AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Opus 4.6 in Amazon Bedrock, AWS Builder ID Sign in with Apple, and more (February 9, 2026)

AWS continues its rapid pace of innovation with a diverse set of announcements spanning compute infrastructure, database capabilities, security enhancements, and AI services. This week's roundup highlights several significant updates that demonstrate AWS's commitment to providing builders with powerful tools for modern application development.

Compute and Networking Infrastructure

New EC2 Instances with Intel Xeon 6 Processors

AWS has introduced three new Amazon EC2 instance families powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors: C8id, M8id, and R8id. These instances deliver substantial performance improvements over previous generations, offering up to 43% higher performance and 3.3x more memory bandwidth.

The C8id instances are optimized for compute-intensive workloads, while M8id provides a balanced compute and memory profile suitable for general-purpose applications. R8id instances cater to memory-intensive workloads that require large datasets to be processed in memory.

These instances are particularly well-suited for demanding workloads such as high-performance computing, large-scale data processing, and memory-intensive databases. The enhanced memory bandwidth is especially valuable for applications that perform frequent memory access patterns, such as in-memory databases and real-time analytics.

AWS Network Firewall Price Reductions

AWS Network Firewall has announced significant price reductions, including hourly and data processing discounts on NAT Gateways that are service-chained with Network Firewall secondary endpoints. Additionally, the service has removed additional data processing charges for Advanced Inspection, which enables Transport Layer Security (TLS) inspection of encrypted network traffic.

These pricing changes make it more cost-effective to implement comprehensive network security across AWS environments. The removal of data processing charges for TLS inspection is particularly noteworthy, as it removes a potential barrier to implementing full traffic visibility and security controls for encrypted communications.

ECS Network Load Balancer Support

Amazon ECS now supports Network Load Balancer (NLB) for Linear and Canary deployments, providing native traffic shifting capabilities for applications that require TCP/UDP-based connections, low latency, long-lived connections, or static IP addresses.

This enhancement is particularly valuable for microservices architectures and containerized applications that need precise control over traffic routing during deployments. The ability to perform gradual traffic shifting with NLB integration means teams can implement safer deployment strategies with minimal disruption to end users.

Database and Configuration Management

DynamoDB Global Tables Cross-Account Support

Amazon DynamoDB global tables now support replication across multiple AWS accounts, enabling organizations to replicate tables across AWS accounts and Regions to improve resiliency, isolate workloads at the account level, and apply distinct security and governance controls.

This capability addresses a critical need for enterprise customers who want to maintain data sovereignty, implement strict security boundaries, or isolate different business units within separate AWS accounts while still maintaining the benefits of multi-region, multi-active database replication.

Enhanced RDS Console Experience

Amazon RDS has introduced an enhanced console experience for connecting to databases, providing ready-made code snippets for Java, Python, Node.js, and other programming languages, as well as tools like the psql command line utility. These code snippets are automatically adjusted based on your database's authentication settings.

The new console experience also includes integrated CloudShell access, allowing users to connect to databases directly from within the RDS console. This streamlined approach reduces the friction of database connectivity and helps developers get started more quickly with their database operations.

AWS Config Resource Type Expansion

AWS Config now supports 30 new resource types across key services including Amazon EKS, Amazon Q, and AWS IoT. This expansion provides greater coverage over AWS environments, enabling more comprehensive discovery, assessment, audit, and remediation capabilities.

The expanded resource coverage is particularly important for organizations with complex multi-service architectures, as it allows for more complete visibility into resource configurations and compliance status across the entire AWS environment.

Security and Identity

AWS Builder ID Sign in with Apple

AWS Builder ID now supports Sign in with Apple as a social login provider, expanding on the existing sign-in with Google capability. This addition provides Apple users with a streamlined way to access AWS resources without managing separate credentials.

This enhancement reflects AWS's commitment to providing flexible authentication options that align with user preferences and existing identity ecosystems. For organizations with mixed device environments, this means users can leverage their existing Apple credentials for AWS access, reducing password fatigue and improving the overall user experience.

AWS STS OIDC Claim Validation

AWS Security Token Service (STS) now supports validation of select identity provider-specific claims from Google, GitHub, CircleCI, and OCI. This capability allows referencing these custom claims as condition keys in IAM role trust policies and resource control policies, expanding fine-grained access control for federated identities.

