In this 34th quarterly recap post, discover the most impactful AWS serverless launches, features, and resources from Q3 2026 that you might have missed.

AWS Lambda durable functions has increased default quotas for running executions and API request rates. The new quotas below apply in all AWS Regions except US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland), which have twice these quotas. Running durable executions per account (1 million to 5 million) Function invocation rate to start durable executions (300 to 3,000 requests per second) CheckpointDurableExecution and GetDurableExecutionState (1,000 to 10,000 requests per second) SendDurableExecutionCallbackSuccess, SendDurableExecutionCallbackFailure, and SendDurableExecutionCallbackHeartbeat (300 to 3,000 requests per second) GetDurableExecution and StopDurableExecution (30 to 300 requests per second) GetDurableExecutionHistory and ListDurableExecutionsByFunction (15 to 150 requests per second) AWS Lambda durable functions helps you build resilient multi-step applications and AI workflows that execute for up to one year, with built-in checkpointing, automatic retries, and waits that suspend execution without incurring compute charges. With this increase, workloads such as order processing and document pipelines can run more executions in parallel without requesting quota increases. When many executions wait on external work, such as payment confirmations or batch jobs, more can resume together. If you monitor and manage executions with your dashboards or scripts, they can now check status, list executions, read history, and stop executions at least ten times as often. The new quotas apply in all AWS Regions where AWS Lambda durable functions is available. To learn more, see Lambda quotas in the AWS Lambda Developer Guide.

AWS Lambda durable functions has increased default quotas for running executions and API request rates. The new quotas below apply in all AWS Regions except US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland), which have twice these quotas. Running durable executions per account (1 million to 5 million) Function invocation rate to start durable executions (300 to 3,000 requests per second) CheckpointDurableExecution and GetDurableExecutionState (1,000 to 10,000 requests per second) SendDurableExecutionCallbackSuccess, SendDurableExecutionCallbackFailure, and SendDurableExecutionCallbackHeartbeat (300 to 3,000 requests per second) GetDurableExecution and StopDurableExecution (30 to 300 requests per second) GetDurableExecutionHistory and ListDurableExecutionsByFunction (15 to 150 requests per second) https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/durable-functions.html helps you build resilient multi-step applications and AI workflows that execute for up to one year, with built-in checkpointing, automatic retries, and waits that suspend execution without incurring compute charges. With this increase, workloads such as order processing and document pipelines can run more executions in parallel without requesting quota increases. When many executions wait on external work, such as payment confirmations or batch jobs, more can resume together. If you monitor and manage executions with your dashboards or scripts, they can now check status, list executions, read history, and stop executions at least ten times as often. The new quotas apply in all AWS Regions where AWS Lambda durable functions is available. To learn more, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/gettingstarted-limits.html#durable-functions-quotas in the AWS Lambda Developer Guide.

Introduction In part 8 of the series, we learned how to convert the sample application to...

Durable functions span many Lambda invocations, so per-invocation logs answer the wrong question. The Durable Execution Telemetry Exporter is an SDK plugin that emits one complete record per execution to any of 13 destinations with a one-line change, and a companion MCP server lets an AI agent query that data in plain language.

AWS Lambda announces the Durable Execution Telemetry Exporter plugin for Lambda durable functions. This new observability plugin captures the step-by-step history of your durable executions and sends them to one or more destinations of your choice. You can use the exported data to gather operational and business insights and keep history beyond the standard retention period. We are also releasing a companion Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI agents such as Kiro query your exported telemetry data using natural language. Lambda durable functions helps you build resilient multi-step applications and AI workflows that run for up to one year. The new Telemetry Exporter sends data such as execution status, operation timing, step input and output, and errors to 13 built-in destinations. Destinations include Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3 for Amazon Athena, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon OpenSearch Service. You can redact sensitive fields before export and set a sampling rate to control data volume. With the MCP server, an on-call engineer can ask an AI agent to list recent failed executions and find the cause of a failure, and a business analyst can find all transactions for a specific customer. The exporter is available for TypeScript, Python, Java, and Go. To get started, install the exporter, register the plugin in your function handler, then add the MCP server to your agent. The Durable Execution Telemetry Exporter is available at no additional charge in all AWS Regions that support Lambda durable functions. To learn more, see the Durable Execution SDK documentation and the blog post.

