC and AWS IT and software services. Additionally, Sinnet will enter into customer agreements with users of the Beijing Region and offer customer support via the AWS console and other channels.

5. Q: Will service prices be changing as a result of this adjustment to the operating model?

A: No, there will be no service pricing adjustments as a result of this change.

6. Q: How will customer’s bills change and when will that change occur?

A: Beginning with the August billing cycle (which customers will see in September), customers will no longer see the billing lines “Sinnet Services – IDC” and “Sinnet Services – ISP” and related VAT for each itemized service charge. Instead, customers will see two lines per itemized service charge, one from Sinnet for the service charge and another for the VAT. Customers will also see a new logo on the bill (“AWS operated by Sinnet”) and references to “AWS” replaced by “Sinnet.” There will also be new payment remittance instructions, reflecting a new PayEase bank account.

7. Q: How many fapiaos will customers receive, and who issues them?

A: Under the new operating model, customers will receive only one fapiao, issued by Sinnet.

8. Q: Will my customer agreement change, as a result of this adjustment to the operating model?

A: Sinnet will be the counterparty to all customer agreements as of 1 August, 2016, and not AWS. The customer agreement will also be modified to reflect recent regulatory developments. However, the terms and conditions of the agreement will otherwise be substantially similar.

In January, Amazon Web Services announced that longer IDs for EBS volumes and snapshots would be available in April. Starting today, you can opt in to using longer volume and snapshot IDs for EBS and Storage Gateway using APIs or the AWS Management Console.  

We are excited to announce that Amazon Redshift is now available in the AWS China (Beijing) Region.

Amazon Redshift is a fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse that makes it simple and cost-effective to analyze all of your data using your existing business intelligence tools for less than a tenth the cost of traditional data warehousing solutions.

Today, AWS announced that we are collapsing Amazon S3 price tiers and reducing storage prices across Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier. We will collapse the number of Amazon S3 price tiers from six to three – 0-50 TB; 50 TB-500 TB; and 500+ TB – making it easier to understand your bill and project future costs. We will also reduce Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier storage prices by more than 20% in global regions. Together, these changes will help AWS customers even further reduce their cost of storage while still enjoying the simplicity, durability, and massive scalability of Amazon’s object storage services.
The price adjustment for storage products in AWS China (BJS) Region, operated by SINNET, is as below:
Glacier – 0.0334 RMB/GB/MONTH 55% reduction

AWS customers will see the effect of these prices in their billing effective December 1, 2016.

In addition to the S3 and Glacier storage price reductions, Glacier is enabling data to be retrieved in minutes, is offering an ultra-low-cost retrieval option, and is replacing the rate-based retrieval pricing with flat per-GB pricing.

New retrieval options
Customers now have three options for retrieving data from Glacier: Expedited, Standard, and Bulk.
• Standard: Customers can access any of their archives within within 3 – 5 hours. This the existing option and is the default option for unspecified requests.
• Expedited: Customers can now quickly access their data when occasional urgent requests for a subset of archives are required. For all but the largest archives (250MB+),data accessed using Expedited retrievals are typically made available within 1 – 5 minutes. There are two types of Expedited retrievals: On-Demand and Provisioned. On-Demand requests are like EC2 On-Demand instances and are available the vast majority of the time. Provisioned requests are guaranteed to be available when you need them (but require the purchase of provisioned capacity for a nominal monthly fee).
• Bulk: Bulk retrievals are Glacier’s lowest-cost retrieval option, enabling customers to retrieve large amounts, even petabytes, of data inexpensively in a day. Bulk retrievals typically complete within 5 – 12 hours.

These retrieval options are effective now.

As a managed database service, Amazon RDS takes care of the more routine aspects of setting up, running, and scaling a relational database. We first launched support for SQL Server in 2012. Continuing our effort to add features that have included SSL support, major version upgrades, transparent data encryption, enhanced monitoring and Multi-AZ, we have now added support for SQL Server native backup/restore.

SQL Server native backups include all database objects: tables, indexes, stored procedures and triggers. These backups are commonly used to migrate databases between different SQL Server instances running on-premises or in the cloud. They can be used for data ingestion, disaster recovery, and so forth. The native backups also simplify the process of importing data and schemas from on-premises SQL Server instances, and will be easy for SQL Server DBAs to understand and use.

To learn more please visit AWS Blog China

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Amazon CloudWatch Logs in the AWS China (Beijing) region.

With CloudWatch Logs, you can monitor and troubleshoot your systems and applications using log data from other AWS services along with your own system, application, and custom log files. Logs are streamed in near real-time to highly durable, low-cost storage. In the Amazon CloudWatch Console, you can view and search your logs plus configure metrics extraction for specific phrases, values or patterns in your log data.

To learn more about how CloudWatch Logs can help you better understand and operate your systems and applications, see the Amazon CloudWatch product details.

We are excited to announce that on December 15, 2014, AWS launched Trusted Advisor in the China (Beijing) region. AWS Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations for saving money, improving system performance and reliability, or enhancing security. Since 2013, customers have viewed over 2.6 million best-practice recommendations and realized over $350 million in estimated cost reductions.

