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We are thrilled to announce a significant enhancement in our collaboration with top-tier storage providers, aimed at streamlining the integration of third-party storage with AWS Outposts. Users can now seamlessly attach and utilize external block data volumes from industry leaders like NetApp® and Pure Storage® FlashArray™ directly through the AWS Management Console.
AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS’s infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools directly to your premises. By leveraging local access to AWS-managed infrastructure, Outposts enables the development and execution of applications on-site using the same application programming interfaces (APIs) available in AWS Regions. This is particularly beneficial for meeting low-latency and local data processing requirements. Outposts is offered in various configurations, including racks and servers.
For many organizations, existing on-premises block storage systems are equipped with advanced data management features such as snapshots, replication, and encryption to ensure data security and integrity. There are numerous scenarios, such as regulatory auditing, compliance with government regulations, high durability and resilience demands, and low-latency access for applications that necessitate integration with external storage systems when running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances on Outposts. To facilitate the use of these external volumes, AWS has vetted a wide range of third-party storage solutions through the AWS Outposts Ready Program, making it easier for you to identify compatible storage options.
In this update, we are elevating our integration with storage solutions from NetApp and Pure Storage. Outposts now features a simplified and automated process for launching EC2 instances with attached block storage from external infrastructures via the AWS Management Console. This new capability includes automated user script generation and the capacity to attach data volumes to EC2 instances operating on 42U Outposts racks and 2U Outposts servers. This integration minimizes the challenges of utilizing advanced data management and security features from external storage alongside Outposts, helping you establish a resilient, compliant, and optimized storage and compute environment.
Outposts Rack Storage and Networking Overview
Outposts racks support Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes for EC2 instances, providing persistent local block storage. EC2 instances on Outposts racks can access data from external block storage arrays through the Outposts local gateway (LGW), which enables connectivity between the Outposts subnets and the on-premises network. The LGW facilitates storage traffic between EC2 instances on the Outposts rack and the local network, and is set up by AWS during the Outposts rack installation.
Outposts Server Storage and Networking Overview
Outposts servers come equipped with internal NVMe SSD-based high-performance instance storage. Just like in AWS Regions, this instance storage is directly allocated to the EC2 instance and is tied to its lifecycle. Should an EC2 instance be terminated, the associated instance storage will also be deleted. For persistent data storage beyond the instance’s lifecycle, external storage solutions can complement the internal instance storage.
To support the integration between Amazon EC2 on Outposts and external storage arrays, a local network interface (LNI) must be created and linked to the EC2 instance at launch. This can only be accomplished through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or the AWS SDK. For detailed instructions, refer to the Outposts server user guide.
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Supported Operating Systems and AWS Support
This feature currently supports EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server 2022 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL9). To access all Outposts integration features, including this one, an active AWS Enterprise Support Plan or AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support Plan is required. Support for external storage arrays can be obtained from the respective vendor and may necessitate an additional support plan.
This article assumes familiarity with the basic functionalities of Outposts servers and racks. For more information, the user guide, “What is AWS Outposts?” is an excellent resource.
Solution Deployment
The following sections outline the necessary steps for deploying the solution.
Prerequisites:
- An Outposts 2U server or Outposts rack must be provisioned, activated, and connected to the customer network.
- A block storage array must be connected to the same network and configured properly.
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