AWS recently announced significant lifecycle changes for over 20 services and features, classifying them as Maintenance, Sunset, or End of Support.
The first wave of change occurred last year, when AWS abruptly discontinued new customer access to several long-standing managed services (such as the source control AWS CodeCommit), effective in July 2024 and later in October (including AWS App Mesh and Amazon FSx File Gateway). Now, for the second time, the company has initiated a significant review of its product portfolio, announcing availability changes across three lifecycle categories. The update reflects a strategic decision to consolidate offerings and eliminate solutions with low adoption.
Services moving to the Maintenance phase will no longer be available to new customers starting November 7, 2025, while existing customers may continue to use them while planning for alternatives.
- Core Data and Storage: The change for Amazon Glacier (the original standalone vault-based service) is primarily an API consolidation. Corey Quinn, in a lastweekinaws blog post, noted that this is a “red herring,” as the preferred S3 Glacier storage classes remain fully available, and AWS is simply removing the older, “profoundly annoying” separate APIs. Similarly, Amazon S3 Object Lambda is being removed, as its functionality is superseded mainly by standard Lambda operations on S3.
- Developer and Specialized Tools: Amazon CodeCatalyst is moving to maintenance after what was considered a quiet post-launch period, suggesting a lack of adoption. Other services include Amazon Cloud Directory, Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer (integrated with GitHub Actions in 2021), Amazon Fraud Detector (GA in 2020), and .NET Modernization Tools.
- Management, Mainframe, and Edge: This group includes services such as AWS Mainframe Modernization Service (GA in 2022), whose capabilities are reportedly being folded into a new consolidated service called AWS Transform. AWS Systems Manager – Change Manager and Incident Manager (introduced in 2021) are also being wound down.
The following services are entering a sunset phase, with an operations and support end date to be announced (Note: Sunset end dates are typically announced within 12 months). Customers must begin planning migrations immediately:
One service, AWS Mainframe Modernization App Testing (GA 2024), reached End of Support on October 7, 2025.
Corey Quinns views this mass lifecycle update as a strategic effort to declutter the AWS service catalog. Quinn characterized the overall decision as AWS clearing out the “rotten fruit” resulting from a period of excessive service launches that were not all commercial successes. This consolidation is anticipated to allow AWS to re-focus engineering effort on the fewer core products that drive business value for customers, ultimately improving the experience across a smaller, more mature portfolio.
This event also serves as a reminder for architects, as Benjamen Pyle commented in a LinkedIn post:
Don’t build something integral to your product on a fringe service.
For services like Snowball Edge Compute Optimized and Storage Optimized, which remain available for existing users, architects are advised to make other plans for new projects to mitigate future risk, despite the immediate ability for current customers to continue operations.
AWS stated that comprehensive migration guides and support teams are available to assist customers with the required transitions.
