New Mac instance On AWS Cloud Platform

Amazon has launched a new Mac Instance on the AWS cloud platform. Amazon EC2 Mac Instances can be used to Build & Test macOS, iOS, ipadOS, tvOS, and watchOS Apps. Now users can easily run macOS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Basic Capabilities for the EC2 Instance

It is powered by Mac mini hardware and the AWS Nitro System, you can use Amazon EC2 Mac instances to build, test, package, and sign Xcode applications for the Apple platform including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Safari. The instances feature an 8th generation, 6-core Intel Core i7 (Coffee Lake) processor running at 3.2 GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 4.6 GHz. There’s 32 GiB of memory and access to other AWS services including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), AWS Systems Manager, and so forth.

This will run in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and include ENA networking with up to 10 GBPS of throughput. It also can support throughput up to 55,000 IOPS for workloads.

macOS Desktop
macOS Desktop

Mac instances run macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina) and can be accessed via the command line (SSH) or remote desktop (VNC). The AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) for EC2 Mac instances are EC2-optimized and include the AWS goodies that you would find on other AWS AMIs: An ENA driver, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), the CloudWatch Agent, CloudFormation Helper Scripts, support for AWS Systems Manager, and the ec2-user account.

The new Mac instances are now available in a number of AWS regions. These include US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland) and Asia Pacific (Singapore), with other regions to follow soon.

Source: AWS Blog and TechCrunch

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