Powered by Mac mini hardware and the AWS Nitro System, developers 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.
Over the last couple of years, AWS users have told us that they want to be able to run macOS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). We’ve asked a lot of questions to learn more about their needs, and today I am pleased to introduce you to the new Mac instance!
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 Elastic File System (EFS), Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), AWS Systems Manager, and so forth.
On the networking side, the instances run in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and include ENA networking with up to 10 Gbps of throughput. With EBS-Optimization, and the ability to deliver up to 55,000 IOPS (16KB block size) and 8 Gbps of throughput for data transfer, EBS volumes attached to the instances can deliver the performance needed to support I/O-intensive build operations.
Mac instances run macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina) and can be accessed via 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. You can use these AMIs as-is, or you can install your own packages and create custom AMIs (the homebrew-aws repo contains the additional packages and documentation on how to do this).
You can use these instances to create build farms, render farms, and CI/CD farms that target all of the Apple environments that I mentioned earlier. You can provision new instances in minutes, giving you the ability to quickly & cost-effectively build code for multiple targets without having to own & operate your own hardware. You pay only for what you use, and you get to benefit from the elasticity, scalability, security, and reliability provided by EC2.
MacDailyNews Note: You can start using Amazon EC2 Mac instances in the U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. East (Ohio), U.S. West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions today.
Check out this video for more information:
Screw Amazon, they didn’t care before and years later now they do… If your a dev, use macstadium.
Day late and dollar short. No Big Sur. No Apple Silicon.
While I would not expect Amazon to be 100% Apple Silicon, I would expect some significant percentage of the platforms to be Apple Silicon based so developers at the very least could test against that. I would also expect some significant fraction to be Big Sur based for the same reason. You really want to be testing against both.
Whats that?
To the comments, but the commercial was, pointed, lively, and engaging.
Don’t like Apple teaming up with Amazon and putting small companies out of business, companies that have supported the Mac world from day one.
Apple found someone to get rid of the junk Intel Mac Minis, they are amazing
You do have a point… junk stock for a junk man.