Posted On: Jun 6, 2023

AWS announces the availability of AWS Snowblade for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract customers. AWS Snowblade is designed to provide AWS compute, storage, and other hybrid services in remote locations, including Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) environments for the DoD. AWS Snowblade is the first AWS Snow Family device designed to meet U.S. Military Ruggedization Standards (MIL-STD-810H), enabling JWCC defense customers to run their operations in edge locations that can be subject to extreme temperatures, vibrations, and shocks. With support for 208 vCPU in a portable, compact 5U, half-rack width form-factor, AWS Snowblade is the densest compute device of the AWS Snow Family allowing JWCC customers to run demanding workloads in space, weight, and power (SWaP) constrained edge locations.

AWS Snowblade adds to the AWS hybrid cloud and edge computing services that extend AWS infrastructure and services to the tactical edge, helping run low-latency applications close to where data originates, is processed, and acted upon. AWS Snowblade supports a select set of AWS services that include Amazon EC2-compatible, AWS IAM, AWS CloudTrail, AWS IoT Greengrass, AWS Deep Learning AMIs, Amazon Sagemaker Neo, and AWS DataSync. Using AWS hybrid cloud services like AWS Snowblade, customers can benefit from a consistent AWS experience using the same services, APIs, and tools to develop, deploy, and manage their applications from AWS Region to the tactical edge locations. 

AWS Snowblade is available in the AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region. AWS Snowblade is limited to U.S. Department of Defense customers under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract. You can learn more on the AWS Cloud for Defense page. To order a device contact your AWS Account team, or AWS Sales support.

06/19/2023 - This post has been updated to reflect “EC2-compatible” Snow Family instances. EC2-compatible instances allow customers using Snow Family devices to use a subset of EC2 APIs and AMIs.