AWS creates EC2 instance types tailored for demanding on-prem workloads

What? Why? It’s an update to its Outposts racks hybrid cloud rigs aimed at bankers and telcos

Amazon Web services has created new elastic compute cloud instance types for its on-prem Outposts racks, the second generation of which was announced on Tuesday.

Outposts are racks full of the same hardware AWS uses in its own datacenters and can run some of the instance types offered in the Amazonian cloud. Outposts launched in 2019 and AWS happily shipped either racks full of kit or individual servers. Both were offered as a way of delivering hybrid clouds for all and satisfying users who just aren’t comfortable with public cloud for some workloads – but want a consistent IT estate that’s all managed with the same Amazonian tools.

The next-gen Outposts racks launched Tuesday pack fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, and have twice the vCPU, memory, and network bandwidth as their predecessors powered by third-generation Xeons. AWS says that means VMs running in the new Outposts racks can deliver up to 40 percent better performance.

The salient difference between Amazon’s on-prem offerings and its public cloud is a lack of elasticity – unless customers order more racks and servers. AWS has addressed that with the new Outposts racks by allowing independent scaling of compute and networking infrastructure, which will mean users don’t have to pay for all the kit in a rack. Rival hybrid cloud providers already offer similar arrangements.

Perhaps the most interesting change is the introduction what AWS describes as “a new category” of instance types built for demanding on-prem apps.

“These instances are purpose built for the most latency-sensitive, compute-intensive, and throughput-intensive mission-critical workloads on-premises,” states an AWS post.

One of the new types is called bmn-sf2e. Powered by a 4th Gen Xeon Scalable running at a sustained 3.9 GHz across all cores and with 8GB of RAM allocated to each core, the virtual machines use AMD Solarflare X2522 network cards that connect directly to top-of-rack switches.

All cables from servers to switches are the same length – a nicety that AWS says satisfies “regulatory requirements around fair trading and equal access”. The cloudy giant thinks these instances will fit in nicely with existing trading infrastructure.

The new bmn-cx2 instance type uses Nvidia’s ConnectX-7 400G NIC, which AWS says means the virtual servers offer “800 Gbps bare metal network bandwidth operating at near line rate.” bmn-cx2 instances are suggested as ideal for real-time market data distribution, risk analytics, and telecom 5G core network applications.

This upgrade to Outposts racks is further acknowledgement that public clouds can’t meet all needs, but that when AWS sees a customer need it will enhance its on-prem products – and in this case with somewhat exotic offerings. ®