AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon Bedrock Agent Workflows, Amazon SageMaker Private Connectivity, and More (February 2, 2026) | Amazon Web Services

Over the past week, we’ve been through the Laba Festival, a traditional mark in the Chinese calendar that signals the final stretch leading up to the Lunar New Year. For many in China, it’s a moment of reflection and preparation, wrapping up what the year has brought and turning their attention to what lies ahead.

Looking forward, next week will also bring Lichun, the beginning of spring and the first of the 24 solar terms. In Chinese tradition, spring is often seen as a time when growth begins and new cycles are formed. It is commonly said that “annual plans begin in the spring”, which captures the idea that it is time to set a direction and start afresh.

Last week’s launch

Here are the news that caught my eye this week:

• Amazon Bedrock Improves Support for Agent Workflows with Server-Side Tools and Enhanced Caching Amazon Bedrock has introduced two updates that improve the way developers build and operate AI agents. The Responses API now supports the use of server-side tools so that agents can perform actions such as searching the web, running code, and updating the database within the security boundaries of AWS. Bedrock also adds a 1-hour time-to-live (TTL) capability for fast caching, which helps improve performance and reduce costs for long-running, multi-turn agent workflows. Server-side tools are available for OpenAI GPT OSS 20B and 120B models, and 1-hour TTL fast caching is generally available for select Claude models from Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock.
• Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio Adds Private VPC Connectivity with AWS PrivateLink – Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio now supports AWS PrivateLink, providing a private connection between your VPC and SageMaker Unified Studio without routing customer data over the public Internet. With VPC-integrated SageMaker endpoints, data traffic remains on the AWS network and is governed by IAM policies that support stricter security and compliance requirements.
• Amazon S3 adds support for changing object encryption without moving data – Amazon S3 now supports changing the server-side encryption type of existing encrypted objects without moving or re-uploading data. Help UpdateObjectEncryption API, you can switch from SSE-S3 to SSE-KMS, rotate customer-managed AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) keys, or standardize encryption across buckets in bulk using S3 Batch Operations while maintaining object properties and lifecycle capability.
• Amazon Keyspaces Introduces Table Preheating for Predictable High-Throughput Workloads – Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) now supports table preheating, which helps you proactively set warm throughput levels so tables can immediately handle high read and write traffic without cold-start delays. Preheating helps reduce constraints during sudden traffic peaks, such as product launches or sales events, and works with both on-demand and provisioned capacity modes, including multi-region tables. This feature promotes consistent, low-latency performance while giving you more control over bandwidth readiness.
• Amazon DynamoDB MRSC Global Tables Integrate with AWS Fault Injection Service – – Amazon DynamoDB global tables with strong consistency (MRSC) for multiple regions now integrate with AWS Fault Injection Service. With this integration, you can simulate regional failures, test replication behavior, and verify application resiliency for highly consistent multi-region workloads.

Another update

Here are some other projects, blog posts and news that caught my eye:

• Building Zero-Trust Access in Multi-Account AWS Environments Using AWS Authenticated Access – This post describes how to implement AWS Authenticated Access in a centralized shared services architecture. It shows how to integrate with AWS IAM Identity Center and AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) to apply zero-trust access control at the application layer and reduce operational overhead across multi-account AWS environments.
• Amazon EventBridge Increases Event Payload Size to 1MB – Amazon EventBridge now supports event payloads up to 1MB, an increase from the previous limit of 256KB. This update helps event-driven architectures carry richer context in a single event, including complex JSON structures, telemetry data, and machine learning (ML) or generative AI outputs, without having to split payloads or rely on external storage.
• AWS MCP Server Adds Deployment Agent SOPs (preview) – AWS has introduced deployment standard operating procedures (SOPs) that allow AI agents to deploy web applications to AWS from a single natural language command in MCP-compatible integrated development environments (IDEs) and command-line interfaces (CLIs) such as Kiro, Cursor, and Claude Code. The agent generates AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) infrastructure, deploys AWS CloudFormation stacks, and sets up continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows according to AWS best practices. The preview supports frameworks including React, Vue.js, Angular and Next.js.
• AWS Network Firewall Adds Generative AI Traffic Visibility with Web Category Filtering – AWS Network Firewall now provides visibility into generative AI traffic of applications through predefined web categories. You can use these categories directly in your firewall rules to control access to generative AI tools and other web services. In combination with TLS checking, category-based filtering can be applied at the full URL level.
• AWS Lambda adds improved observability for Kafka event source mapping – AWS Lambda introduced improved observability for Kafka event source mapping, providing Amazon CloudWatch logs and metrics to monitor event query configuration, scaling behavior, and event processing status. The update improves visibility into Kafka-based Lambda workloads and helps teams more effectively diagnose configuration issues, permission errors, and feature failures. This feature supports both Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) and self-managed Apache Kafka event sources.
• AWS CloudFormation 2025 in Review – This annual post highlights CloudFormation updates delivered throughout 2025 with a focus on early validation, more secure deployments, and improved developer workflows. It includes enhancements such as improved troubleshooting, shift-aware changesets, stack refactoring, updates to StackSets, and new IDE and AI-enabled tools, including the CloudFormation language server and the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) MCP server.

Upcoming AWS events

Check your calendars to sign up for this upcoming event:

AWS Community Day Romania (April 23-24, 2026) – This community-led AWS event brings together developers, architects, entrepreneurs, and students in more than 10 expert sessions hosted by AWS Heroes, Solutions Architects, and industry experts. Attendees can expect expert technical talks, insights from speakers with global conference experience, and opportunities to connect during dedicated networking breaks, all in a premium venue designed to foster collaboration and community engagement.

If you’re looking for more ways to stay connected after the event, join the AWS Builder Center to learn, build, and connect with builders in the AWS community.

Check back next Monday for another weekly roundup.

– Betty