Autopkg and new AWS hosted mac instances

[John Lockwood]

As I suspect many people here may have seen, Amazon have recently launched a new AWS service whereby you can now run macOS in AWS on genuine Apple Mac mini computers.

See https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-use-mac-instances-to-build-test-macos-ios-ipados-tvos-and-watchos-apps/

Now if you run such an AWS instance full time you will of course be able to boot it, install whatever you want on it e.g. AutoPkg and have it run AutoPkg regularly to update your Munki repo. It is after all a real Mac!

My question is how practical will it be to do this with an 'on-demand' AWS instance? This is important because AWS costs make a full-time instance too expensive to justify but running an on-demand instance once a day could be comparatively cheap.

[Gregory Neagle]

Minimum billed time is 24 hours, so running autopkg once a day will cost the same as running it 24 times a day....

-Greg

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "autopkg-discuss" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to autopkg-discu...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autopkg-discuss/499862c2-289d-41d8-860d-29386870ba2an%40googlegroups.com.

[Mat X]

You need to pay for 24 hour rental. 

If you could build it and run it once a week would it be more economical than MacStadium or your own Mac mini?

-x

On Dec 16, 2020, at 2:40 PM, John Lockwood <jeloc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mike Solin]

Echoing what Greg and Mat mentioned. Tom Bridge did an excellent breakdown, too:

https://tombridge.com/2020/12/01/understanding-ec2-macs-purpose/

Mike

--

mi...@mikesolin.com / @flammable

https://mikesolin.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autopkg-discuss/34879E7D-DE5A-4455-8E87-736ACAB30EB9%40gmail.com.

[John Lockwood]

Thanks @mike Tom's article is exactly what I was looking for.

I will discuss with our org's AWS manager and see what they feel about the costs. We are extensive AWS users so like Tom suggests it might be swallowed in the noise. Otherwise I will revert to plan A which is to fit our own Mac mini in a rack.

[David Ross]

I did the math and a year came out to over $9K if I did the calculations correctly. So divide by 7 and you get $1300?

 

And at the end of the year you don’t own anything. Which may be the goal but …

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autopkg-discuss/34879E7D-DE5A-4455-8E87-736ACAB30EB9%40gmail.com.

[Jonathan Vaughn]

If you go the route of sticking a mini in the rack, sonnet makes some nice mounting hardware

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autopkg-discuss/0e80b1ad-ce30-4c3d-a2d4-9bfcd818b69dn%40googlegroups.com.