AWS Outpost Review
AWS Unveils New AWS Outposts Rack and Server Offerings for Telcos
On-premises 5G network operations that demand low latency and high throughput are modernised by AWS Outposts racks.
AWS Outposts servers for Cloud RAN workloads offer cloud-native services and infrastructure for virtualised RAN deployment, operation, and scalability.
Amazon Web Services unveiled new products that allow telecom service providers (telcos) to extend AWS infrastructure and services to deploy on-premises network functions that require low latency, high throughput, and real-time performance. These products include AWS Outposts racks for high throughput, network-intensive workloads and AWS Outposts servers designed for Cloud Radio Access Network (RAN) workloads. Later this year, these solutions will be widely accessible to accommodate workloads for 5G Core user plane function (UPF), RAN centralised unit (CU), and RAN distributed unit (DU).
Telcos can modernise outdated networks and speed up the deployment of virtualised cloud-based networks with the support of AWS Outposts racks for high throughput, network-intensive workloads and AWS Outposts servers made for Cloud RAN workloads. Customers’ on-premises data centres and edge locations can now access the seamless and secure cloud infrastructure and services from AWS Regions and major metropolitan regions. Telcos’ requirements for low latency, migration and modernisation, data residency, and local data processing use cases are met by this range of AWS infrastructure and services, which includes AWS Regions, AWS Local Zones, and AWS Outposts.
Telcos can now operate their complete 5G network, including 5G Core and 5G RAN, on AWS cloud services to the new AWS Outposts capabilities, which enable the AWS Cloud Continuum to reach the farthest edge of the 5G network. The new architecture of the AWS Outposts rack offering enables cost-effective capacity scalability to satisfy the increasing throughput demands on the world’s most densely populated 5G networks.
With full feature and performance equivalence with appliance-based 5G RAN, the AWS Outposts server offering supports both Open and Virtual RAN architectures. With the help of these products, telcos will be able to construct a cloud infrastructure that is ready for 5G and beyond. Better end-user experiences, quicker network deployment, improved pricing performance, and lower cost of ownership will all be made possible by the ground-breaking technologies.
AWS Outposts racks for high throughput, network-intensive workloads
The new AWS Outposts racks offer cost-effective traffic scaling to satisfy the constantly increasing throughput demands of 5G Core UPF and RAN CU workloads. They are designed for high throughput and network-intensive on-premises operations. This enables future advanced 5G use cases by allowing mobile operators to allocate workloads to various sites according to latency, throughput, and traffic aggregation requirements. Regardless of where their workloads are located, operators can now utilise the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, tools, and a single continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. This reliable cloud experience minimises integration costs, eases operational load, and speeds up the creation of new features for operators.
New Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable-based (Sapphire Rapids) bare metal instances and a high-performance bare metal network fabric are features of the AWS Outposts racks that provide telecoms several advantages, such as:
- Support for network-intensive, high-throughput on-premises applications: EC2 bare metal instances and a bare metal network fabric that can flexibly scale to meet growing performance requirements are two features that the AWS Outposts racks give telcos to operate high-throughput workloads.
- Improved performance and security with AWS Nitro System: The AWS Nitro System, which powers contemporary Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Regions, is the foundation for the new Amazon EC2 bare metal instances on the AWS Outposts racks. This allows the Nitro System’s improved security and performance advantages to be extended to dispersed telco network sites.
- Automated deployment, scaling, and administration: The AWS Outposts racks are compatible with pre-validated Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) add-ons that are necessary to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of 5G network functionalities that rely on microservices.
- Enhanced operational efficiency with regional AWS services: Telcos can connect to a wide range of services offered in the parent AWS Region and run some AWS services locally with AWS Outposts. With only one set of AWS services, such as Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, and Amazon Managed Grafana, they can keep an eye on their whole 5G network. Telcos can also employ AWS analytics and machine learning services like Amazon Athena and Amazon SageMaker to improve 5G network metrics and analytics.
The 5G cloud core deployment marks a major milestone in cloud network design. They are pleased to report that it have established the first entirely cloud-native 5G core network on AWS, serving one million users to date. Being Germany’s largest mobile network provider with millions of users, they need the newest technological platform without sacrificing the dependability and functionality of the offerings. The new AWS Outposts racks support to nationwide 5G core’s high throughput and low latency requirements while aligning with the next stage of network growth. It also able to provide your clients with exceptional 5G operating experiences and innovative digital applications to AWS Outposts.
Currently in preview, the new Outposts rack offering will go on sale later this year.
AWS Outposts servers designed for Cloud RAN workloads
In order to host crucial RAN DU applications at the farthest edge, like RAN cell towers, the new AWS Outposts servers were built from the ground up for Cloud RAN workloads, satisfying the strictest form factor, environmental, synchronisation, transport latency, and throughput criteria.
Telcos may use cloud infrastructure and services to install virtualised RAN solutions to AWS Outposts servers optimised for Cloud RAN workloads. This speeds up the adoption of 5G and makes new revenue-generating services possible. The servers were created in partnership with Nokia. In order to integrate their accelerator cards as future options, AWS is also collaborating with other RAN providers.
Nokia and AWS collaborate closely to help businesses and mobile network operators throughout the world with their cloudification efforts. With the AWS Cloud and Nokia RAN software, it have a pre-integrated and tested Cloud RAN solution that guarantees feature and performance consistency. It is assist operators in increasing the 5G networks’ scalability and efficiency while utilising the edge cloud to create new revenue streams.
Key benefits of the new AWS Outposts servers for telcos include:
- The new AWS Outposts servers have pre-integrated L1 acceleration card, hardware, operating system, and Container as a Service (CaaS), which reduces operational complexity by eliminating the need to integrate, deploy, and manage multiple RAN infrastructure layers.
- With the most extensive and comprehensive collection of cloud capabilities, innovation is accelerated: Telcos may easily leverage more than 200 AWS services in AWS Regions to create new revenue-generating services with AWS Outposts servers. Regular deployments of new services and features to a wide range of dispersed cell sites are made possible by the new Outposts servers, which also make the transition from legacy infrastructure to a software-centric and microservice-based RAN easier.
- Additional computational possibilities and high performance with AWS Graviton3 processors: AWS Graviton3-based EC2 instances power AWS Outposts servers for Cloud RAN applications, offering high compute performance and capacity along with extra computing options for Cloud RAN and edge AI inference.
- Pre-Integrated with RAN vendors: Through close collaboration with RAN vendors, they are able to provide reliable radio vendors like Nokia with the high radio performance, feature parity, spectral, and energy efficiency that are essential for any large-scale 5G telco.
Later this year, Telefonica, Orange, and Du Network will start developing pilots for test validation.
With the help of the Graviton chipset, which is evidence of advancements in portability and vendor diversification, this collaborative effort seeks to investigate the possibilities of Cloud RAN integrated across a hybrid cloud architecture, increasing Orange’s options for network deployment flexibility. In order to demonstrate the solution’s performance, energy efficiency, and automation advantages, are currently working with Nokia and AWS on a lab trial. This will be a key component of the Orange Cloud RAN rollout strategy.
Later this year, the new Outposts server service will be made widely accessible.