In the China region, Trusted Advisor provides 14 checks for Business and Enterprise support customers for Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Elastic IP addresses, service limits, and security group configuration. All AWS users can access two of the Trusted Advisor performance and security checks: Service Limits and Open Security Groups. The Trusted Advisor user interface appears in the AWS Management Console.

The Trusted Advisor recent changes feature on the console dashboard brings status changes to your attention. The action links in some checks take you to the relevant service console if changes are necessary.

For more information about Trusted Advisor, visit http://www.amazonaws.cn/en/support/trustedadvisor/

We are excited to announce that on December 15, 2014, AWS launched Trusted Advisor in the China (Beijing) region. AWS Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations for saving money, improving system performance and reliability, or enhancing security. Since 2013, customers have viewed over 2.6 million best-practice recommendations and realized over $350 million in estimated cost reductions.

In the China region, Trusted Advisor provides 14 checks for Business and Enterprise support customers for Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Elastic IP addresses, service limits, and security group configuration. All AWS users can access two of the Trusted Advisor performance and security checks: Service Limits and Open Security Groups. The Trusted Advisor user interface appears in the AWS Management Console.

The Trusted Advisor recent changes feature on the console dashboard brings status changes to your attention. The action links in some checks take you to the relevant service console if changes are necessary.

For more information about Trusted Advisor, visit http://www.amazonaws.cn/en/support/trustedadvisor/

AWS is excited to announce its limited preview of its China (Beijing) Region. Throughout the limited preview, we will continue to invite both China-based and multinational companies with customers in China to begin using the new Beijing Region to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud. Businesses or software developers can apply for access to the limited preview of AWS services in the AWS China Region today at www.amazonaws.cn.

As a reminder, customers who wish to use the new Beijing Region are required to sign up for a separate set of account credentials unique to the China (Beijing) Region. Customers with existing AWS credentials will not be able to access resources in the new Region, and vice versa.

Please visit the new China website for more information at www.amazonaws.cn.

AWS is excited to announce its limited preview of its China (Beijing) Region. Throughout the limited preview, we will continue to invite both China-based and multinational companies with customers in China to begin using the new Beijing Region to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud. Businesses or software developers can apply for access to the limited preview of AWS services in the AWS China Region today at www.amazonaws.cn.

As a reminder, customers who wish to use the new Beijing Region are required to sign up for a separate set of account credentials unique to the China (Beijing) Region. Customers with existing AWS credentials will not be able to access resources in the new Region, and vice versa.

Please visit the new China website for more information at www.amazonaws.cn.

AWS is excited to announce its upcoming limited preview of its China (Beijing) Region. In the limited preview, which will be deployed in early 2014, a select group of China-based and multinational companies with customers in China will be invited to begin using the new Beijing Region to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud. Businesses or software developers can apply for access to the limited preview of AWS services in the AWS China Region today at http://www.amazonaws.cn.

Customers who wish to use the new Beijing Region are required to sign up for a separate set of account credentials unique to the China (Beijing) Region. Customers with existing AWS credentials will not be able to access resources in the new Region, and vice versa.

Under the Limited Preview phase, access to the new Region will be by invitation only. AWS will periodically review applicants for the limited preview and invite more and more customers to experience our services in China. The China (Beijing) Region aims to help customers reduce latency to end-users based in China while avoiding the up-front expenses, long-term commitments, and scaling challenges associated with maintaining and operating their own infrastructure. Beijing joins Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo as the fourth Region in Asia Pacific and as the tenth Region worldwide. We will gradually open up the Region for a wider range of customers over time.

AWS’s new Beijing Region will support Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Storage Gateway, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Glacier, Amazon Simple Workflow (SWF), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Management Console, and AWS Premium Support.

Please visit the new China website for more information at www.amazonaws.cn.

AWS is excited to announce its upcoming limited preview of its China (Beijing) Region. In the limited preview, which will be deployed in early 2014, a select group of China-based and multinational companies with customers in China will be invited to begin using the new Beijing Region to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud. Businesses or software developers can apply for access to the limited preview of AWS services in the AWS China Region today at http://www.amazonaws.cn.

Customers who wish to use the new Beijing Region are required to sign up for a separate set of account credentials unique to the China (Beijing) Region. Customers with existing AWS credentials will not be able to access resources in the new Region, and vice versa.

Under the Limited Preview phase, access to the new Region will be by invitation only. AWS will periodically review applicants for the limited preview and invite more and more customers to experience our services in China. The China (Beijing) Region aims to help customers reduce latency to end-users based in China while avoiding the up-front expenses, long-term commitments, and scaling challenges associated with maintaining and operating their own infrastructure. Beijing joins Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo as the fourth Region in Asia Pacific and as the tenth Region worldwide. We will gradually open up the Region for a wider range of customers over time.

AWS’s new Beijing Region will support Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Storage Gateway, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Glacier, Amazon Simple Workflow (SWF), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Management Console, and AWS Premium Support.

Please visit the new China website for more information at www.amazonaws.cn.