AWS Outposts Servers FAQs

AWS Outposts 1U and 2U rack-mountable servers provide local compute and networking services to edge locations that have limited space or smaller capacity requirements. Outposts servers are delivered directly to you, and installed by either your onsite personnel install or a 3rd-party vendor. Once connected to your network, AWS will remotely provision compute and storage resources. You can use the same AWS APIs, control plane, and tools that you’re familiar with to manage servers across hundreds or thousands of on-premises locations.

The 1U high server is suitable for 19ʺ wide cabinets, is 24ʺ deep, and uses an AWS Graviton2 processor to provide 64 vCPUs, 128 GiB memory, and 4 TB of local NVMe storage. The 2U high server is suitable for standard 19ʺ wide, 30ʺ deep cabinets, and uses a 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor to provide up to 128 vCPUs, 256 GiB memory, and 8 TB of local NVMe. 

You can deploy and manage applications on servers using the same tools for workloads running on Outposts racks or in the AWS Region. Launch resources by targeting the unique identifier (Outpost ID) that is associated with the virtualized capacity on a server. Outposts servers support local Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for compute, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) for containers, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for networking.

For fleet management, Outposts servers generate the same capacity and network monitoring metrics as Outposts racks. As you scale across sites, you can group devices and target deployments by using resource tags to associate devices within your fleet as you would for resources running in the AWS Region. You can also use deployment management tools such as AWS CloudFormation, AWS CodeDeploy, and Terraform.

Outposts servers are supported in the following AWS Regions and customers can connect their Outposts to the following AWS Regions:

Outposts servers can be shipped to and installed in the following countries and territories.

• NA - US, Canada, Mexico
• EMEA - All EU countries, United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, Norway, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, South Africa, Gibraltar, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Oman, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Qatar, Egypt, Iceland, Turkey, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia*, Senegal, Jordan, Kuwait
• APAC - Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam
• SA - Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay
• CA - Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala

Support for more countries and territories is coming soon.

* Customers deploying in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may require additional authorization. Contact your AWS Sales Representative to learn more.

Outposts servers support EC2 instance storage, which is block-level storage located on local SSD NVMe disks. The size of instance storage varies by instance type. Instance storage is tied to an instance’s lifecycle. It does disappear if an EC2 instance is terminated. To learn more about implementing termination protection to prevent this, see Terminate your instance.

The noise from an Outposts server will range from 66 to 78 dB, which is louder than common consumer-grade equipment. Outposts enterprise-grade servers will work well in a data-center environment, or protected IT spaces like an IT room, closet, or telco site.

After you receive your AWS Outposts servers, you can have either onsite personnel or a third-party IT provider install them. For Outposts servers that require maintenance, AWS will send you a replacement device. 

AWS Outposts servers have two form factors: the 1U server comes with Amazon EC2 C6gd compute optimized instances that are powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton2 processors, and the 2U server comes with Amazon EC2 C6id compute optimized instances that are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors for a wide variety of workloads. You can launch AWS services including Amazon EC2 for compute, Amazon VPC for networking, and Amazon ECS for containers. Additionally, you can use AWS IoT Greengrass to locally process data collected from edge devices, and use Amazon SageMaker Edge Manager to operate machine learning (ML) models running on edge devices.  

You can also manage Outposts servers applications and capacity using in-Region governance services like AWS Organizations and Resource Access Manager, CloudFormation and CodeDeploy, CloudWatch and CloudTrail. The pricing information for Outposts servers includes delivery, infrastructure service maintenance, and software patches and upgrades.

AWS will deliver Outposts servers directly to you, and you can either have your onsite personnel install them or an AWS preferred third-party contractor. After the Outposts servers are connected to your network, AWS will remotely provision compute and storage resources so you can start launching applications.

Billing for each AWS Outposts server begins upon the earlier of: 1) compute capacity becoming available after installation of the Outposts server or 2) the 31st day after delivery of the Outposts server to you.

At the end of your Outposts servers term, you can either renew your subscription and keep your Outposts server(s), or return your Outposts server(s). If you do not notify AWS which option you intend to take, your Outposts server(s) will be renewed on a monthly basis, at the rate of the No Upfront payment option corresponding to your Outposts server configuration. For more information, see term end documentation here.

AWS provides services that allow data to be encrypted at rest and in-transit and other granular security controls and auditing mechanisms. In addition, customer data is wrapped to a physical Nitro Security Key. Destroying the device is equivalent to destroying the data. As part of the shared responsibility model, customers are responsible for attesting to physical security and access controls around the Outpost, as well as environmental requirements for facility, networking, and power. Prior to returning the Outpost hardware, the Nitro Security Key will be removed to ensure customer content is crypto shredded.

FedRAMP has granted authorization to AWS Outposts, excluding the hardware components of the service. The physical and environmental controls for the AWS Outposts protection while at the customers’ sites are the customers’ responsibilities. Customers and agencies can make a risk-based decision to use AWS Outposts or conduct a Type Accreditation to review the hardware components of AWS Outposts to process FedRAMP workloads. Assessment results previously conducted by the AWS Third Party Assessment Organization can be accessed via CapLinked.

When your Outposts server is installed and is visible in the AWS Management Console, AWS will monitor it as part of the public Region and will automatically execute software upgrades and patches.

If there is a need to replace physical equipment, AWS will notify you and ship an appropriate module to your site. There is no additional charge for this, as hardware is included as part of the Outposts service price.

EC2 instances and local instance store volumes already attached to the instances on the Outpost will continue to operate normally and can be accessed locally through the local network interface (LNI). However, API availability will be degraded, for instance run/start/stop/terminate APIs may not work. Instance metrics and logs will continue to be cached locally for up to 7 days, and will be pushed to the AWS Region when connectivity returns. Disconnection beyond 7 days however may result in loss of metrics and logs. If you expect to lose network connectivity, we strongly recommend regularly testing your workload to ensure it behaves properly in this state when an Outpost is disconnected. Your data remains safely stored on your Outpost during periods of disconnect, and once connectivity is restored along with your ability to take mutable actions, such as start/stop/terminate EC2 instances, can resume.