Cloud · Top stories
GitHub Adds 4M CPU Cores and 160 PB Storage to Handle 7.4B Monthly Commits
GitHub reported 7.4 billion commits in September, a significant increase from 2.9 billion in August, driven by 'agentic demand.' To manage this growth, GitHub added 4 million CPU cores, 160 petabytes of storage, and 50 Tb/s of network capacity, while also rearchitecting its platform to separate compute and storage.
Texas Environmental Agency Continues Data Center Permit Approvals Despite Governor's Call to Halt
Texas environmental regulators are reportedly continuing to process and approve permits for data center projects, despite Governor Greg Abbott's public call to halt new permits. Nonprofits Public Citizen and FracTracker Alliance identified multiple ongoing permit activities, raising concerns about the state's commitment to the announced pause and potential influence from industry donations.
Google Cloud Data Agent Kit is now Generally Available, adding BigQuery Graph, Bigtable, and Apache Spark support
Google Cloud's Data Agent Kit is now generally available, providing tools and agent skills for coding agents to interact with Google Cloud data products. This release adds support for BigQuery Graph, Bigtable, and Managed Service for Apache Spark, allowing agents to inspect schemas, run queries, and manage resources directly within the user's data environment.
Cloudflare Unifies Observability Platform with Traces and Expanded Features
Cloudflare introduced eight updates to its observability platform, including the open beta launch of Cloudflare Traces. This update unifies logs, traces, analytics, alerts, and dashboards into a single system, providing end-to-end request tracing across the entire Cloudflare platform and offering a single pricing model for ingested and stored observability data. The changes aim to simplify troubleshooting and provide a comprehensive view of traffic processing.
Netflix Observability Team Discusses Ontology-Driven Knowledge Graph for E2E Monitoring
Netflix's observability team presented on building an ontology-driven end-to-end knowledge graph to manage observability at their scale. This approach addresses the data engineering challenges of monitoring 65 million concurrent streams, 2 billion daily requests, and 38 million logging events per second. The knowledge graph aims to provide insights into user experience from application click to content playback.
Microsoft to Deploy Maia AI Accelerators for Multi-Gigawatt Inference by 2027
Microsoft announced plans to scale its Azure Maia family of AI accelerators to multi-gigawatt deployments starting in 2027, making Maia the primary inference system for Microsoft products and services. Maia 200 is already in production, and the upcoming Maia 300 is designed for long-context, memory-intensive inference workloads, featuring a custom AI transport built on Ethernet.
Cloudflare launches K2 in public beta, a serverless event streaming service
Cloudflare introduced K2, a new serverless event streaming primitive now available in public beta on its Developer Platform. K2 provides durable, ordered event logs built on R2 object storage, decoupling data producers and consumers to prevent event loss and scale independently.
Cloudflare launches OHTTP Gateway for privacy-preserving HTTP requests
Cloudflare announced the Cloudflare OHTTP Gateway, a new paid add-on that allows customers to receive HTTP requests without exposing user IP addresses. This expands Cloudflare's existing OHTTP product suite, which previously included only an OHTTP relay, providing a complete solution for developers to integrate privacy into their applications.
Google's Spanner Omni, a deploy-anywhere distributed database, is now generally available
Google has made Spanner Omni generally available, allowing users to deploy the distributed, multi-model database in on-premises data centers or other cloud environments. This release provides the same core Spanner capabilities, including ACID compliance and horizontal scalability, outside of Google Cloud, enabling greater deployment flexibility for demanding workloads and AI applications.
Home Assistant renames 'Cloud' service to 'Link' to distance from 'Big Tech' connotations
Home Assistant has renamed its Home Assistant Cloud service to Home Assistant Link. This change, announced by founder Paulus Schoutsen and Nabu Casa, aims to redefine the service's identity, moving away from negative associations with "cloud" services and emphasizing its role as an optional remote access link. The rebranding is part of a broader strategy to simplify the platform and attract a mainstream smart home audience.
EU Proposes Mandatory Energy and Water Use Disclosure for Data Centers
The European Union has proposed new rules requiring data centers with over 500 kW capacity to disclose their energy and water consumption through a common rating system. This initiative aims to manage the environmental impact of projected data center growth, which is expected to triple by 2030, and will inform future minimum performance standards.
Amazon CloudWatch Omni Introduces AI-Powered Collaborative Observability
Amazon CloudWatch launched CloudWatch Omni, an AI-powered observability platform for applications and AI agents. Omni integrates OpenTelemetry data, offers a collaborative workspace, and automates service discovery and alarm adjustments, aiming to reduce manual effort in incident investigation.
Cloudflare Adds Vary Header Support to Cache Rules
Cloudflare has implemented support for the HTTP Vary response header within its Cache Rules feature, allowing users to control how caches handle varied content. This update enables more precise caching of resources that deliver different representations from a single URL, preventing incorrect content delivery to clients.
