MacOS X Available on AWS
Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) announced that it will have macOS instances on its EC2 service. The instances will use a combination of Mac mini hardware and the AWS Nitro abstraction layer, which will allow macOS 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina instances to use other AWS services such as S3, EBS, and EFS. The instances will give developers a virtual environment on which to design apps for the Mac, iPhone, and other Apple devices.
The instances will have an 8th generation, 6-core Intel Core i7 processor running at 3.2 GHz. Instances of macOS also have 32GB of memory and is accessible via SSH and as a remote desktop via VNC. Amazon recommends that if VNC is used, the port be locked down to only allow access from certain IPs or to tunnel VNC over SSH.
As Apple attracts more developers eager to design apps for its different products, there's a greater need to provide them with the resources. Instead of having to set up and maintain on-premises Mac hardware and software, developers can turn to the new AWS instances to focus on the apps themselves. Individuals and organizations can access the virtual macOS environments to build and test their apps quickly.
AWS makes the instances available as dedicated hosts with a minimum tenancy period of 24 hours, which means they cannot be part of an automatic scaling group. The macOS instances are available in US East in North Virginia and Ohio, US West in Oregon, Europe in Ireland, and Asia Pacific in Singapore. Instances using the new Apple M1 chip are planned for 2021.