AWS Outposts is a fully managed service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that extends AWS’s infrastructure, services, and tools to on-premises environments. With AWS Outposts, customers can run AWS services, including compute, storage, and networking, directly in their data centers or on-premises locations, seamlessly integrating with the broader AWS cloud ecosystem.

Hybrid Cloud Environment: AWS Outposts enable a consistent hybrid environment, providing the same AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools both in the cloud and on-premises.
Fully Managed: AWS handles the setup, operation, and management of the Outposts hardware and software, ensuring easy deployment and minimal operational overhead.
Seamless Integration: Outposts integrate with other AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda, among others. This allows customers to use familiar tools, APIs, and management consoles across both on-premises and cloud environments.
Customizable Configurations: You can choose the specifications of your Outposts hardware, such as compute capacity, storage, and network bandwidth, to meet the specific needs of your workload.
Low Latency and Local Data Processing: It is useful for applications that require low latency or local data processing, such as those in manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services.
Use Cases
Data Residency Requirements: Organizations that need to keep data on-premises due to compliance or regulatory reasons can use AWS Outposts while benefiting from the scalability and flexibility of AWS cloud services.
Latency-Sensitive Applications: Applications that require low-latency processing, such as real-time analytics, gaming, or video processing, can be hosted on AWS Outposts while integrating with cloud-based resources.
Edge Computing: For distributed applications that run at the edge and need cloud integration, Outposts can deliver cloud services closer to the point of data creation or consumption.
Types
EC2-based Outposts
These Outposts are primarily designed to host Amazon EC2 instances on-premises, and they provide virtualized compute resources that are directly integrated with the AWS cloud.
- Compute Instances: These Outposts come with pre-configured compute resources, including various EC2 instance types (such as general-purpose, memory-optimized, or compute-optimized instances) for running applications that require scalable compute capacity.
- Integration: Directly integrates with AWS management tools like Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, and other EC2 features.
Storage-based Outposts
These are designed for workloads requiring scalable and high-performance storage with local on-premises storage options, integrating with services like Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) and Amazon S3.
- EBS Volumes: Provides local block storage to your EC2 instances hosted on the Outposts, integrating with your AWS environment for persistent storage.
- On-premises Data Management: Useful for applications with large amounts of data that need to be accessed locally while still maintaining cloud consistency.
Storage Gateway Outposts
This type integrates with AWS Storage Gateway, enabling customers to use hybrid cloud storage solutions by allowing data to be stored both on-premises and in the AWS cloud.
- Hybrid Storage Solutions: Helps to streamline data movement between on-premises systems and AWS storage, enabling solutions like file storage, backup, and archiving.
- Data Transfer: Facilitates local caching for workloads requiring high-performance local storage while ensuring that data is available in the cloud for long-term storage and disaster recovery.
VPC and Networking-based Outposts
These Outposts focus on networking resources and include Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) integration for extending your network from the AWS cloud to your on-premises Outposts environment.
- VPC Integration: Allows customers to seamlessly extend their VPCs into the on-premises environment for a consistent networking setup between the cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
- Direct Connect: Provides low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity between AWS services in the cloud and on-premises applications.
Flavours
AWS Outposts rack | AWS Outposts servers | |
---|---|---|
Form factors | The Outposts rack is 80 inches tall, 24 inches wide, and 48 inches deep. Inside are hosts, switches, a network patch panel, a power shelf, and blank panels. | The Outposts rack-mountable servers fit inside 19″ width, EIA-310 cabinets. The 1U high server is 24” deep, and uses AWS Graviton2 processors. The 2U high server is 30” deep and uses 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. |
Installation | AWS delivers Outposts racks fully assembled and ready to be rolled into final position. Racks are installed by AWS and simply need to be plugged into power and network. | AWS delivers Outposts servers directly to you, installed by either onsite personnel install or a 3rd-party vendor. Once connected to your network, AWS will remotely provision compute and storage resources. |
Locally supported services | Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon EBS Snapshots, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Elasticache, Amazon EMR, Application Load Balancer (ALB), Amazon Route 53 Resolver, AWS IoT Greengrass, AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, and VMware Cloud. Seamlessly extend Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on premises and run select AWS services locally on Outposts rack, and connect to a broad range of services available in the AWS Region. | Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, and AWS IoT Greengrass. Seamlessly extend Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on premises and run select AWS services locally on Outposts servers, and connect to a broad range of services available in the AWS Region. |
Networking | • Includes integrated networking gear. • Supports Local Gateway, which requires Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) over a routed network. | • Does not include integrated networking gear. • Supports a simplified network integration experience providing a local Layer 2 presence. |
Power | • Supports three power configurations: 5 kVA, 10 kVA, or 15 kVA. The configuration of the power shelf depends on the total power draw of the Outpost capacity. • Centralized redundant power conversion unit and a direct current (DC) distribution system in the backplane handled by line mate connectors. | • Requires 1-2 kVA of power. • Supports standard alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) power options. |