We are announcing the availability of Anka software with hourly usage pricing for AWS EC2 Mac deployments to align with currently available ec2-mac instance usage models.
Why do users need to run Anka on top of ec2-mac instances?
AWS ec2-mac instance runs on top of a dedicated mac host machine. Provisioning and de-provisioning of these dedicated hosts can take a considerable amount of time and limit iOS infrastructure’s scalability. DevOps can not instantaneously scale dedicated hosts based on job queue loads. This issue, however, can be solved by running type 2 macOS virtualization on top of AWS ec2-mac instance to enable on-demand, instantaneous provisioning of macOS VMs for Build and test CI jobs. Anka is one of the leading type 2 mac virtualization solutions to create and run macOS Vms on ec2-mac instances. Anka is built on top of macOS native hypervisor/virtualization framework and provides performant build and test executions inside Anka macOS VMs. Additionally, users can double the AWS ec2-mac infrastructure capacity by running up to 2 macOS VM environments on each ec2-mac instance. Many iOS development teams within large organizations are running iOS CI on Anka deployed on AWS EC2 instances.
With Anka AWS Marketplace AMIs, we are adding a new deployment option to our existing BYOL (Bring Your Own Anka License) model for deployment on ec2 macs. Marketplace Anka AMIs do not require a license. They are billed based on hourly usage through AWS. These AMIs are built on top of AWS macOS AMIs with Anka pre-installed and configured to enable users to get started. Product support is included and available through our standard channels. We will continue to publish new Anka AMIs in the marketplace with new Anka versions.
For more detailed documentation on using the Anka AWS marketplace AMIs, you can go to https://docs.veertu.com/anka/aws-ec2-mac/#marketplace-ami.
