What is AWS Outposts?

AWS Outposts is a hybrid IT solution that allows businesses to run AWS services on-premises while integrating seamlessly with the cloud. Organizations can leverage local compute and storage resources in their own data centers, maintaining a consistent connection to management tools, APIs, and services. These hardware components, deployed locally as 42U racks or 1U/2U servers, are considered part of an Amazon Region, enabling AWS to manage and monitor the infrastructure just like their cloud-based services, providing a unified experience between on-premises and cloud environments.

In this blog, we’ll explore what it is, how it works, and the key benefits it offers. We’ll also dive into its features, the different family members available, and common use cases, helping you understand how this hybrid solution can be implemented to meet your organization’s needs.

What is AWS Outposts?

It is a fully managed service that enables organizations to extend AWS’s infrastructure, services, and APIs to on-premises environments, creating a seamless hybrid cloud experience. Businesses can run AWS services locally within their data centers, colocation spaces, or on-premises facilities while maintaining the ability to connect to a wide range of services offered in nearby AWS Regions. This hybrid approach simplifies IT management by allowing users to operate a consistent environment across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure, eliminating the need to manage multiple IT vendors.

An Outpost is essentially a pool of AWS compute and storage capacity deployed on-site at a physical location, such as a company’s data center. AWS fully manages and monitors these Outposts, treating them as part of an AWS Region, which ensures the same level of service and management as their cloud-based infrastructure. Outposts are available in various configurations, from 1U and 2U Outposts servers to 42U Outposts racks, allowing organizations to select the size that best suits their specific needs. This flexibility makes it easier for businesses to run workloads that require low-latency access to local data or systems while maintaining a connection to AWS’s broad suite of cloud services.

Now that we understand what this solution is, let’s explore how it works and how to implement it effectively in your organization.

How to use AWS Outposts?

To use AWS Outposts, users have two primary options: VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and AWS native. The VMware Cloud variant allows organizations to leverage VMware’s control planes and APIs, while the AWS native option provides access to the same AWS APIs used in the cloud and on-premises environments. This flexibility enables users to select the variant that best suits their existing infrastructure and operational requirements.

To deploy it, users need physical space, adequate power, and a network connection to install the Outpost hardware. After the hardware is set up, users can securely connect to an AWS Availability Zone via VPN or AWS Direct Connect, ensuring a stable and secure connection to the AWS cloud. Once the hardware is connected, users can log into the AWS Management Console to configure and order their Outposts service, including choosing EC2 instances and storage options.

Once they are delivered, users can integrate the service into their environment and manage it through the AWS Management Console. From there, they can launch applications within the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), just as they would in the cloud. Starting with a single Outpost server, organizations can scale up by adding additional servers or racks as needed to meet their growing demands.

Having covered how they operate, let’s dive into the key benefits they offer to businesses seeking a hybrid IT solution.

Benefits of AWS Outposts

It offers a fully managed experience, significantly reducing operational risks and minimizing maintenance downtime that is often associated with traditional IT infrastructure management. By extending the AWS cloud environment to on-premises locations, organizations can leverage the same hardware, APIs, tools, and management controls they use in the cloud, ensuring a consistent and streamlined hybrid cloud experience for both developers and IT operations teams.

With this solution, users can monitor system health and performance through a variety of AWS services, including AWS CloudWatch metrics, AWS CloudTrail logs, VPC flow logs, traffic mirroring, and the AWS Health Dashboard. This allows organizations to gain real-time insights into their infrastructure, ensuring smooth operations.

AWS also takes care of software updates, patches, and routine maintenance at no additional charge. This reduces the administrative burden on organizations and ensures that the infrastructure remains secure and up to date. Moreover, AWS Outposts offers flexibility in deployment, with a variety of rack or server configurations and customizable compute, memory, and storage options, allowing businesses to choose the setup that best meets their needs.

With the benefits in mind, let’s take a closer look at the core features that make AWS Outposts a unique hybrid cloud solution.

Features of AWS Outposts

It brings a unique set of features that allow organizations to extend their cloud operations to on-premises environments seamlessly. Key features include:

• Native AWS Services: It gives you access to a range of native AWS services on-premises. These include services like Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Amazon EKS, Amazon RDS, and Amazon EMR, all of which can be run locally while still connecting to nearby AWS Regions for additional cloud services.
• Unified APIs and Management: Whether you’re running applications on-premises or in the cloud, AWS Outposts enables you to use the same APIs, tools, and security controls, providing a consistent hybrid experience. You can manage your applications and workloads using familiar AWS services, regardless of where they’re deployed.
• Customizable Hardware Configurations: The service lets organizations select from a variety of compute, memory, and storage options. This flexibility allows you to tailor the infrastructure to meet the specific needs of your applications, whether you require high-performance computing or more storage capacity.
• Single Code Base: It ensures that you can keep a single code base for both on-premises and cloud deployments. This enables seamless deployment and management across environments with minimal friction and additional tooling required.
• AWS Managed Infrastructure: It is fully managed by AWS, meaning you don’t have to worry about the complexities of infrastructure maintenance. AWS handles the setup, monitoring, and management of the hardware, ensuring that it operates as efficiently as cloud-based infrastructure.
• Comprehensive Monitoring: AWS provides robust monitoring capabilities through the AWS Management Console, where users can track the health and performance of their Outposts in real-time. This ensures high availability and optimal performance for your on-premises applications.

