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Disclosure: I work for AWS and am part of the team that built EC2 Mac instances 1) After every stop/terminate of Mac instances, EC2 runs a scrubbing workflow o

Disclosure: I work for AWS and am part of the team that built EC2 Mac instances 1) After every stop/terminate of Mac instances, EC2 runs a scrubbing workflow on the underlying Dedicated Host to wipe the Mac mini's non-volatile storage and reset the NVRAM variables, to enable same security posture as any other EC2 instance. This workflow also upgrades the T2 chip on Mac mini to the latest BridgeOS version if needed. It may take 30-60 mins for this scrubbing workflow to complete, and up to 2-4 hours if BridgeOS update is required - during which the host shows up in "pending" state. We're actively working on lowering this scrubbing duration and really appreciate your feedback here. Important to note - You are not billed for any duration(s) during which the Mac1 Dedicated Host is in "pending" state (or any state other than "Available"). 2. Once you have increased the size of the EBS volume on your Mac1 instance, you can execute following commands within macOS guest to increase the size of your APFS container. 1. Copy and paste the first three lines PDISK=$(diskutil list physical external | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1) APFSCONT=$(diskutil list physical external | grep "Apple_APFS" | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f8) sudo diskutil repairDisk $PDISK 2. Accept the prompt with "y", then paste this command sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer $APFSCONT 0 Since the EBS volume was resized after boot, an instance reboot is required before the additional disk size is available for your use.

dolni 6y ago
How much concern is there on your team that Apple will make breaking changes to internals that you rely on? I've seen that happen multiple times in the past to JAMF, seemingly without any heads up.
- ManishR 6y ago
  We have worked closely and transparently with Apple over the past few months not only on the product definition and platform design, but also on multiple architectural decisions for this offering. Many a times - even though not apparent in those moments (but only in hindsight) - Apple has nudged us in right directions that aligned with their future plans. Granted - it's challenging to keep up with the pace of both Apple and AWS - inadvertent regressions do get introduced with certain releases, but we're building mechanisms to catch and jointly remediate them early. Ultimately, both Apple and AWS are excited about this offering, and share the vision of bringing AWS benefits to all Apple developers. We only expect this collaboration to further deepen going forward.
  - marta_weber 6y ago
    Question: If you are already working with them, why do you have to use Mac Mini's, as opposed to, say, Apple giving you a special version of the OS that runs on "normal" hardware? Hackintoshs are real and there should be no reason for you to use Mac Mini's in the first place. Of course you can't use a Hackintosh, but the existence of this alternative suggests that this is a possible avenue to explore, especially when cooperating with Apple and keeping to a specific hardware that has the drivers or where drivers can be added easily.
    - sswaner 6y ago
      Because Apple is a hardware company. I wouldn't expect them to be supportive of a Hackintosh solution, to the point of making it difficult to operate.
    - fearface 6y ago
      Who would provide large-scale hardware support to AWS for this approach? Certainly not Apple as it’s not their hardware. Also in a few minth from now people will want M1 cpu’s and you wouldn’t have worked towards that at all. If someone is fine with the Hackintosh experience, there are ways to do it in AWS already now.
      - daniel_iversen 6y ago
        It’s an “as-A-Service” offering. The hardware is abstracted and you get you use MacOS and its services on demand. It’d be the same as asking Dropbox what happens when their underlying hard drives reaches end of life from the manufacturers. It’s not our problem.
      - easton 6y ago
        A patched version of macOS that Apple provided could just be a AMI on EC2. They run it on x86 test boxes internally, at least until they complete the transition to Apple Silicon, so it should be possible. Apple just doesn’t want to support it, and for developers, they want them to buy Macs to work on and only use VMs when absolutely necessary.
electroly 6y ago
That's interesting about the billing. Playing devil's advocate here -- if I provisioned a Mac dedicated host, used it for the ~1 hour that I actually need, and then repeatedly cycled instances for the rest of the 24 hours to maximize the amount of time that it spends in "pending", would I indeed succeed in paying substantially less than 24 hours worth of time while still obeying the Apple-imposed "one customer per day" restriction? Would this violate a TOS?
Aeolun 6y ago
> It may take 30-60 mins for this scrubbing workflow to complete, and up to 2-4 hours if BridgeOS update is required I’m curious. Did nobody at any point in time ever say ‘this is unacceptable’ about this? Because it sure sounds so to me. It’d be (much) faster to boot up a new instance than wait for your previous instance to exit pending state.
- macintux 6y ago
  I suspect the macOS license precludes this.
  - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
    Copyright law seriously needs to change. They should not have to jump through hoops like this simply to use a device that they already paid for.
dastx 6y ago
Why is mac on ec2 so expensive? This is a genuine question, I'm not being snobby or anything like that.
mherrmann 6y ago
Thank you. This was very helpful. I would have spent another few hours without your help. If I may make a suggestion, those steps you described should be performed out of the box when I launch the instance with a larger volume size to begin with. And the docs should mention what you wrote above in case someone resizes their volume after the fact. As far as I saw, the docs do already contain instructions for Linux and Windows. Would save others like me, many of whom I suspect will run into this same issue, a lot of time if it gave the macOS instructions you wrote as well.

