Brave Search

Para-virtual Devices – Xen instances leverage para-virtual (PV) devices to obtain network and block storage access. These devices were not implemented in the Nitro environment and support had to be added to enable legacy instance type storage and network interfaces to work without changes to the customer workloads or AMIs.

Amazon Web Services

docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon ec2 › user guide › amazon ec2 instances › amazon ec2 instance types

Amazon EC2 instance types - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Amazon EC2 supports the following hypervisors: Xen and Nitro.

All Things Distributed

allthingsdistributed.com › 2020 › 09 › reinventing-virtualization-with-nitro.html

Reinventing virtualization with the AWS Nitro System | All Things Distributed

September 14, 2020 - Figure 1: EC2 Instance host architecture for the Xen Hypervisor · Thirty percent is significant, and this waste wasn't providing direct value to our customers. It became clear to us that if we wanted to significantly improve performance, security, and agility for our customers, we had to migrate most of our hypervisor functionalities to dedicated hardware. That’s when we began our journey of designing the Nitro ...

Virtana

virtana.com › home › aws nitro—what are aws nitro instances, and why use them?

AWS Nitro—What Are AWS Nitro Instances, and Why Use Them?

May 12, 2023 - The new C5 instance type and many of the new instance types announced by AWS include the Nitro Hypervisor, and as such, have a few requirements. The first risk arises from the usage of undocumented features of the system. Occasionally an application checks to see if it’s running on EC2 by looking for features of the Xen virtualization service, which is no longer present on Nitro-based systems.

Kevin Sookocheff

sookocheff.com › posts › increased virtualization performance with the aws nitro system

Increased virtualization performance with the AWS Nitro System | Kevin Sookocheff

December 21, 2022 - Prior to the Nitro system, AWS used the Xen hypervisor. With Xen the VPC networking, EBS storage, local storage, and all management functions happen at the dom0 level.

AWS

docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon ec2 › user guide › amazon ec2 instances › upgrade an ec2 windows instance to a newer version of windows server › migrate an ec2 windows instance to a nitro-based instance type

Migrate to Xen instance types from Nitro instance types

The AWS Windows AMIs are configured with the default settings used by the Microsoft installation media, with some customizations. The customizations include drivers and configurations that support Nitro-based instances, such as M5 and C5. When migrating from Xen-based instances to Nitro-based ...

Windows Forum

windowsforum.com › forums › windows help and support forums › windows news

Migrating Windows Server to AWS EC2: Nitro vs Xen, Boot Modes, and Validation | Windows Forum

September 26, 2025 - Modern EC2 instance families are built on the AWS Nitro System, which presents EBS block devices through NVMe and depends on Nitro device drivers in the guest OS. Nitro‑based instances also typically support UEFI booting. Older EC2 instance families were implemented atop the Xen hypervisor, which historically used emulated IDE devices early in the boot process and then paravirtualized block drivers (PV) for runtime I/O.

reddit.com › r/vmware › what hypervisor does amazon cloud use?

r/vmware on Reddit: What hypervisor does Amazon cloud use?

January 16, 2024 -

With the new vmware licensing i am sure we are all going to be challenged by our purchasing departments to find viable alternatives.

Was wondering what the underlying hypervisor for Amazon cloud vm is and how it compares to vmware. Perf, Live migration, administration.

What would it take for a vmware admin to stand up a similar in house environment?

Top answer

1 of 16

105

KVM. Heavily customized

2 of 16

KVM, but AWS isn’t really built for requiring stuff like live migration etc. If you want to build something similar to AWS and you have the scale (ie you count your servers in terms of how many full cabinets you have) then you’d want to look into OpenStack which is the open source project with the aim to replicate AWS services maintaining API compatibility. But if you haven’t heard of openstack before and your coming from vsphere (and never had vCloud Director) it’s really not for you.

World Wide Technology

wwt.com › multicloud architecture › cloud migration and modernization › security benefits of aws nitro-based architecture

Security Benefits of AWS Nitro-based Architecture - WWT

February 6, 2025 - Utilizing KVM, a different framework than Xen, AWS created Nitro to provide direct cards and controllers for block storage, networking and security, CPU and Memory isolation to Guest OSs, increase performance consistency, and provide larger ...

Amazon Web Services

docs.aws.amazon.com › amazon ec2 › user guide › amazon ec2 instances › amazon ec2 billing and purchasing options › amazon ec2 dedicated hosts › migrate to nitro-based amazon ec2 dedicated hosts

Migrate to Nitro-based Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

The Nitro System is a collection of hardware and software components built by AWS that enable high performance, high availability, and high security. Nitro-based Dedicated Hosts offer improved price performance compared to Xen-based Dedicated Hosts. If you have any Xen-based Dedicated Hosts ...

