AWS

Amazon EKS has increased the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) sync concurrency on Provisioned Control Plane clusters to up to 40 times the default Kubernetes value. This enhancement allows the control plane to evaluate multiple HPA objects in parallel, significantly reducing the time required to scale workloads in response to demand. The update targets clusters running hundreds or thousands of HPA objects, ensuring quicker responsiveness to load changes.

• HPA sync concurrency is now up to 40x the default Kubernetes limit on EKS Provisioned Control Planes.
• Parallel evaluation of HPA objects reduces scaling latency for high-demand workloads.
• Beneficial for clusters managing hundreds or thousands of HPA objects simultaneously.
• Improves responsiveness to traffic spikes without manual intervention.

Amazon EKS has added support for AWS PrivateLink on its cluster OIDC discovery and JWKS endpoints, which are critical for IAM roles for service accounts (IRSA). This allows tools like eksctl, Terraform, and custom token validators to access signing keys privately from within a VPC without requiring internet egress. The feature ensures correct DNS resolution even when the EKS management VPC endpoint is configured for private connectivity.

• Eliminates need for internet egress to access IRSA OIDC keys
• Supports private token validation for IRSA in restricted VPCs
• Requires creating interface VPC endpoint for com.amazonaws.<region>.oidc-eks
• Ensures DNS resolution works with EKS management VPC endpoints

Amazon Redshift Serverless now supports a 3-year All Upfront payment option for Serverless Reservations, delivering up to 50% discount on compute costs compared to on-demand pricing. This model requires paying the full reservation term upfront in exchange for maximum savings and cost predictability. The new option complements existing 1-year and 3-year No Upfront and All Upfront choices, allowing teams to align commitment structures with financial preferences while maintaining the benefits of serverless scaling.

• 3-year All Upfront reservations offer up to 50% cost reduction over on-demand rates
• Requires full payment at start but ensures maximum discount on RPU consumption
• Adds to existing portfolio of 1-year/3-year No/All Upfront reservation options
• Enhances cost predictability for long-term serverless analytics workloads

Amazon Neptune now allows administrators to use AWS resource tags and IAM principal tags as conditions in IAM policies and Service Control Policies. This feature enables dynamic, attribute-based access control for Neptune data-plane operations without needing to enumerate specific cluster ARNs. It addresses the need for scalable security boundaries when managing multiple clusters at scale.

• Use Neptune cluster tags and IAM principal tags to enforce access boundaries dynamically.
• Avoid hardcoding cluster ARNs in IAM policies by leveraging tag matching conditions.
• Applies to Neptune data-plane operations like neptune-db:* under IAM and SCPs.
• Simplifies governance for multi-cluster environments with shared organizational policies.