AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon EC2 M8azn instances, new open weights models in Amazon Bedrock, and more (February 16, 2026) | Amazon Web Services

AWS’s February 16, 2026 roundup highlights the launch of Amazon EC2 M8azn instances, which deliver substantial performance gains for compute-intensive workloads. It also covers expanded Amazon Bedrock model and networking support, improved observability in EKS Auto Mode, more efficient OpenSearch Serverless capacity management, and configurable RDS backup settings during snapshot restoration. The post concludes with upcoming AWS conferences, summits, and community events.

Amazon EC2 M8azn Instances

• Powered by fifth-generation AMD EPYC processors with a maximum frequency of 5 GHz.
• Compared with M5zn instances, they provide:
  • Up to 2× compute performance
  • 4.3× higher memory bandwidth
  • 10× larger L3 cache
  • Up to 2× networking throughput
  • Up to 3× EBS throughput
• Built on the AWS Nitro System with sixth-generation Nitro Cards.
• Available in nine sizes, from 2 to 96 vCPUs and up to 384 GiB of memory, including two bare-metal options.
• Designed for high-performance workloads such as financial analytics, high-frequency trading, CI/CD, gaming, simulations, and HPC.

New Open-Weight Models in Amazon Bedrock

• Bedrock now supports six fully managed models:
  • DeepSeek V3.2
  • MiniMax M2.1
  • GLM 4.7
  • GLM 4.7 Flash
  • Kimi K2.5
  • Qwen3 Coder Next
• The models target reasoning, agentic intelligence, autonomous coding, and cost-efficient production deployments.
• They use Project Mantle and support OpenAI-compatible APIs.
• DeepSeek V3.2, MiniMax 2.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next are also available in Kiro.

Amazon Bedrock PrivateLink Support

• AWS PrivateLink now supports the bedrock-mantle endpoint in addition to bedrock-runtime.
• Project Mantle provides serverless inference, quality-of-service controls, automated capacity management, and OpenAI API compatibility.
• PrivateLink support for OpenAI-compatible endpoints is available in 14 AWS Regions.

EKS Auto Mode Logging

• EKS Auto Mode now supports CloudWatch Vended Logs for managed capabilities such as:
  • Compute autoscaling
  • Block storage
  • Load balancing
  • Pod networking
• Logs can be delivered to CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Amazon Data Firehose.
• The feature includes AWS authentication and authorization and is offered at a lower price than standard CloudWatch Logs.

OpenSearch Serverless Collection Groups

• Collection Groups allow multiple collections to share OpenSearch Compute Units while retaining separate KMS keys and access controls.
• Shared capacity can reduce OCU costs.
• Administrators can define both minimum and maximum OCU limits, ensuring baseline capacity for latency-sensitive applications.

RDS Snapshot Restore Improvements

• RDS now lets users view and configure backup retention periods and preferred backup windows before or during snapshot restoration.
• Restored databases no longer need post-restore backup configuration changes.
• The feature supports all major RDS engines, Aurora editions, commercial AWS Regions, and GovCloud at no additional cost.

Upcoming AWS Events

• AWS Summits in Paris, London, and Bengaluru during April 2026.
• AWS AI and Data Conference in Ireland on March 12, focusing on Bedrock, SageMaker, QuickSight, agent deployment, data integration, and governance.
• AWS Community Days in Ahmedabad, Slovakia, and Pune.

Overall, the announcements emphasize faster specialized compute, broader managed AI model access, stronger private connectivity, and improved operational controls across AWS services.