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Medium

medium.com › guardians-of-cloud › how-can-you-benefit-from-aws-nitro-222ae6883274

How can you benefit from AWS Nitro? | by OpsLyft | Guardians of Cloud | Medium

April 18, 2020 - The C5 instance type and a considerable lot of the new instance types declared by AWS incorporate the Nitro Hypervisor, and in that capacity, have a couple of prerequisites. The main hazard emerges from the use of undocumented highlights of the framework. Once in a while an application verifies whether it’s running on EC2 by searching for the Xen virtualization administration, which is not, at this point present on Nitro-based frameworks.

AWSstatic

d1.awsstatic.com › events › Summits › awstorontosummit › Powering_next-gen_Amazon_EC2-A_deep_dive_into_the_AWS_Nitro_System_CMP202.pdf pdf

A deep dive into the AWS Nitro System - awsstatic.com

AWS Nitro System · Before Nitro . . . Customer instances · Xen Hypervisor · Dom0 · Management · security · monitoring · Local · storage · Amazon · EBS storage · Amazon VPC · networking · Host CPU · © 2022, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates.

DEV Community

dev.to › choonho › nitro-card-why-aws-is-best-46ph

Nitro Card, Why AWS is best! - DEV Community

June 28, 2024 - With the Nitro System, AWS changed the hypervisor from Xen to KVM.

Brendan Gregg

brendangregg.com › blog › 2017-11-29 › aws-ec2-virtualization-2017.html

AWS EC2 Virtualization 2017: Introducing Nitro

AWS have said that eventually most (or all) instances will use the Nitro hypervisor, with the exception of the new Bare Metal instances. Also announced at AWS re:Invent: the Amazon EC2 Bare Metal instances, which are just that – bare metal servers. 0% performance overhead. Run whatever you like: Xen, KVM, containers.

Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com › item

Turns out Nitro is not only an improved KVM but also work exclusively with their... | Hacker News

December 11, 2017 - And we are finally here, the true cloud, elastic computing with little to no performance overhead · That AWS should go home and re-write EC2 to just be zones instead of VMs

reddit.com › r/aws › how are nitro instances treating everyone?

r/aws on Reddit: How are Nitro instances treating everyone?

April 30, 2017 -

When the M5 instances came out I heard lots of reports of bugs and instability. What are everybody's recent experience with them? Any initial impressions of the new T3s?

Top answer

1 of 7

Nitro based instance types are running fine nowadays. Just be aware that they might be not available in all AZs within region. And I think Nitro is not caching DNS requests where xen based instance were doing that.

2 of 7

I authored the other post you linked to. I'm not having any trouble these days and I recently changed all my t2 to t3 as well (nice CPU % drop as a result)

AWS re:Post

repost.aws › questions › QUofiw2HngQaSfSH4wWlFLNA › nitro-support-for-legacy-ec2-instances

Nitro support for Legacy EC2 instances | AWS re:Post

December 29, 2023 - Hi, This article https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2021/11/xen-on-nitro-aws-nitro-for-legacy-instances/ states that " Whether the instance runs on the original hardware or newer Nitro hardware will...

Blogger

awschamps.blogspot.com › 2018 › 07 › aws-nitro-hypervisor-faq.html

AWS Champs: AWS Nitro Hypervisor FAQ

Previously, C3 and C4 instances each eliminated software components by moving VPC and EBS functionality to hardware designed and built by AWS. This hardware enables the Nitro Hypervisor to be very small and uninvolved in data processing tasks for networking and storage. Q. Will all EC2 instances use the Nitro Hypervisor? Eventually all new instance types will use the Nitro Hypervisor, but in the near term, some new instance types will use Xen depending on the requirements of the platform.

SiliconANGLE

siliconangle.com › 2021 › 06 › 18 › aws-secret-weapon-revolutionizing-computing

AWS' secret weapon is revolutionizing computing - SiliconANGLE

December 11, 2021 - AWS shelled out a reported $350 ... acquisition led to a modern version of Project Nitro in 2017. [Nitro offload cards were first introduced in 2013]. At this time, AWS introduced C5 instances, replaced Xen with KVM and more tightly coupled the hypervisor with the ...

ipSpace.net

blog.ipspace.net › 2021 › 12 › worth-reading-xen-on-aws-nitro

Worth Reading: Xen on AWS Nitro NICs « ipSpace.net blog

If you find smart NICs interesting, you’ll like the latest blog post by James Hamilton explaining how AWS emulated Xen environment on Nitro hardware to keep old VM instances running on new hardware.