Now that we’ve discussed the features, let’s explore the different hardware configurations available within the AWS Outposts family to help you choose the right fit for your needs.

AWS Outposts Family Members

It offers two primary hardware options: Outposts Rack and Outposts Servers. Each is designed to cater to different deployment needs, whether for large-scale data centers or locations with limited space.

AWS Outposts Rack

The AWS Outposts Rack comes in a 42U form factor, which is the industry standard for data center equipment. It enables organizations to deploy AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools within their own data centers or colocation spaces. This rack provides a full range of AWS services, including compute, storage, and databases, ensuring a consistent hybrid experience by integrating seamlessly with AWS services available in the cloud. It is ideal for organizations that need significant computing and storage resources locally while maintaining connectivity with AWS Regions for additional cloud capabilities.

The Outposts Rack is a fully managed service, meaning AWS handles all setup, maintenance, and management, providing a seamless hybrid experience between on-premises and cloud infrastructure. It is delivered fully assembled and only requires power and network connections to be operational.

AWS Outposts Servers

These are available in 1U and 2U configurations, making them ideal for environments with limited space or lower capacity requirements, such as retail stores, branch offices, healthcare facilities, or factory floors. These servers provide local computing and networking services, offering a more compact solution for on-premises environments that don’t require the full capacity of the Outposts Rack.

The Outposts Servers bring services, APIs, and tools to smaller locations, with compute and networking services available on-site. These servers are delivered by AWS and installed either on-site or by a third-party vendor. Once connected to the network, AWS remotely provisions compute and storage resources.

Feature Comparison: AWS Outposts Rack vs. AWS Outposts Servers

Now that we know the available Outposts configurations, let’s move on to how AWS Outposts can be applied across various industries through its use cases.

Use Cases of AWS Outposts

It offers a range of use cases for organizations needing seamless hybrid cloud solutions, bridging the gap between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud. Some key use cases include:

1. Low Latency Computation

The service is ideal for industries requiring low-latency computing, such as manufacturing execution systems (MES), high-frequency trading, and medical diagnostics. When the nearest public cloud servers are too far to meet single-digit millisecond latency requirements, Outposts provide the ability to run business applications on-premises, ensuring minimal latency and optimal performance.

2. Data Residency

Data residency is a critical concern for organizations bound by regulations, security policies, or contracts that require data to stay in specific countries, states, or municipalities. It enables users to control where their workloads are executed and where their data resides. It gives flexibility to easily switch between cloud and edge locations, helping organizations quickly adapt to changes in data sovereignty regulations.

3. Migration and Modernization

Migrating legacy on-premises applications is often challenging due to dependencies on latency-sensitive systems. With AWS Outposts, organizations can break down the migration process into smaller, more manageable phases while maintaining low-latency connectivity between application components. This approach ensures a smoother transition as businesses modernize their infrastructure.

4. Local Data Processing

AWS Outposts can also be used for local data processing, such as running data lakes or training machine learning models. For scenarios where data is too large, costly to migrate, or limited by bandwidth, Outposts provide a consistent hybrid architecture. This allows organizations to process local datasets efficiently and transfer data to the cloud for long-term storage.

Conclusion

AWS Outposts offers a powerful hybrid IT solution that combines the scalability and flexibility of the cloud with the control and security of on-premises infrastructure. By extending AWS services into local environments, organizations can enjoy the benefits of cloud-based management and tools while maintaining the performance and compliance needed for sensitive workloads. Whether it’s for low-latency computation, meeting data residency requirements, or simplifying migrations, the solution provides a seamless bridge between on-premises and cloud environments. As businesses continue to modernize and adopt hybrid solutions, they can scale their infrastructure efficiently while meeting evolving demands.

If you want to dive deeper into AWS and build your expertise, you can explore AWS Solution Architect Training to gain a comprehensive understanding of AWS services, infrastructure, and deployment strategies. For more detailed insights, check out our What is AWS and AWS Tutorial. If you are preparing for an interview, explore our AWS Interview Questions.

FAQs

1. What are the benefits of AWS Outpost?

It offers a unified hybrid cloud experience, low-latency processing, full management by AWS, scalability, and compliance with data residency requirements.

2. When to use AWS Outposts?

Use AWS Outposts when you need low-latency computing, data residency compliance, seamless hybrid cloud setups, or gradual migration of legacy applications.

3. What is the difference between AWS Outposts and AWS Local Zones?

It deploys AWS infrastructure on-premises for large-scale, long-term hybrid environments, while AWS Local Zones offer services closer to users for latency-sensitive applications.

4. What two options are available for AWS Outposts?

The two options are:

• VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts (integrating VMware’s control planes with AWS).
• AWS Native Outposts (direct access to AWS APIs and services).