AWS Lambda now supports Seekable OCI (SOCI) for lazy loading Event Functions packaged as Open Container Initiative (OCI) images running on Lambda Managed Instances. With SOCI support, Lambda fetches only the files needed at each stage of the execution environment startup rather than downloading the entire image upfront, reducing container startup times by up to 70%. Customers building compute-intensive applications such as data processing pipelines, high-throughput API backends, and batch computation workloads require substantial memory and CPU resources to process large datasets, serve low-latency responses at scale, and run complex computations efficiently. Container images for these workloads can reach several gigabytes, and downloading and preparing the full image can take several minutes when provisioning new execution environments. SOCI support on Lambda Managed Instances eliminates this bottleneck by streaming only the required files at each stage of the execution environment startup, so your functions start faster as you scale. To get started, create a SOCI index (a table of contents for the files in your image layers) for your container image and push it to Amazon ECR. When creating or updating your function, set the image URI to the SOCI-indexed tag in Amazon ECR (for example, my-function:v1-soci) and publish a function version. Lambda automatically detects the SOCI index and enables lazy loading with no additional configuration. If you use a coding assistant such as Kiro, Claude Code, or Codex, install the Lambda Managed Instances skill from the Agent Toolkit for AWS to configure and deploy functions through your agent. The feature is available in all AWS commercial Regions where Lambda Managed Instances is available. To learn more, visit the AWS Lambda Managed Instances developer guide.

AWS IAM Identity Center's Identity Store now delivers real-time events to Amazon EventBridge when users, groups, or group memberships or the identity store itself is created, updated, or deleted. AWS IAM Identity Center Identity Store is a central repository that allows you to manage identities and access across AWS accounts and applications, serving as the identity source for AWS IAM Identity Center. This new capability helps you automatically respond to identity lifecycle events and support your security and compliance processes by detecting changes as they happen. With Identity Store change notifications, you can build automated workflows that respond to identity changes in your organization. For example, security teams can create EventBridge rules that trigger AWS Lambda functions to audit user provisioning activity, send alerts to security information and event management (SIEM) systems, or update access in downstream applications when users or groups change. Organizations that manage large workforces can also use this data to automate onboarding and offboarding when users are added to or removed from specific groups. Change notifications are available in all AWS Regions where IAM Identity Center is available, and events are sent in each enabled Region of your instance. For the list of Regions, see AWS capabilities by Regions. Change notifications are available at no additional cost beyond standard Amazon EventBridge usage charges. To learn more, see Event notifications in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide and Identity Store events in the Amazon EventBridge Events Reference.

AWS Lambda now supports https://github.com/awslabs/soci-snapshotter for lazy loading https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-functions/ packaged as Open Container Initiative (OCI) images running on https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/lambda-managed-instances/. With SOCI support, Lambda fetches only the files needed at each stage of the execution environment startup rather than downloading the entire image upfront, reducing container startup times by up to 70%. Customers building compute-intensive applications such as data processing pipelines, high-throughput API backends, and batch computation workloads require substantial memory and CPU resources to process large datasets, serve low-latency responses at scale, and run complex computations efficiently. Container images for these workloads can reach several gigabytes, and downloading and preparing the full image can take several minutes when provisioning new execution environments. SOCI support on Lambda Managed Instances eliminates this bottleneck by streaming only the required files at each stage of the execution environment startup, so your functions start faster as you scale. To get started, create a https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-managed-instances-seekable-oci.html#lambda-managed-instances-seekable-oci-create-index (a table of contents for the files in your image layers) for your container image and push it to https://aws.amazon.com/ecr/. When creating or updating your function, set the image URI to the SOCI-indexed tag in Amazon ECR (for example, my-function:v1-soci) and publish a function version. Lambda automatically detects the SOCI index and enables lazy loading with no additional configuration. If you use a coding assistant such as Kiro, Claude Code, or Codex, install the Lambda Managed Instances skill from the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/agent-setup-guide.html to configure and deploy functions through your agent. The feature is available in all https://builder.aws.com/build/capabilities where Lambda Managed Instances is available. To learn more, visit the https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-managed-instances-seekable-oci.html. 

