At present, we’re asserting the final availability of Amazon EC2 M2 Professional Mac cases. These cases ship as much as 35 % quicker efficiency over the prevailing M1 Mac cases when constructing and testing purposes for Apple platforms.
New EC2 M2 Professional Mac cases are powered by Apple M2 Professional Mac Mini computer systems that includes 12 core CPU, 19 core GPU, 32 GiB of reminiscence, and 16 core Apple Neural Engine and uniquely enabled by the AWS Nitro System via high-speed Thunderbolt connections, providing these Mac mini computer systems as totally built-in and managed compute cases with as much as 10 Gbps of Amazon VPC community bandwidth and as much as 8 Gbps of Amazon EBS storage bandwidth. EC2 M2 Professional Mac cases assist macOS Ventura (model 13.2 or later) as AMIs.
A Story of EC2 Mac Situations
When Jeff Barr first launched Amazon EC2 Mac Situations in 2020, clients had been stunned to have the ability to run macOS on Amazon EC2 to construct, take a look at, bundle, and signal purposes developed with Xcode purposes for the Apple platform, together with macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
In his keynote in AWS re:Invent 2020, Peter DeSantis revealed the key to construct EC2 Mac cases powered by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it potential to supply Apple Mac mini computer systems as totally built-in and managed compute cases with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage, identical to every other EC2 cases.
“We didn’t have to make any adjustments to the Mac {hardware}. We merely linked a Nitro controller through the Mac’s Thunderbolt connection. While you launch a Mac occasion, your Mac-compatible Amazon Machine Picture (AMI) runs straight on the Mac Mini, with no hypervisor. The Nitro controller units up the occasion and supplies safe entry to the community and any storage hooked up. And that Mac Mini can now natively use any AWS service.”
In July 2022, we launched Amazon EC2 M1 Mac Situations constructed across the Apple-designed M1 System on Chip (SoC). Builders constructing for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV purposes can select both x86-based EC2 Mac cases or Arm-based EC2 M1 cases. If you wish to re-architect your apps to natively assist Macs with Apple Silicon utilizing EC2 M1 cases, you may construct and take a look at your apps to ship as much as 60 % higher worth efficiency over the EC2 Mac cases for iPhone and Mac app construct workloads with all the advantages of AWS.
Many shoppers benefit from EC2 Mac cases to ship a whole end-to-end construct pipeline on macOS on AWS. With EC2 Mac cases, they’ll scale their iOS construct fleet; simply use customized macOS environments with AMIs; and debug any construct or take a look at failures with totally reproducible macOS environments.
Prospects have reported as much as 4x discount in construct occasions, as much as 3x enhance in parallel builds, as much as 80 % discount in machine-related construct failures, and as much as 50 % discount in fleet dimension. They’ll proceed to prioritize their time on innovating merchandise and options whereas lowering the tedious effort required to handle on-premises macOS infrastructure.
To speed up this innovation, EC2 Mac cases lately started to assist changing root volumes on a operating EC2 Mac occasion, enabling you to revive the basis quantity of an EC2 Mac occasion to its preliminary launch state or to a selected snapshot, with out requiring you to cease or terminate the occasion.
You can too use in-place working system updates from inside the visitor surroundings on EC2 M1 Mac cases to a selected or newest macOS model, together with the beta model, by registering your cases with the Apple Developer Program. Builders can now combine the newest macOS options into their purposes and take a look at present purposes for compatibility earlier than public macOS releases.
Getting Began with EC2 M2 Professional Situations
As with different EC2 Mac cases, EC2 M2 Professional Mac cases additionally assist Devoted Host tenancy with a minimal host allocation period of 24 hours to align with macOS licensing.
To get began, it’s best to allocate a Mac-dedicated host, a bodily server totally devoted in your personal use in your AWS account. After the host is allotted, you may launch, cease, and begin your personal macOS surroundings as one occasion on that host for one devoted host.
After the host is allotted, you can begin an EC2 Mac occasion on it. The process isn’t any totally different from beginning any EC2 occasion sort. Select your macOS AMI model and choose the mac2-m2pro.metallic
occasion sort within the Utility and OS Photographs part.
Within the Superior particulars part, choose Devoted host in Tenancy and a devoted host you simply created in Tenancy host ID.
While you use EC2 Mac cases for the primary time, you need to use SSH to hook up with the newly launched occasion as ordinary or allow Apple Distant Desktop and begin a VNC session to the EC2 occasion. To be taught extra, see Sebastien’s collection of articles to launch and join your Mac occasion.
While you not want the Mac devoted host, you may terminate your operating Mac occasion and launch the underlying host. Be aware once more that after being allotted, a Mac devoted host can solely be launched after 24 hours to align with Apple’s macOS licensing.
Now Obtainable
Amazon EC2 M2 Professional Mac cases can be found within the US West (Oregon) and US East (Ohio) AWS Areas, with extra areas coming quickly.
To be taught extra or get began, see Amazon EC2 Mac Situations or go to the EC2 Mac documentation. You may ship suggestions to AWS re:Put up for EC2 or via your ordinary AWS Assist contacts.
— Channy