Today we’re announcing the general availability of second-generation AWS Outposts racks, which marks the latest innovation from AWS for edge computing. This new generation includes support for the latest x86-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, new simplified network scaling and configuration, and accelerated networking instances designed specifically for ultra-low latency and high-throughput workloads. These enhancements deliver greater performance for a broad range of on-premises workloads, such as core trading systems of financial services and telecom 5G Core workloads.

Customers like athenahealth, FanDuel, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Mercado Libre, Liberty Latin America, Riot Games, Vector Limited, and Wiwynn are already using Outposts racks for workloads that need to stay on-premises. The second-generation Outposts rack can provide low latency, local data processing, or data residency needs, such as game servers for multi-player online games, customer transaction data, medical records, industrial and manufacturing control systems, telecom Business Support Systems (BSS), and edge inference of a variety of machine learning (ML) models. Customers can now take advantage of the latest generation of processors and more advanced configurations of Outposts racks to support faster processing, higher memory capacity, and increased network bandwidth.

Latest generation EC2 instances
We’re excited to announce local support for the latest generation (7th generation) of x86-powered Amazon EC2 instances on AWS Outposts racks, starting with C7i compute-optimized instances, M7i general-purpose instances, and R7i memory-optimized instances. These new instances deliver twice the vCPU, memory, and network bandwidth while providing up to 40% better performance compared to C5, M5, and R5 instances on previous generation Outposts racks.

They are powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and are ideal for a broad range of on-premises workloads requiring enhanced performance such as larger databases, more memory-intensive applications, advanced real-time big data analytics, high-performance video encoding and streaming, and CPU-based edge inference with more sophisticated ML models. Support for more latest generation EC2 instances, including GPU-enabled instances, is coming soon.

This video walks you through the major advancements in the new AWS Outposts racks.

Simplified network scaling and configuration
We’ve completely reimagined networking in our latest Outposts generation, making it simpler and more scalable than ever. At the heart of this upgrade is our new Outposts network rack, which acts as a central hub for all your compute and storage traffic.

This new design brings three major benefits to the table.

First, you can now scale your compute resources independently from your networking infrastructure, giving you more flexibility and cost efficiency as your workloads grow. Second, we’ve built in network resilience from the ground up, with the network rack automatically handling device failures to keep your systems running smoothly. Third, connecting to your on-premises environment and AWS Regions is now a breeze – you can configure everything from IP addresses to VLAN and BGP settings through straightforward APIs or our updated console interface.

Specialized Amazon EC2 instances with accelerated networking
We’re introducing a new category of specialized Amazon EC2 instances on Outposts racks with accelerated networking. These instances are purpose built for the most latency-sensitive, compute-intensive, and throughput-intensive mission-critical workloads on-premises. To deliver the best possible performance, in addition to the Outpost logical network, these instances feature a secondary physical network with network accelerator cards connected to top-of-rack (TOR) switches.

First in this category are bmn-sf2e instances, designed for ultra-low latency with deterministic performance. The new instances run on Intel’s latest Sapphire Rapids processors (4th Gen Xeon Scalable), delivering 3.9 GHz sustained performance across all cores with generous memory allocation – 8GB of RAM for every CPU core. We’ve equipped bmn-sf2e instances with AMD Solarflare X2522 network cards that connect directly to top-of-rack switches.

For financial services customers, especially capital market firms, these instances offer deterministic networking through native Layer 2 (L2) multicast, precision time protocol (PTP), and equal cable lengths. This enables customers to meet regulatory requirements around fair trading and equal access while easily connecting to their existing trading infrastructure.

The second instance type, bmn-cx2, is optimized for high throughput and low latency. This instance features NVIDIA ConnectX-7 400G NICs physically connected to high-speed top-of-rack switches, delivering up to 800 Gbps bare metal network bandwidth operating at near line rate. With native Layer 2 (L2) multicast and hardware PTP support, this instance is ideal for high-throughput workloads like real-time market data distribution, risk analytics, and telecom 5G core network applications.

Bottom line, the new generation of Outposts racks deliver enhanced performance, scalability, and resiliency for a broad range of on-premises workloads, even for mission-critical workloads with the most stringent latency and throughput requirements. You can make your selection and initiate your order from the AWS Management Console. The new instances maintain consistency with regional deployments by supporting the same APIs, AWS Management Console, automation, governance policies, and security controls in the cloud and on-premises, improving developer productivity and IT efficiency.

Things to know
At launch, second-generation Outposts racks can be shipped to US and Canada and be parented back to 6 AWS Regions including US East (N. Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU West (London and France) and Asia Pacific (Singapore). Support for more countries and territories and AWS Regions is coming soon. At launch, second-generation Outposts racks locally support a subset of AWS services found in previous generation Outposts racks. Support for more EC2 instance types and more AWS services is coming soon.

To learn more, visit the AWS Outposts racks product page and user guide. You can also talk to an Outposts expert if you are ready to discuss your on-premises needs.

— Micah;

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