AWS Overview

Why AWS?

Firecracker requires direct access to KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), which is only available on bare metal instances. AWS provides several metal instance types suitable for Firecracker workloads.

Architecture on AWS

Supported Instance Types

Instance Type	vCPUs	Memory	Network	Use Case
m5zn.metal	48	192 GB	25 Gbps	Recommended - Best performance
m5.metal	96	384 GB	25 Gbps	High memory workloads
c5.metal	96	192 GB	25 Gbps	Compute intensive
i3.metal	72	512 GB	25 Gbps	Storage intensive

note

The default configuration uses m5zn.metal (~$3.96/hour in us-east-1). You can change this in Taskfile.yaml:

Configure instance type in Taskfile

AWS_INSTANCE_TYPE: 'm5.metal'

Networking Configuration

Security Group Rules

The project creates a security group infra-operator-sg with:

Type	Protocol	Port	Source	Description
SSH	TCP	22	0.0.0.0/0	SSH access

warning

For production, restrict SSH access to your IP address:

Restrict SSH to specific IP

--cidr YOUR_IP/32

VPC Requirements

• Public subnet with internet gateway
• Route table with 0.0.0.0/0 → igw

The default configuration uses:

• VPC: vpc-0dd1e4d3c5ed4f3c7
• Subnet: subnet-004de53997864f0a3

Storage Layout

EC2 Instance Storage

/srv/firecracker/
├── vmlinux                    # Linux kernel
├── rootfs.ext4               # Symlink to active rootfs
├── images/
│   ├── rootfs-python.ext4
│   ├── rootfs-nodejs.ext4
│   ├── rootfs-go.ext4
│   ├── rootfs-rust.ext4
│   └── rootfs-bash.ext4
├── jailer/                    # (future) Jailer workdir
├── snapshots/                 # VM snapshots
└── logs/                      # Firecracker logs

/opt/llm-infra-operator/
└── bin/
    └── infra.operator        # Unified CLI (host and guest)

S3 Bucket

s3://llm-infra-operator-rootfs/
├── vmlinux
├── rootfs-python.ext4
├── rootfs-nodejs.ext4
├── rootfs-go.ext4
├── rootfs-rust.ext4
└── rootfs-bash.ext4

Cost Breakdown

Hourly Costs (us-east-1)

Resource	Cost
m5zn.metal instance	$3.9616/hour
50GB gp3 EBS	$0.0057/hour
Total	~$4.00/hour

Monthly Costs (if running 24/7)

Resource	Cost
m5zn.metal instance	$2,892/month
50GB gp3 EBS	$4/month
S3 storage (~5GB)	$0.12/month
Total	~$2,896/month

tip

For development and testing:

• Use task aws:stop to stop the instance when not in use
• You only pay for EBS storage while stopped (~$4/month)
• Use task aws:cleanup to terminate completely when done

Quick Start Commands

Launch instance

task aws:launch 2>&1 | tee /tmp/log.txt

Check status

task aws:status

SSH into instance

task aws:ssh

View setup logs

task aws:logs

Deploy code

task aws:deploy

Run test

task aws:test

Stop (pause billing for compute)

task aws:stop

Cleanup (remove all resources)

task aws:cleanup

Region Support

The project defaults to us-east-1. To use a different region:

Set region

export AWS_REGION=eu-west-1

Or pass to task

AWS_REGION=eu-west-1 task aws:launch

note

When changing regions, you may need to update the VPC and subnet IDs in Taskfile.yaml.

Next Steps