AWS has announced new Mac instances (EC2 Mac instances) for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

EC2 Mac instances are powered by a combination of Mac mini computers—featuring Intel’s eighth-generation 3.2GHz (4.6GHz turbo) Core i7 processors, 6 physical/12 logical cores, and 32 GiB of memory—and the AWS Nitro System, providing up to 10 Gbps of VPC network bandwidth and 8 Gbps of EBS storage bandwidth through high speed Thunderbolt 3 connections.

Amazon EC2 Mac instances are enabled by the AWS Nitro System, which makes it possible to offer Mac mini computers as a fully integrated and managed compute instances with Amazon VPC networking and Amazon EBS storage just like any other Amazon EC2 instance.

Built on Mac mini computers, EC2 Mac instances enable customers to run on-demand macOS workloads in the AWS cloud. The idea is to extend 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 now provision and access macOS environments within seconds and benefit from AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing.

Similar to other Amazon EC2 instances, customers can use EC2 Mac instances together with AWS services and features like Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network security, Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for expandable storage, Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) for distributing build queues, and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for OS image orchestration.

EC2 Mac instances are available to be purchased On-Demand or with Savings Plans. EC2 Mac instances are available now in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) regions, with other regions coming soon.