AWS Outposts
- What it is
- Physical racks of AWS-designed hardware that AWS delivers and installs in your own data center.
- Runs AWS services (EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, ECS, EKS) on premises with the same APIs and console.
- Why
- Workloads that must stay on site: low latency to local systems, local data processing, strict data residency rules.
- True Hybrid Cloud — one control plane across on-premises and Region.
- Operating model
- AWS owns, monitors, patches, and replaces the hardware. You rent it.
- Managed as an extension of an AWS Region you choose.
- Not to be confused with
- AWS Local Zones / AWS Wavelength — AWS-owned facilities near you, not hardware in your building.
- AWS Storage Gateway — connects on-premises apps to cloud storage; no compute delivered.