dolni 6y ago

How much concern is there on your team that Apple will make breaking changes to internals that you rely on? I've seen that happen multiple times in the past to JAMF, seemingly without any heads up.

ManishR 6y ago
We have worked closely and transparently with Apple over the past few months not only on the product definition and platform design, but also on multiple architectural decisions for this offering. Many a times - even though not apparent in those moments (but only in hindsight) - Apple has nudged us in right directions that aligned with their future plans. Granted - it's challenging to keep up with the pace of both Apple and AWS - inadvertent regressions do get introduced with certain releases, but we're building mechanisms to catch and jointly remediate them early. Ultimately, both Apple and AWS are excited about this offering, and share the vision of bringing AWS benefits to all Apple developers. We only expect this collaboration to further deepen going forward.
- marta_weber 6y ago
  Question: If you are already working with them, why do you have to use Mac Mini's, as opposed to, say, Apple giving you a special version of the OS that runs on "normal" hardware? Hackintoshs are real and there should be no reason for you to use Mac Mini's in the first place. Of course you can't use a Hackintosh, but the existence of this alternative suggests that this is a possible avenue to explore, especially when cooperating with Apple and keeping to a specific hardware that has the drivers or where drivers can be added easily.
  - sswaner 6y ago
    Because Apple is a hardware company. I wouldn't expect them to be supportive of a Hackintosh solution, to the point of making it difficult to operate.
  - fearface 6y ago
    Who would provide large-scale hardware support to AWS for this approach? Certainly not Apple as it’s not their hardware. Also in a few minth from now people will want M1 cpu’s and you wouldn’t have worked towards that at all. If someone is fine with the Hackintosh experience, there are ways to do it in AWS already now.
    - daniel_iversen 6y ago
      It’s an “as-A-Service” offering. The hardware is abstracted and you get you use MacOS and its services on demand. It’d be the same as asking Dropbox what happens when their underlying hard drives reaches end of life from the manufacturers. It’s not our problem.
    - easton 6y ago
      A patched version of macOS that Apple provided could just be a AMI on EC2. They run it on x86 test boxes internally, at least until they complete the transition to Apple Silicon, so it should be possible. Apple just doesn’t want to support it, and for developers, they want them to buy Macs to work on and only use VMs when absolutely necessary.

electroly 6y ago

That's interesting about the billing. Playing devil's advocate here -- if I provisioned a Mac dedicated host, used it for the ~1 hour that I actually need, and then repeatedly cycled instances for the rest of the 24 hours to maximize the amount of time that it spends in "pending", would I indeed succeed in paying substantially less than 24 hours worth of time while still obeying the Apple-imposed "one customer per day" restriction? Would this violate a TOS?

Aeolun 6y ago

> It may take 30-60 mins for this scrubbing workflow to complete, and up to 2-4 hours if BridgeOS update is required I’m curious. Did nobody at any point in time ever say ‘this is unacceptable’ about this? Because it sure sounds so to me. It’d be (much) faster to boot up a new instance than wait for your previous instance to exit pending state.

macintux 6y ago
I suspect the macOS license precludes this.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  Copyright law seriously needs to change. They should not have to jump through hoops like this simply to use a device that they already paid for.

dastx 6y ago

Why is mac on ec2 so expensive? This is a genuine question, I'm not being snobby or anything like that.

mherrmann 6y ago

Thank you. This was very helpful. I would have spent another few hours without your help. If I may make a suggestion, those steps you described should be performed out of the box when I launch the instance with a larger volume size to begin with. And the docs should mention what you wrote above in case someone resizes their volume after the fact. As far as I saw, the docs do already contain instructions for Linux and Windows. Would save others like me, many of whom I suspect will run into this same issue, a lot of time if it gave the macOS instructions you wrote as well.