New Appearance - Building and testing MacOS, iOS, iPados, Tvos, and Watchos apps using Amazon EC2 Mac instances

I have been able to fully understand the new hardware and software status throughout my career.When I was a teenager, I had Altair 8800 and Apple II.In the first year of his university, someone gave me a phone number, saying, "Call here on a modem."When I made a phone call, the other party answered "Pentagon Tip" and I was able to access ARPANET!

I followed the curious and leap PC industry, and read byte, Infoworld, and every time a new book of other magazines appeared for a long time.At the beginning of 1983, the rumors that Apple Computer will launch a new system that is compact, self -built -in and very easy to use that can be purchased at an affordable price soon.When Steve Jobs announced his Macintosh in January 1984, the company I was working on was immediately ordered with his Apple Lisa system, which used his Macintosh as a cross development host.did.As a developer, I am fascinated by the abundant Mac built -in API and service, and his Inside Macintosh document, like a thick phone book, is still my treasure!

In the past few years, AWS users have described MacOS in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).We have asked a lot of questions to better understand these users, but today I would like to introduce the long -awaited new Mac instances we have been waiting for!

The Amazon EC2 Mac instance equipped with Mac mini hardware and AWS Nitro System is the construction of Xcode applications for Apple platforms such as MacOS, iOS, iPados, TvOS, Watchos, and Safari, etc.increase.This instance is 3.2 GHz (Up to 4 when using Turbo Boost.6 GHz) Uses a 6 -core 8th generation Intel Core i7 (Coffee Lake) processor.The memory is 32 gib, the memory is Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), Amazon FSX for Windows file server, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Aws Systemes Ayger, etc.。

For networks, this instance is executed in Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and includes an ENA networking with a maximum of 10 Gbps.The EBS optimization, and the ability to achieve the up to 55,000 IOPS (16 KB block size) and the 8 Gbps data transfer throughput, the EBS volume attached to the instance is to support I/O -integrated build operation.You can provide the necessary performance.

Mac instance is MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) and 10.15 (Catalina) を実行し、コマンドライン (SSH) またはリモートデスクトップ (VNC) 経由でアクセスできます。EC2 Mac インスタンス向けの AMI (Amazon マシンイメージ) は EC2 最適化されており、他の AWS AMI にある ENA ドライバー、AWS コマンドラインインターフェイス (CLI)、CloudWatch エージェント、CloudFormation ヘルパースクリプト、AWS Systems Manager のサポート、およびec2-user アカウントなどの AWS の便利アイテムが含まれています。これらの AMI はそのまま使用することも、独自のパッケージをインストールしてカスタム AMI を作成することもできます (homebrew-aws リポジトリには、追加のパッケージと、カスタム AMI の作成方法に関するドキュメントが提供されています)。

These instances can be used to create build firms, render farms, and CI/CD farms for all of the Apple environment mentioned earlier.The new instance can be provided in a few minutes, so you will not need to own and operate your own hardware, and you will be able to build code quickly and efficiently for multiple targets.Only the fee for use is charged, and you can take advantage of the elasticity, scalability, security, and reliability provided by EC2.

Example of using EC2 Mac instances This time, we also requested the EC2 team to access the instance to test all the instances.The instance can be used as an exclusive host, so we started by assigning the host.

$ aws ec2 allocate-hosts --instance-type mac1.metal \--availability-zone us-east-1a --auto-placement on \--quantity 1 --region us-east-1

Next, the MAC instance was launched using the command line (console, API, and CloudFormation can also be used).

$ aws ec2 run-instances --region us-east-1 \--instance-type mac1.metal \--image-idami-023f74f1accd0b25b \--key-name keys-jbarr-us-east--associate-public-ip-address

When I took Luna for a short walk and came back, I was ready to use the instance, so I used the console to give this instance.

After that, I connected to the instance.

From here, you can install the development tools, clone the code on the instance, and start the build.

You can start the VNC server in an instance and connect to the instance using a VNC client.

Note that the VNC protocol is not considered safe, so this function must be used carefully.This time, I used a security group that only allowed access from my desktop IP address.

It is also possible to tune VNC traffic via SSH.This method is safer and no need to open port 5900.

The following is key point information of the Mac instance.

AMI Update -AWS will release a new AMI each time Apple releases a major or minor version of each supported OS.We are also planning to create AMIs that contain updated Amazon packages every quarter.

Proflyed host -instance is launched as a 24 -hour EC2 dedicated host with a minimum Tenance.This is generally clear, but it means that instances cannot be used as part of the Auto Scaling Group.

Purchase model -Mac instance can be executed on demand and you can purchase Savings Plan.

Apple M1 Chips -The EC2 Mac instance equipped with Apple M1 chips is already in place and will be offered in 2021.

Let's launch the Instance now will start using Mac instances today in the eastern United States (northern Virginia), the eastern United States (Ohio), the western United States (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore).You can do it.For more information, see this video!

- Jeff;