Cloudflare Workers now generally available for Python applications
Cloudflare has announced the general availability of Python Workers, allowing developers to run Python applications directly within the Cloudflare Workers runtime. This update makes Python a fully supported language on the Cloudflare Developer Platform, integrating it with various Cloudflare services and popular Python frameworks.
Oracle Issues Force Majeure Notice for New Mexico Data Center Project
Oracle issued a "force majeure" notice to the developer of its New Mexico data center project, Project Jupiter, to mitigate potential cost increases. This action led to a 5% drop in Oracle's stock, as it signals potential delays or financial adjustments for the large-scale AI infrastructure development.
Meta Announces Petal, a Petabit-Class Transoceanic Subsea Cable Using Multi-Core Fiber
Meta is building Petal, a new subsea cable connecting France and the United States, which will be the first to deliver petabit capacity over transoceanic distances. This project will deploy multi-core fiber technology at scale, doubling capacity per fiber without a proportional increase in power or physical infrastructure, addressing increasing demand for global connectivity.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Introduces Cluster Mode for Shared Infrastructure
AWS Elastic Beanstalk launched Cluster Mode, allowing multiple applications to share infrastructure managed by Amazon EKS. This update aims to reduce per-application costs and operational complexity for teams managing a portfolio of applications.
Google Introduces AX, an Open Agentic Orchestrator for Scalable Agent Workloads
Google has released AX, an open agentic orchestrator designed to manage and scale agent-based workloads. AX provides sandboxed execution, workspace setup, network policies, and model configuration, addressing the unique requirements of agent workloads that differ from traditional microservices or batch jobs.
UK Datacentres Projected to Create 75% Fewer Jobs Than Tech Sector Estimates
A new analysis by the environmental thinktank Verdant predicts that UK datacentres will create only 10,400 direct jobs, significantly less than the 40,000 jobs projected by the industry lobby group TechUK. This discrepancy raises questions about the economic benefits of rapid datacentre expansion, especially given their high energy consumption and the government's support for these projects.
Microsoft Exchange Online Experiences Widespread Outage Affecting Email and Authentication
Microsoft is investigating a widespread service issue impacting Exchange Online customers, causing email delays, failures, and authentication problems. The outage, tracked as EX1464935, is attributed to core authentication configuration issues within the Exchange Online infrastructure. This incident affects tens of thousands of users and follows several other Exchange Online outages in recent months.
Microsoft to Disclose Quarterly Azure Revenue, Consolidates Business Units
Microsoft will begin reporting quarterly revenue for its Azure cloud business and is restructuring its operating segments from three to two. This change provides more detailed financial insight into Azure's performance, aligning Microsoft's reporting closer to competitors like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service optimizes cache, saving 100TB memory
Cloudflare's Big Pineapple platform, which powers the 1.1.1.1 DNS service, implemented five changes to its DNS cache entry storage. These optimizations reduced the per-entry memory footprint by over 50%, freeing up approximately 100 terabytes of memory across its fleet and improving cache performance.
Amazon DynamoDB Adds Real-Time Vector Search Capability
Amazon DynamoDB now supports real-time vector search, allowing users to store vector embeddings alongside operational data and perform similarity searches directly within the database. This integration removes the need for separate vector databases and synchronization pipelines, simplifying application architecture and reducing operational overhead for AI-driven features.
Emporia, Kansas Approves Data Center Amid Arrest and Virtual Meeting Shift
Emporia, Kansas, approved zoning changes for the Flint Hills Digital Campus, a hyperscale data center, despite community opposition. The approval followed the arrest of Lux Claridge, a high school physics teacher, for clapping at a city commission meeting, and the city subsequently moved future meetings online, citing public safety concerns due to threats.
Amazon EKS Introduces Kubernetes Version Rollback and Extended Support
Amazon EKS now supports Kubernetes version rollbacks, allowing users to revert a cluster's control plane to its previous Kubernetes version within seven days of an upgrade. This feature provides a safety net for quick recovery from problematic updates. Additionally, EKS has introduced Extended Support for Kubernetes versions, making each version available for 26 months.
Google Cloud Introduces AI Security Blueprint for Kubernetes Engine
Google Cloud has released a security blueprint for AI workloads on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). This strategic guide suggests a multilayered security approach to protect model weights and counter threats like prompt injection, advancing AI's transition from prototype to production. It matters as AI deployment security becomes crucial for enterprises.
Plymouth Township Demands 43 Conditions for 2 Million Sq. Ft. Data Center Project
Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania, has issued 43 conditions for the approval of a 2 million-square-foot data center project proposed by developer Brian O’Neill. The developer is challenging the township's zoning ordinance, claiming the demands are too burdensome, leading to a dispute over local control and data center development.
