Posted On: Feb 23, 2021

Starting today, customers can run macOS Big Sur (11.2.1) as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) on EC2 Mac instances. macOS Big Sur is the current major macOS release from Apple, and introduces multiple new capabilities and performance improvements over prior macOS versions. macOS Big Sur will support running Xcode versions 12.5 and later, which will include additional SDKs for iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, tvOS 14.5, watchOS 7.4, and macOS Big Sur 11.3. Customers can now also access Amazon EFS file systems from EC2 Mac instances running macOS Big Sur.

macOS Big Sur AMIs are AWS supported images that are backed by Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). These AMIs include the AWS Command Line Interface, Command Line Tools for Xcode, Amazon SSM Agent, and Homebrew. The AWS Homebrew Tap includes the latest versions of AWS packages included in the AMIs.

EC2 Mac instances enable customers to run on-demand macOS workloads in the AWS cloud for the first time, extending the flexibility, scalability, and cost benefits of AWS to all Apple developers. With EC2 Mac instances, developers creating apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Safari can provision and access macOS environments within minutes, dynamically scale capacity as needed, and benefit from AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing.

macOS Big Sur AMIs are available today in AWS US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), and Asia-Pacific (Singapore) Regions. Customers can get started with macOS Big Sur AMIs via the AWS Console, Command Line Interface (CLI), or API.  

Learn more about AWS Mac instances here or start a machine today in the AWS Console. Get started with Amazon EFS file systems on EC2 Mac instances here.