Day Two Cloud 180: Understanding AWS EC2 At The Edge

On today’s Day Two Cloud podcast, we speak with Jan Hofmeyr, a vice president within Amazon Web Services (AWS). His group focuses on Amazon EC2 Edge, including AWS Outposts. This show was recorded at AWS re:Invent 2022 in Las Vegas. We discuss: * EC2 at the edge * What goes on in an AWS Outpost box * Standing up an AWS Outpost box in a local rack * What an AWS Local Zone really is * Connecting an AWS Local Zone to the AWS cloud * More Show Links: AWS Local Zones – AWS AWS for the Edge -AWS AWS Outposts Family – AWS AWS Private 5G – AWS Transcript: [00:00:10.970] – Ethan Welcome to day two. Cloud. In today’s episode, we are interviewing Jan Hofmeyer. Jan is a vice president within Amazon Web Services. His group focuses on EC Two. Specifically, EC Two functioning at the Edge. So we’re talking talking local zones, AWS, outposts, these sorts of things. Ned and I recorded the show at AWS Reinvent 2022 in Vegas. Some media folks were kind enough to set us up with Jan to have this conversation in the discussion. Ned and I asked Jan all kinds of questions about EC. Two at the edge. What’s really happening in an Outpost box, how you order one, what it means when you’ve got an Outpost box standing up in one of your racks, what a local zone really is. How does AWS decide to stand up a new local zone? What is the plumbing for AWS like going into a local zone? Is it as good as what happens in a region? Jan answered all of our questions, and it was totally unscripted. We walked in having really no idea what all Jan was ready to talk about. We just went in and started asking questions, and he started giving us answers. It was a lot of fun. [00:01:14.180] – Ethan So enjoy this conversation with Jan Hofmeier, vice president at AWS for EC Two at the Edge. [00:01:21.370] – Ned Jan hoffmeyer. Welcome to day two, Cloud. We’re very excited to have you here today on the show. Can you please tell the good folks out there a little bit about yourself and what you do for AWS? [00:01:32.190] – Jan Great to be here with both of you. So I’m with the AWS EC two team. And EC two is the cloud. Compute for Amazon. And specifically my focus is around the easy to edge area. So before you even ask me what is the age the Edge is at AWS, we have our big regions, and our regions are our large data centers. Although locations, we have 30 of them across the world. Each of these regions have 97 or not each, but these regions represents 97 Availability Zones. So that Availability Zone is for a given region. There’s typically three or more or four different Availability Zones. Each of those are independent data centers. That’s where we run the big workloads. So think of that. That’s AWS, right? [00:02:22.500] – Ethan That’s easy too, that everybody knows and. [00:02:24.060] – Jan Uses all of our services, over 200 services. That’s Amazon. Right. AWS, the Edge is when we take the Cloud, the AWS Cloud, outside of the region and closer to our users outposts. Well, the first stop is actually Local Zones. [00:02:40.090] – Ethan Okay? [00:02:40.950] – Jan So Local Zones is where we still have AWS run facilities that runs a smaller instance of the AWS Cloud, closer to metropolitan areas and the Edge. And a good example of where that’s useful is the Dish. For instance,