What is AWS Outposts?
AWS Outposts brings AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to your own datacenter or colocation facility. An Outpost is a pool of AWS compute and storage capacity on-site that AWS operates, monitors, and manages as an extension of an Availability Zone and its associated AWS Region. You create subnets on your Outpost and use AWS resources within them, such as EC2 instances, EBS volumes, ECS clusters, or RDS instances, using the same APIs, SDKs, and console as in the cloud.
Outposts addresses requirements for data residency, low latency to local systems, and local data processing while you benefit from consistent AWS interfaces. Every Outpost requires a service link, a network connection to its associated AWS Region, through which management and updates flow.
Core Features
- AWS services on-site: Depending on the region, services such as EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, ECS, EKS, EMR, and ElastiCache run on Outposts racks; a smaller feature set (including EC2 and ECS) runs on Outposts servers.
- Consistent APIs: The same tools, SDKs, and console as in AWS Regions.
- Fully managed: AWS handles delivery, infrastructure maintenance, and software patches and upgrades; for racks, also installation and removal.
- VPC extension: Outposts subnets are part of the same VPC as your resources in the AWS Region.
- Two form factors: Industry-standard 42U racks for substantial workloads, and compact 1U/2U servers for locations with limited space.
Typical Use Cases
Data residency: When data cannot leave your own datacenter, Outposts still enables use of AWS services with local processing. Relevant for regulated industries with strict data location requirements.
Low latency: For applications requiring very low latency to local systems, such as production control, real-time analytics, or latency-critical on-site applications.
Hybrid workloads: Distributed architectures combining local processing with connectivity to cloud services, such as local data collection paired with cloud-based analytics in the same AWS Region.
Benefits
- AWS experience and the same APIs in your own datacenter as in the AWS cloud.
- AWS handles hardware maintenance, patches, and updates.
- Seamless integration with the associated AWS Region through the same VPC.
- Supports both data residency and low-latency requirements.
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with AWS Outposts: we help with evaluating hybrid cloud scenarios, choosing between Outposts Racks and Servers, architecture planning, and integrating Outposts with your existing systems.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AWS Outposts?
AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to your own datacenter. An Outpost is a pool of AWS compute and storage capacity on-site that AWS operates, monitors, and manages as an extension of an AWS Region.
Which services are available on Outposts?
Outposts racks support services such as EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, ECS, EKS, EMR, and ElastiCache, depending on the associated AWS Region. Outposts servers support a smaller set of services, primarily EC2 and ECS. All services use the same APIs as in AWS Regions.
What is the difference between Outposts Racks and Servers?
Outposts Racks are complete industry-standard 42U racks for substantial workloads with broad service support. Outposts Servers are compact 1U or 2U servers for locations with limited space or smaller capacity needs, but support fewer AWS services.
How is Outposts maintained and what network connectivity is required?
AWS handles delivery, installation (for racks), infrastructure maintenance, and software patches and upgrades. Every Outpost requires a service link to its associated AWS Region for management, monitoring, and updates.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.