On November 28, 2018, the AWS Outposts hybrid cloud solution was announced to be launched at AWS re:Invent.

AWS Outposts are integrated cabinets deployed in customer data centers. The product form is packaged

  • At the hardware level: Configure the corresponding server and switch hardware devices according to customer orders. After being delivered to the client room, they can be used by connecting the power supply and network.
  • Software level: AWS infrastructure, AWS services, apis and tools consistent with AWS Region can be provided to almost any data center, colocation space or on-premises facility to achieve a truly consistent hybrid experience.
    Although Outpost is deployed in the customer’s data center, it is itself part of AWS’s public cloud services. The customer does not own the property rights of the AWS Outposts device itself and is not responsible for the maintenance of the device. Outpost connects to the AWS Region via AWS Direct Connect or Public VPN and logically serves as an extension of the AWS Region.

The core demands of AWS Outposts:

  1. Low latency: Some applications have higher requirements for low latency.
  2. Data residency and local processing: Some factories and edge terminals cannot go to the cloud.
  3. Consistent hybrid cloud experience: Some are designed to seamlessly integrate applications or services on AWS.

Local hardware provided by AWS Outposts

AWS Outposts offers hardware designed by AWS itself at a lower cost and can be provided as 42U racks. It can be expanded from 1 rack to 96 racks to create a pool of computing and storage capacity.

In 2021, Outposts is set to introduce two smaller form factors: 1U and 2U racks that can install servers for locations with limited space or capacity requirements. The 1U is about the size of a Pizza and has exactly the same functions as the classic model, but its volume is reduced to 1/40. Small-sized Outposts can be well adapted to places such as hospitals, restaurants, stores, factories, etc., where IT equipment space is limited.

The AWS Outposts all-in-one Rack is 80 inches high, 24 inches wide, 48 inches deep and weighs 2,000 pounds. They are fully assembled together and equipped with casters, allowing for the connection of power and network at any time. It includes two network devices, each with a connection capacity of 400Gbps and supporting 1GigE, 10GigE, 40GigE and 100GigE fiber optic connections.

At the 2021 AWS re:Invent, we also saw as expected the two long-rumored small Outposts devices, 1U and 2U, for physical locations with limited space. The size of the 1U is even as small as a Pizza, with a volume reduced by 1/40 compared to the original, but its functions are exactly the same as the classic model. Small-sized Outposts can be well adapted to places such as hospitals, restaurants, stores, factories, etc., where IT equipment space is limited.

AWS Outposts provides local AWS services

Many AWS services do not run on AWS Outposts; instead, Outposts are remotely accessed via the network. AWS does not “replicate” a public cloud locally, but instead uses Local AWS Outposts as an extension of the Region Amazon VPC. AWS Outposts can connect to other applications or other AWS services in the Region Amazon VPC via the network.

AWS Outposts support running locally:

  • Computing services (e.g., Amazon EC2
  • Storage services (e.g. Amazon EBS, Amazon S3) : AWS Outposts can create Local snapshots and amis (Amazon System Images) for EBS volumes, thereby meeting the requirements of data residency and local backup. Additionally, if Amazon S3 on Outposts are preset at Outpost, snapshots can be uploaded to Amazon S3. Based on the Amazon EBS Local Snapshot feature provided by Outpost, workloads can be directly migrated, copied and restored from any source to Amazon Outposts, or migrated, copied and restored between Amazon Outposts devices. Without going through a Region, this not only reduces costs and latency but also improves performance.
    Container-based services (such as Amazon EKS)
  • Database services (such as Amazon RDS on AWS Outposts)
  • Analysis services (such as Amazon EMR
  • With AWS Outposts, customers can choose EC2 instances that are computationally optimized, storage-optimized, or graphically optimized. These instances can have local storage or not, and they can also choose EBS (Elastic Block Storage) volumes.

 

The advantages of AWS Outposts

Low-latency computing

If the nearest public cloud server is not close enough to meet the latency requirements of the application, Outposts can help you run the application where it needs to be.

Data residency and local data processing

Sometimes, for regulatory, contractual or information security reasons, data needs to remain in a specific country/region, state or city – this is often the case in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, oil and gas, and others.

With Outposts, you can control where your workloads run and where your data resides, while using local operation tools for monitoring, stability and other operations. With this service, you can also move workloads between public clouds and the edge with low friction, and vice versa, so you can easily adapt to any regulatory changes.

Some local datasets cannot be easily migrated to the cloud for processing due to constraints such as cost, size, bandwidth or time. Outposts enables you to handle data locally while keeping your in-lake data warehouse and ML training in one area. With Outposts, you can set up a consistent hybrid cloud architecture to process data locally and easily move data to the cloud for long-term archiving.

With AWS Outposts, you can securely store and process customer data that needs to be retained locally or in countries/regions without AWS regions. This can help meet the needs of companies in highly regulated industries or those located in countries/regions with data residency requirements.

A truly consistent hybrid experience

AWS Outposts creates a truly consistent hybrid experience by providing the same hardware infrastructure, services, apis, management, and operations on-premises as in the cloud. Unlike other hybrid solutions that require the use of different apis, manual software updates, and the purchase of third-party hardware and support, Outposts offers a truly consistent developer and IT operations experience in both on-premises and cloud environments.

Fully managed infrastructure

AWS Outposts are fully managed and supported by AWS. Your Outpost is delivered, installed, monitored, patched and updated by AWS. With Outposts, you can reduce the time, resources, operational risks and maintenance downtime required to manage your IT infrastructure.