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AWS Glue Catalog Federation Now Connects Directly to Remote Iceberg REST Catalogs in GovCloud (US)!

AWS What's New ★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure#security

Hi, it's me, Shiichan! Today I'm covering a data-platform update I spotted on AWS What's New.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, AWS Glue catalog federation is now available in AWS GovCloud (US) regions. It covers these two regions.

  • AWS GovCloud (US-East)
  • AWS GovCloud (US-West)

Catalog federation lets AWS analytics engines directly and securely access Iceberg tables that are stored in Amazon S3 and cataloged in a remote Iceberg REST catalog outside the AWS Glue Data Catalog. You don't need to move or copy the tables — you query them right where they live.

The story so far

Catalog federation itself was already available in standard AWS commercial regions. This update extends it to GovCloud (US) regions as well. Teams running government or heavily regulated workloads in GovCloud previously couldn't take advantage of this capability.

What changes

Data teams in GovCloud (US) can now federate to remote Iceberg tables using whichever AWS analytics engine fits their needs. You can pick the engine with the best price-performance for a given workload while keeping consistent security controls for discovering and querying data.

Metadata is synchronized in real time between the AWS Glue Data Catalog and the remote catalog whenever a query runs, so query results always reflect the latest metadata. That means you no longer have to worry about stale copies of catalog metadata drifting out of sync.

Dive Deep

Here are the supported analytics engines.

  • Amazon Redshift
  • Amazon EMR
  • Amazon Athena
  • AWS Glue
  • Third-party engines like Apache Spark

Access control runs through AWS Lake Formation, which brings:

  • Fine-grained access control
  • Cross-account sharing
  • Trusted identity propagation

Catalog federation works with any catalog implementation that supports the Iceberg REST specification. You can set it up from the Lake Formation console, or through the AWS Glue and Lake Formation SDKs and APIs, and this update is announced as generally available.

Wrap-up

  • AWS Glue catalog federation now works in AWS GovCloud (US-East) and (US-West).
  • You can query tables in remote Iceberg REST catalogs directly, without moving or copying data.
  • Supported engines include Redshift, EMR, Athena, Glue, and third-party engines like Apache Spark.
  • Access control is handled by Lake Formation, with fine-grained permissions and cross-account sharing.
  • A great fit for engineers building data platforms on GovCloud for government or regulated-industry workloads.

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