Launch macOS in the Cloud

As an IT Professional you may come across scenarios where you may need to run macOS instances in the cloud, These scenarios could range from testing or building software solutions with Xcode or if you need to speed up the development lifecycle amongst the Apple Ecosystem.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide services that will allow you to run macOS in the cloud should you need to no matter what your use case is.

it is worth noting that AWS are the only general cloud provider who provide such services as at this time.

We kick off by visiting the Ec2 Amazon Webpage https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/

on the left hand side where the navigation pane is located, We should click on the Dedicated Hosts option.

We should see this page pop up after.

Hover unto the Allocate dedicated hosts Action Button.

You should see this next page.

Name your dedicated host.

In the Instance family drop down menu, you should choose mac1 or mac2.

With choosing the instance type we can look at choosing mac1.metal or mac2.metal.

For the availability zone, You should choose any, Usually AWS will prompt you if the zone you’ve chosen isn't available and that you should choose another.

For Quantity we can just keep it at 1.

Then we click allocate.

If this error message pops up after clicking on Allocate

Go to the Search bar present on the Amazon Web Services Webpage and search for Service Quotas.

In service quotas you should see this dashboard.

Click on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Link.

In this new Webpage, You should be able to locate the search bar and search for mac, Instantly mac dedicated hosts should come up and show if any are running, if it shows a null result (0), Click on the mac dedicated host you want to increase your Quota in.

In this example I have chosen mac1 Hosts, When a new page pops up, Locate the Request Quota Increase Action Button and click on it.

A new popup should appear prompting to change quota value, put in your desired amount and Click on the Request action button, This should immediately send a request for your Quota to increase, Feedback on when Amazon Approves your request should be communicated to you by Email.

After creating your Dedicated Hosts, Assuming you have navigated back to the Dedicated Hosts Webpage, Click on the Actions button and choose Launch instances onto the host.

Select a macOS AMI and choose the appopriate type of instance (mac1.metal or mac2.metal), The next page should be the configure details page and verify Tenancy and Host are preconfigured as based on your dedicated host, Then choose the mac1.metal instance type, On the configure details webpage, you would have to verify Tenancy and Host are preconfigured as based on your dedicated host and update affinity as needed, You can complete the Wizard and specify the details as desired and A Launch page should come up and show your new Instance launching.

I hope this has been a great and very EASY tutorial to follow.