Introducing Gen 2 AWS Outpost Racks with Improved Speed

Outpost Racks

The second-generation AWS Outpost racks, the company’s most recent edge computing innovation, are now generally available. The most recent x86-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances are supported by this new generation, which also has accelerated networking instances made especially for applications requiring ultra-low latency and high throughput, as well as new, easier network scaling and setup. These improvements result in improved performance for a variety of on-premises workloads, including telecom 5G Core workloads and financial services core trading systems.

For workloads that must remain on-premises. For multiplayer online gaming servers, consumer transaction data, medical records, industrial and manufacturing control systems, telecom BSS, and edge inference of diverse applications, machine learning (ML) models, the second-generation at outpost racks, data is processed locally and has low latency. The newest processor generation and more sophisticated Outposts rack configurations are now available to customers, including faster processing, more memory, and greater network bandwidth.

Latest generation EC2 instances

Racks at AWS house Amazon EC2 compute-optimized C7i instances, general-purpose M7i instances, and memory-optimized R7i x86 instances. Rack C5, M5, and R5 instances from older Outposts had 40% less performance and double vCPU, RAM, and Internet bandwidth. Bigger databases, real-time big data analytics, memory-intensive apps, on-premises workloads, CPU-based edge inference with complex machine learning models. benefit greatly from their 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. More recent generation EC2 instances, including those with GPU support, will soon be supported.

Simplified network scaling and configuration

With Amazon’s most recent Outposts generation, Amazon has entirely redesigned networking, making it easier and more scalable than ever. Its new Outposts network rack, which serves as a single hub for all of your compute and storage traffic, is at the center of this upgrade.

There are three main advantages to this new design. First, when your workloads increase, you can now expand your compute resources separately from your networking infrastructure, which increases your flexibility and reduces costs. Second, in order to maintain the smooth operation of your systems, it has included network resilience from the beginning. The network rack automatically handles device failures. Third, it’s now easy to connect to your on-premises environment and AWS Regions. Using redesigned console interface or simple APIs, you can setup anything from IP addresses to VLAN and BGP settings.

Specialized Amazon EC2 instances with accelerated networking

A new class of specialised Amazon EC2 instances with faster networking is being introduced on Outpost racks. These instances are optimised for mission-critical applications that need high throughput, compute, and latency on-premises. These instances include a supplementary physical network with network accelerator cards linked to top-of-rack (TOR) switches in addition to the Outpost logical network to provide optimal performance.

Bmn-sf2e instances, which are intended for ultra-low latency with predictable performance, are the first in this category. With a substantial memory allotment of 8GB of RAM for each CPU core, the new instances are powered by Intel’s most recent Sapphire Rapids processors (4th Gen Xeon Scalable), could maintain 3.9 GHz across all cores. AMD Solarflare X2522 network cards that connect straight to top-of-rack switches have been installed on bmn-sf2e instances.

These examples provide deterministic networking for clients of financial services, particularly capital market organisations, using equal cable lengths, native Layer 2 (L2) multicast, and precision time protocol (PTP). Customers may easily connect to their current trading infrastructure and satisfy regulatory obligations for fair trading and equitable access with this.

Instance Name	vCPUs	Memory (DDR5)	Network Bandwidth	NVMe SSD Storage	Accelerated Network Cards	Accelerated Bandwidth (Gbps)
bmn-sf2e.metal-16xl	64	512 GiB	25 Gbps	2 x 8 TB (16 TB)	2	100
bmn-sf2e.metal-32xl	128	1024 GiB	50 Gbps	4 x 8 TB (32 TB)	4	200

Bmn-cx2, the second instance type, is designed to have minimal latency and high throughput. The NVIDIA ConnectX-7 400G NICs in this example are physically linked to fast top-of-rack switches, providing bare metal network bandwidth of up to 800 Gbps while running at near line rate. This instance is perfect for high-throughput workloads like as risk analytics, real-time market data dissemination, and telecom 5G core network applications since it supports hardware PTP and native Layer 2 (L2) multicast.

Instance Name	vCPUs	Memory (DDR5)	Network Bandwidth	NVMe SSD Storage	Accelerated Network Cards	Accelerated Bandwidth (Gbps)
bmn-cx2.metal-48xl	192	1536 GiB	50 Gbps	4 x 4 TB (16 TB)	2	800

In summary, the next Outpost racks generation offers improved performance, scalability, and resilience for a variety of on-premises applications, including mission-critical workloads with the strictest throughput and latency requirements. The AWS Management Console is where you can choose and place your purchase. By supporting the same APIs, AWS Management Console, automation, governance policies, and security controls on-premises and in the cloud, the new instances maintain regional deployment consistency. enhancing IT efficiency and developer productivity.

Things to know

Second-generation Outpost racks may be supplied to the United States and Canada at launch, and they can be parented back to six AWS regions: Asia Pacific (Singapore), US West (Oregon), US East (N. Virginia, and Ohio) and EU West (London, France).There will soon be support for additional nations, territories, and AWS regions. A subset of the AWS services offered by first-generation Outpost racks are locally supported by second-generation Outpost racks at launch. More AWS services and EC2 instance types will soon be supported.