AWS IAM Identity Center's Identity Store now delivers real-time events to Amazon EventBridge when users, groups, or group memberships or the identity store itself is created, updated, or deleted. AWS IAM Identity Center Identity Store is a central repository that allows you to manage identities and access across AWS accounts and applications, serving as the identity source for AWS IAM Identity Center. This new capability helps you automatically respond to identity lifecycle events and support your security and compliance processes by detecting changes as they happen. With Identity Store change notifications, you can build automated workflows that respond to identity changes in your organization. For example, security teams can create EventBridge rules that trigger AWS Lambda functions to audit user provisioning activity, send alerts to security information and event management (SIEM) systems, or update access in downstream applications when users or groups change. Organizations that manage large workforces can also use this data to automate onboarding and offboarding when users are added to or removed from specific groups. Change notifications are available in all AWS Regions where IAM Identity Center is available, and events are sent in each enabled Region of your instance. For the list of Regions, see https://builder.aws.com/build/capabilities/explore?tab=service-feature&f=eJwdi0EKhDAUQ68yZK2L2fYAc4DZ-ouIZqQgtrRfQaR3909XeeElNwo3zsrlyzXEvcBhEByl51S0fws8OqQcE7Oen7Ap8_jjpEemTW9BEjhBzIJOoFYGb7D-wWxs1jV5NggLdw16vWZL2q36ivoAQn8tDw. Change notifications are available at no additional cost beyond standard Amazon EventBridge usage charges. To learn more, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/singlesignon/latest/userguide/event-notifications.html in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/ref/events-ref-identitystore.html in the Amazon EventBridge Events Reference.

AWS Lambda announces the Durable Execution Telemetry Exporter plugin for Lambda durable functions. This new observability plugin captures the step-by-step history of your durable executions and sends them to one or more destinations of your choice. You can use the exported data to gather operational and business insights and keep history beyond the standard retention period. We are also releasing a companion Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI agents such as Kiro query your exported telemetry data using natural language. Lambda durable functions helps you build resilient multi-step applications and AI workflows that run for up to one year. The new Telemetry Exporter sends data such as execution status, operation timing, step input and output, and errors to 13 built-in destinations. Destinations include Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3 for Amazon Athena, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon OpenSearch Service. You can redact sensitive fields before export and set a sampling rate to control data volume. With the MCP server, an on-call engineer can ask an AI agent to list recent failed executions and find the cause of a failure, and a business analyst can find all transactions for a specific customer. The exporter is available for TypeScript, Python, Java, and Go. To get started, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/durable-execution/sdk-reference/observability/telemetry/exporter/ the exporter, register the plugin in your function handler, then https://docs.aws.amazon.com/durable-execution/sdk-reference/observability/telemetry/mcp/ the MCP server to your agent. The Durable Execution Telemetry Exporter is available at no additional charge in all AWS Regions that support Lambda durable functions. To learn more, see the Durable Execution SDK https://docs.aws.amazon.com/durable-execution/sdk-reference/observability/telemetry/ and the https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/observing-aws-lambda-durable-functions-with-the-durable-execution-telemetry-exporter/.

Introduction In part 8 of the series, we learned how to convert the sample application to...

Learn AWS Lambda: create, invoke, and delete a Python function with the AWS CLI, and understand cold starts, invocation types, concurrency, and cost.

AWS Lambda MicroVMs is now available in 4 additional AWS Regions: Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Malaysia), Asia Pacific (Thailand), and Europe (Spain). With this launch, you can use Lambda MicroVMs in a total of 14 AWS Regions. Lambda MicroVMs is a serverless compute primitive that provides VM-level isolation, near-instant launch and resume speeds, and state preservation for executing user or AI generated code.  Developers can use Lambda MicroVMs to give each user or job their own isolated compute environment without managing virtualization infrastructure or choosing between isolation, speed, and state retention. MicroVMs enable secure, stateful, and responsive code execution for applications including AI coding assistants, interactive development environments, and vulnerability scanners. With today's launch, developers can run Lambda MicroVMs closer to their end-users in 4 additional Regions, helping meet latency and data residency requirements. To get started, create a MicroVM image from your Dockerfile, then launch MicroVMs from that image. Give each user or job their own MicroVM with a dedicated HTTPS URL that supports popular connectivity protocols such as HTTP/2, gRPC, and WebSockets. You can use MicroVMs through the AWS Lambda console, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Cloud Development Kit, or with your preferred Agentic development tools using the Agent Toolkit for AWS. To learn more, visit the AWS Lambda MicroVMs developer guide. For information on pricing, see Lambda MicroVMs pricing. Visit the AWS Capabilities by Region page for the latest region availability.