Ofgem Proposes Upfront Fees for UK Data Center Grid Connections to Address Backlog
Ofgem, Britain's energy regulator, has proposed requiring significant upfront fees from data center projects to secure electricity grid connections. This measure aims to reduce a backlog of 315 data center projects, representing 73GW of demand, which exceeds the country's peak energy demand of 45GW.
Cloudflare Internal DNS Launches for Private Networks
Cloudflare has launched its Internal DNS, providing unified management of authoritative and recursive DNS for private networks. This service aims to simplify DNS operations by consolidating public and private DNS management on a single platform, thereby enhancing security and visibility across networks.
Anthropic Launches Claude Apps Gateway for AWS and Google Cloud
Anthropic has launched the Claude apps gateway for both AWS and Google Cloud. This tool provides enterprises with centralized management of Claude Code, enhancing control over access, costs, and policy adherence. By streamlining developer credential management and spend tracking, the gateway eases administrative burdens for organizations operating at scale.
AWS & Google Cloud Designated as Critical Third Parties to UK's Financial Sector
HM Treasury has designated Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud as critical third parties to the UK financial sector. Under the Critical Third Party (CTP) regime effective January 1, 2025, these tech giants will be subject to oversight from UK regulators such as the Bank of England. This move aims to enhance the operational resilience of the financial sector amidst increasing reliance on cloud services.
AWS and Google Launch New Sandboxing Environments for Running Untrusted Code
AWS Lambda has introduced MicroVMs, a new serverless compute option offering VM-level isolation for running user-generated code. Concurrently, Google Cloud has launched Cloud Run sandboxes in public preview, enabling safe execution of AI-generated code and untrusted binaries. Both solutions aim to provide secure, isolated environments for a variety of applications.
AWS Introduces Account Access Manager for Centralized IAM Role Management
AWS has launched Account Access Manager, a new feature within AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) that centralizes workforce access to AWS accounts. This tool combines the flexibility of existing IAM roles with the centralized federation capabilities of AWS IAM Identity Center, allowing users to assign existing IAM roles to workforce users and groups from a single point.
Google Cloud API Gateway Adds Streaming Support for Real-Time and AI Applications
Google Cloud API Gateway now supports streaming, allowing real-time communication for applications like AI model responses and interactive sessions. This update enables streaming endpoints to use existing gateway policies and security controls, addressing a previous limitation where developers had to choose between streaming and gateway features. The new functionality also introduces predictable gateway hostnames.
Local Utility Hikes and Noise Drive US Data Center Protests, Not Anti-AI Sentiment
Research indicates that public opposition to data center projects in the US is primarily driven by local environmental and economic concerns, such as increased utility costs and noise pollution, rather than broader anti-AI sentiment or political affiliations. This highlights the direct impact of data center operations on local communities, leading to widespread protests and calls for policy changes regarding infrastructure costs.
Render Removes AI Sandbox Time Limit, Offers Indefinite Runtime and State Preservation
Render has eliminated the 30-day continuous runtime limit for AI sandboxes on paid plans, allowing them to run indefinitely and suspend/resume with state intact. This contrasts with Vercel's 24-hour session cap, providing a different approach for long-running AI agent workflows and development tasks.
Azure Failure Prediction and Detection System Reduces VM Interruptions by 36%
Microsoft Azure launched its Azure Failure Prediction and Detection (AFPD) system in 2024, which uses machine learning and telemetry to predict and prevent hardware failures. AFPD has reduced hardware-related virtual machine interruptions across the Azure fleet by 36%. The system operates across various workload types, including General Purpose, Specialized Compute, HPC/AI, and select Storage workloads.
AI Data Centers Use Converted Jet Engines for Power Due to Grid Delays
Some AI data centers are deploying converted jet engines to generate electricity, bypassing long waits for grid connections and new turbines. This approach allows data centers to become operational faster, addressing power supply shortages that hinder AI infrastructure expansion.
Envision Energy deploys 800V DC power system for AI data center in Inner Mongolia
Envision Energy has deployed an 800-volt DC power system at its Galaxy AI data center in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, China. This system converts 10kV AC directly to 800V DC, reducing power conversion stages and supporting higher computing density for AI workloads. The technology is intended to scale the Galaxy campus to 3GW capacity and support up to one million AI accelerators.
Google Cloud Developer plugin released in Antigravity Marketplace
Google Cloud has released the Google Cloud Developer plugin in the Antigravity Marketplace. This plugin provides Antigravity with skills, safety guardrails, and live documentation grounding for building on Google Cloud. It addresses issues with coding agents using outdated information by offering live documentation access and enforcing least-privilege IAM patterns.