Starting today, customers can boot Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances on AWS Outposts using boot volumes backed by NetApp® on-premises enterprise storage arrays and Pure Storage® FlashArray™, including authenticated and encrypted volumes. This enhancement supports both iSCSI SAN boot and LocalBoot options, with LocalBoot supporting both iSCSI and NVMe-over-TCP protocols. Complementary to fully managed Amazon EBS and Local Instance Store volumes, this capability extends our existing support for external data volumes to now include boot volumes from third-party storage arrays, providing customers with greater flexibility in how they leverage their storage investments with Outposts.
With this new feature, customers can maximize value from their on-premises storage investments while leveraging the cloud operational model of Outposts. They can now use their compatible enterprise storage arrays for both boot and data volumes, benefiting from advanced data management features and high performance. The support for external boot volumes enables customers to streamline operating system (OS) management through centralized boot volume management, while helping meet data residency requirements through on-premises storage arrays. To simplify the process, AWS offers automation scripts through AWS Samples to help customers easily set up and use external boot volumes with EC2 instances on Outposts.
This enhancement is available on Outposts 2U servers and Outposts racks at no additional charge in all AWS Regions where Outposts is available, except the AWS GovCloud Regions. See the FAQs for Outposts servers and Outposts racks for the latest availability information.
You can use the AWS-provided automation scripts to get started with external boot volumes on Outposts. To learn more about implementation details and best practices, check out this blog post or visit our technical documentation for Outposts servers, second-generation Outposts racks, and first-generation Outposts racks.
Source:: Amazon AWS