Introduction:
AWS keeps delivering new features and improvements at a rapid pace, and October 2025 brought some particularly noteworthy updates. Let’s explore the most important changes that could impact your cloud operations.
Updates
AWS Control Tower is now available in AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region
[Published On: October 1, 2025] Good news for teams in New Zealand—AWS Control Tower is now live in the Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region. This brings the total availability to 34 AWS Regions plus the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. If you’ve been looking for an easier way to set up and manage a secure, multi-account AWS environment across regions, Control Tower does the heavy lifting for you by automatically coordinating multiple AWS services while keeping your security and compliance requirements in check.
Setting up your multi-account environment now takes 30 minutes or less. Whether you’re new to Control Tower or already using it elsewhere, getting started is straightforward. New users can launch Control Tower in any supported region right away. Existing users who want to extend governance to New Zealand can simply visit the settings page in their Control Tower dashboard, select the new region, and update their landing zone. Once complete, your governed accounts and organizational units will automatically fall under the new region’s governance.
For the complete list of supported regions and more details, check the AWS Region Table, visit the AWS Control Tower homepage, or review the AWS Control Tower User Guide.
AWS Backup adds single-action database snapshot copy across AWS Regions and accounts
[Published On: October 14, 2025] AWS Backup just made disaster recovery simpler with a new feature that lets you copy database snapshots across both regions and accounts in a single step. This works for Amazon RDS, Aurora, Neptune, and DocumentDB snapshots—eliminating what used to be a two-step process (first copying to another region, then to another account).
This update is especially valuable for protecting against ransomware attacks or regional outages that could impact your primary accounts or regions. By handling both steps at once, you’ll achieve faster recovery points while avoiding costs from intermediate copies. It also removes the need for custom scripts or Lambda functions that previously monitored copy status.
The feature is available in all regions where AWS Backup already supports cross-region and cross-account copying. You can start using it today through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDKs. For implementation details, check the AWS Backup documentation.
Introducing the Capacity Reservation Topology API for AI, ML, and HPC instance types
[Published On: October 5, 2025] AWS has launched the general availability of the EC2 Capacity Reservation Topology API—a game-changer for teams running distributed AI, ML, and high-performance computing workloads. This new API works alongside the existing Instance Topology API to help you manage capacity, schedule jobs, and optimize node placement.
If you’re running thousands of instances across multiple capacity reservations, this API gives you a clear view of your reservation hierarchy without needing to launch instances first. You’ll see how your capacity reservations relate to each other spatially, making it easier to plan and manage tightly coupled workloads. Then, when you’re ready to schedule jobs, the Instance Topology API provides even finer-grained network details for optimal performance.
The API is available in most major AWS regions including all US, Europe, Asia Pacific, Canada, Middle East, and South America regions. It works with all instance types supported by the Instance Topology API. For implementation guidance, check the latest EC2 user guide.
Split Cost Allocation Data for Amazon EKS supports Kubernetes labels
[Published On: October 26, 2025] Great news for Kubernetes cost management—Split Cost Allocation Data for Amazon EKS now supports importing up to 50 Kubernetes custom labels per pod as cost allocation tags. This means you can now track costs at the pod level using business-relevant attributes like cost center, application name, business unit, or environment in your AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR).
This feature gives you much finer-grained visibility into EKS cluster costs, especially valuable when multiple applications share EC2 instances. New users can enable this directly in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. Existing users will see labels automatically imported but need to activate them as cost allocation tags. Once activated, your Kubernetes labels will appear in CUR within 24 hours.
You can visualize these costs using the Containers Cost Allocation dashboard in Amazon QuickSight or query them with Amazon Athena using the CUR query library. The feature is available in all regions where Split Cost Allocation Data for EKS is supported. Get started by visiting Understanding Split Cost Allocation Data.
Introducing the Amazon OCSF Ready Specialization
[Published On: October 3, 2025] AWS has launched the Amazon OCSF Ready Specialization to help customers identify partners whose security solutions integrate seamlessly with OCSF-compatible AWS services. The Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) is an open-source initiative that standardizes how security data is formatted and shared across tools.
This specialization replaces the Amazon Security Lake Specialization and helps you quickly find validated partner solutions that work with OCSF. Partners earn this designation by either sending logs in OCSF format or receiving logs from OCSF-compatible AWS services. The standardization means you can collect, combine, and analyze security data more efficiently—reducing the time spent on security operations.
OCSF Ready Partners get special benefits including private strategy sessions and AWS speaker support for events. If you’re a partner interested in this specialization, visit the AWS Service Ready Program webpage to learn how to participate.
Read More: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/amazon-ocsf-ready-specialization/
Amazon ECS Service Connect enhances observability with Envoy Access Logs
[Published On: October 26, 2025] Amazon ECS Service Connect just got better with support for Envoy access logs, giving you deeper visibility into request-level traffic between services. This new feature captures detailed per-request telemetry that’s perfect for end-to-end tracing, debugging, and compliance monitoring.
Service Connect simplifies secure service-to-service communication across clusters, VPCs, and AWS accounts by automatically injecting AWS-managed Envoy proxies. Now with access logs enabled, you’ll get rich traffic metadata while sensitive query strings remain redacted by default. The logs flow through your existing ECS log pipeline to standard output (STDOUT), so there’s no additional infrastructure needed.
Enabling this is simple—just update your ServiceConnectConfiguration to turn on access logging. It works with all major protocols (HTTP, HTTP2, GRPC, and TCP) and is available in all regions where Service Connect is supported. For setup instructions, check the Amazon ECS Developer Guide.
Read More: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/amazon-ecs-service-connect-envoy-access-logs
Announcing an AI agent context pack for AWS IoT Greengrass developers
[Published On: October 1, 2025] AWS has released a new AI agent context package to speed up edge application development with AWS IoT Greengrass. This open-source GitHub repository (under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 license) gives developers ready-to-use instructions, examples, and templates to leverage generative AI tools for faster software creation, testing, and deployment at the edge.
The package works seamlessly with tools like Amazon Q to help you build cloud-connected edge applications more efficiently. Simply clone the repository and integrate it with your preferred generative AI tools to streamline your development workflow while simplifying fleet-wide deployment and management.
This capability is available in all regions where AWS IoT Greengrass is supported. To get started, check the AWS IoT Greengrass documentation or follow the getting started guide for a quick introduction.
Read More: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/ai-agent-context-pack-iot-greengrass-developers/
Web Grounding: Build accurate AI applications with Amazon Nova models
[Published On: October 21, 2025] AWS has launched Web Grounding, a powerful new tool for Amazon Nova models that helps build more accurate AI applications. Available now with Nova Premier via the Amazon Bedrock tool use API (with more Nova models coming soon), Web Grounding retrieves and incorporates publicly available information with citations to provide context for responses.
This built-in tool gives you a turnkey Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) solution that uses current, real-time information—reducing hallucinations and improving output accuracy. Developers can implement it without building complex infrastructure, making it easier to create reliable AI applications.
Web Grounding is currently available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon) regions via cross-region inference. To learn how to get started, check out our blog post with implementation steps.
Read More: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/web-grounding-ai-applications-amazon-nova-models
At a Glance
Here’s what really matters from October’s AWS updates:
- Improved Performance: New tools that help you scale applications more efficiently and manage high-throughput workloads
- Security: Practical features that strengthen your cloud security posture and application integrity
Conclusions:
October’s AWS updates deliver meaningful improvements that simplify cloud operations while enhancing performance and security. The new features around cost allocation, backup management, and AI development are particularly valuable for teams looking to reduce operational overhead while scaling their cloud infrastructure effectively.