News For Dev-ops

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now enables customers to force cancel instance refreshes immediately, without waiting for in-progress instance launches or terminations to complete. This enhancement provides greater control over Auto Scaling group (ASG) updates, especially during emergency situations such as when needing to rapidly roll forward to a new application deployment when the current deployment is causing service disruptions. Customers can now quickly abort ongoing deployments and immediately start new instance refreshes when needed. Instance refreshes are used to update instances within an ASG, typically when configuration changes require instance replacement. To use this feature, set the WaitForTransitioningInstances to false when calling the CancelInstanceRefresh API. This enables faster cancellation of the instance refresh, bypassing the wait for any pending instance activities such as instance lifecycle hooks. This feature is available in all AWS regions, including AWS GovClou...

Podman  is an open-source container engine that has rapidly gained popularity for its daemonless architecture, rootless operation, and compatibility with Docker CLI commands. Unlike Docker, Podman does not require a central daemon, offering improved security and flexibility - especially in enterprise and cloud-native environments. Its ability to run containers without elevated privileges makes it an attractive choice for developers focused on security and compliance. Podman Integration The integration of Podman in Visual Studio 2026 Insiders is a game-changer for developers who prefer or require Podman for their workflows. Previously, container tooling in Visual Studio was largely centered around Docker. Now, with Podman support, users can choose the container engine that best fits their needs without sacrificing the productivity and convenience Visual Studio provides. Developers can now seamlessly create, run, debug, and manage containerized applications using Podman directly fr...

Adrian aka Silent aka CookiePLMonster did a deep investigation into how a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2 . One reaction I saw to this was "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? Surely there aren't any bugs in it after all these years." While there may not be bugs in critical sections, there may still be performance issues. And since critical sections are so heavily used, small performance issues can add up to large ones. We saw some time ago that many synchronization objects were made unfair to avoid lock convoys . At around the same time, critical sections were optimized to reduce their memory footprint, particularly their cost to non-paged pool. Non-paged pool is an expensive resource since (as the name suggests) it cannot be paged out. On systems doing large-scale computing, even a small cost in non-paged pool is multiplied by a enormous number of critical sections, resulting in outsized non-paged pool pressure that...

Why best practices matter (and why many people skip them) Let’s be honest: when you’re in the zone shipping code or wiring up infrastructure, “best practices” can feel like that nagging voice telling you to eat your vegetables. We all know they’re good for us… but in the rush to get things working, they’re often the first thing to fall off the plate. The result? Configurations that work today but explode tomorrow. Pipelines that deploy - until they don’t. Costs that spiral out of control. And sometimes, security gaps big enough to drive a container ship through. That’s why the Azure team invests so heavily in codifying best practices for SDK usage, Infrastructure-as-Code, CI/CD, and cloud governance. They’re not “nice-to-haves.” They’re what keep your apps reliable, secure, and cost-effective. But here’s the twist: it’s not enough for humans to know these rules. In the era of AI-assisted development, LLMs need to know them too. Enter Azure MCP The Azure MCP Server ( aka.ms/azm...

IAM Identity Center now supports customer-managed AWS Key Management Service (KMS) keys for encrypting workforce identity data, including user and group attributes. While AWS-owned keys are used by default, customer-managed keys (CMKs) provide granular control over identity data access, enhancing security and compliance capabilities. IAM Identity Center helps you securely create, or connect, your workforce identities and manage their access centrally across AWS applications and accounts. You create a CMK and manage its lifecycle and usage permissions in AWS KMS. You can configure the CMK in your IAM Identity Center instance either while enabling a new organization instance or on an existing one. You can then use AWS CloudTrail to monitor and audit the usage of your CMK for access to identity data in IAM Identity Center. Support for CMKs in organization instances of IAM Identity Center is now available for access to accounts and select AWS applications in all AWS Regions where IAM...

Today, AWS announces the general availability of the new Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) R8gb instances. These instances are powered by AWS Graviton4 processors to deliver up to 30% better compute performance than AWS Graviton3 processors. At up to 150 Gbps of EBS bandwidth, these instances offer higher EBS performance compared to same-sized equivalent Graviton4-based instances. Take advantage of the higher block storage performance offered by these new EBS optimized EC2 instances to scale the performance and throughput of workloads such as high performance databases and NoSQL databases, while optimizing the cost of running your workloads. For increased scalability, these instances offer instance sizes up to 24xlarge, including one metal size, up to 768 GiB of memory, up to 150 Gbps of EBS bandwidth, up to 200 Gbps of networking bandwidth. These instances support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) networking on the 16xlarge, 24xl...

Amazon Connect now supports you to associate custom attributes with interaction segments, ensuring reporting and analytics always reflect the true customer journey. Attributes such as business unit name, account type, or contact reason can be centrally managed with predetermined values and applied to contact records through flows or the UpdateContact API . This approach preserves accurate business context throughout customer journeys, particularly during transfers and multi-party communications. For example, a customer engagement that originates in the Support business unit and transitions to Sales: each distinct interaction segment maintains its precise business unit name, creating an accurate and comprehensive record of the customer journey. This feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is available. To learn more about using predefined attributes as contact segment attributes, see the Amazon Connect Administrator Guide. To learn more about Amazon Connect, the...