# AWS Outposts

> AWS hardware installed in your own building, run by AWS as part of a Region.

- Level: Advanced
- Topics: AWS, Cloud
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/aws-outposts/
- In Spanish: [AWS Outposts](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/aws-outposts/)

**AWS Outposts** brings a piece of AWS into your own data center, factory or office. AWS delivers and installs the equipment, either a full 42U **Outposts rack** or a smaller 1U or 2U **Outposts server**, and then operates, monitors and replaces it. On that hardware you run familiar services such as EC2 instances, EBS volumes, ECS clusters or RDS databases, using the same console, APIs and tools as in the cloud.

Each Outpost is anchored to a parent AWS Region through a network connection called the **service link**, and it appears in your VPC as one more subnet. Instances on the Outpost talk to instances in the Region over private IP addresses. The control plane, the part that decides what runs where, stays in the Region; the data and the computing can stay on your premises.

Why not just use the Region? Three usual reasons: **latency**, when a machine on a factory floor needs answers in a few milliseconds; **data residency**, when rules require data to stay in a specific building or country without a nearby Region; and **local processing**, when moving huge volumes of data to the cloud is impractical. It is a form of hybrid cloud with one big difference from running your own servers: the hardware is AWS's, and so is the job of keeping it alive. The site still has to meet AWS's power, space and network requirements.

## An analogy

A bank that installs a full branch inside your company's building. The staff and the vault are the bank's, the rules are the bank's, and it is connected to headquarters, but your employees just walk downstairs.

## Keep in mind

- AWS-owned and AWS-managed racks or servers in your own facility.
- Runs EC2, EBS, ECS, RDS and more with the same APIs as the cloud.
- Connected to a parent Region by a service link; it extends your VPC.
- Chosen for low latency, data residency or local data processing.

## Go deeper

- [What is AWS Outposts? (official docs)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/outposts/latest/userguide/what-is-outposts.html)
- [AWS Outposts product page](https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/)

## Related terms

- [Data center](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/data-center/): A building full of servers where the internet, the cloud and AI actually run.
- [Amazon EC2](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-ec2/): Virtual computers you rent by the hour, in any size, and switch off when done.
- [Amazon EBS](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-ebs/): The virtual hard drive of an EC2 instance, kept alive even when the instance stops.
- [Amazon ECS and Fargate](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-ecs-and-fargate/): AWS runs your containers; with Fargate you never see the servers at all.
- [Amazon RDS](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/amazon-rds/): A ready-made relational database that AWS keeps patched, backed up and running.
- [Database](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/database/): An organized store of data that programs can search and update safely.
- [API](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/api/): The menu of things one program lets another program ask for.
- [Cloud computing](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/cloud-computing/): Renting computers over the internet instead of buying your own.