This enhancement builds upon IAM's existing OIDC federation capabilities, providing organizations with more sophisticated ways to implement data perimeters and access controls based on identity provider attributes. For DevOps teams using CI/CD platforms like GitHub Actions or CircleCI, this means more precise control over which pipelines can assume AWS roles and access resources.

Console Account Name Display

AWS Management Console now displays Account Name on the Navigation bar for easier account identification. This seemingly simple change addresses a common pain point for organizations managing multiple AWS accounts, allowing users to quickly distinguish between accounts visually.

For enterprises with numerous AWS accounts, this enhancement significantly improves the user experience by reducing the cognitive load of account identification and helping prevent accidental operations in the wrong account.

CloudFront Mutual TLS Support

Amazon CloudFront has announced mutual TLS (mTLS) support for origins, enabling organizations to implement certificate-based authentication for backend infrastructure. This standardized approach eliminates operational burden while enforcing strict authentication for proprietary content.

The mTLS capability is particularly valuable for organizations that need to ensure only verified CloudFront distributions can establish connections to backend infrastructure, whether that's AWS origins, on-premises servers, third-party cloud providers, or external CDNs. This enhancement strengthens the security posture for content delivery and API gateway scenarios.

AI and Machine Learning

Claude Opus 4.6 in Amazon Bedrock

Claude Opus 4.6 is now available in Amazon Bedrock, bringing Anthropic's most intelligent model to date to AWS customers. Opus 4.6 is positioned as a premier model for coding, enterprise agents, and professional work, offering industry-leading performance for agentic tasks, complex coding projects, and enterprise-grade workflows that require deep reasoning and reliability.

This addition to Amazon Bedrock significantly expands the range of AI capabilities available to AWS customers, particularly for use cases that demand sophisticated reasoning, complex problem-solving, and reliable performance in production environments. The model's strengths in coding and agentic tasks make it particularly relevant for software development teams and organizations building intelligent automation solutions.

Structured Outputs in Amazon Bedrock

Amazon Bedrock now supports structured outputs, a capability that provides consistent, machine-readable responses from foundation models that adhere to defined JSON schemas. This feature eliminates the need for prompting for valid JSON and adding extra checks in applications, instead allowing developers to specify the desired format and receive responses that match it.

The structured outputs capability makes production workflows more predictable and resilient by ensuring that AI-generated content conforms to expected formats. This is particularly valuable for enterprise applications where data consistency and reliability are critical, such as automated report generation, data extraction, and API integration scenarios.

Upcoming Events

AWS Community Day Romania

AWS Community Day Romania is scheduled for April 23–24, 2026, bringing together developers, architects, entrepreneurs, and students for more than 10 professional sessions delivered by AWS Heroes, Solutions Architects, and industry experts. The event will feature expert-led technical talks, insights from speakers with global conference experience, and dedicated networking opportunities.

This community-led event represents AWS's commitment to fostering local technical communities and providing platforms for knowledge sharing and professional development. Attendees can expect to gain insights into emerging AWS technologies, best practices, and real-world implementation experiences from experienced practitioners.

Strategic Implications

This week's announcements reflect several key strategic themes in AWS's product development approach. First, there's a clear focus on performance and cost optimization across compute and networking services, with the new EC2 instances and Network Firewall price reductions addressing both capability and economic concerns for customers.

Second, AWS continues to expand its database capabilities with cross-account replication for DynamoDB global tables, recognizing the complex multi-account architectures that enterprise customers require. The enhanced RDS console experience also demonstrates AWS's attention to developer experience and productivity.

Third, the security enhancements, particularly around identity federation and mutual TLS, show AWS's commitment to supporting modern authentication patterns and zero-trust architectures. The addition of Sign in with Apple to AWS Builder ID is a practical example of meeting users where they are in terms of identity management.

Finally, the AI announcements with Claude Opus 4.6 and structured outputs in Amazon Bedrock position AWS as a comprehensive AI platform provider, offering both cutting-edge models and practical capabilities for production deployment. The focus on coding and enterprise agents suggests AWS is targeting the most demanding and valuable AI use cases for enterprise customers.

As organizations continue to build and scale their cloud-native applications, these updates provide the tools and capabilities needed to address performance, security, and innovation requirements. The breadth of announcements this week underscores AWS's position as a comprehensive cloud platform that continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of modern software development and operations.