Introducing AWS Nitro Sandboxes on Amazon EKS, ECS and EC2 for hardware isolated pods, tasks and VMs
AWS introduces Nitro Sandboxes for hardware-isolated execution of EKS pods, ECS tasks, and EC2 VMs, enabling secure multi-tenant workloads with near-native performance and cryptographic attestation.
AWS Nitro Sandboxes are now available as lightweight virtual machines managed by the Nitro Hypervisor, designed to run Amazon EKS pods, Amazon ECS tasks, or standalone VMs in a hardware-isolated environment. Each workload operates within its own Nitro isolated virtual machine, providing a strong isolation boundary on a single EC2 instance. This setup allows users to safely run untrusted, multi-tenant, or regulated workloads without compromising security or performance.
Nitro Sandboxes leverage the AWS Nitro System to deliver near-native EC2 performance while maintaining hardware-level isolation. Users can validate workload integrity through cryptographic attestation, ensuring secrets are only released to verified Nitro Sandboxes. The solution supports running LLM-generated code in isolated environments, improving resource utilization and reducing compute costs by securely sharing a single EC2 instance across multiple agentic workloads.
Enabling Nitro Sandboxes in Amazon EKS or Amazon ECS requires only a one-line configuration change, with each pod or task automatically provisioned as its own isolated VM. The feature maintains full compatibility with existing EKS and ECS integrations, including Pod Identity, VPC CNI, EBS/EFS/S3 storage, and CloudWatch, requiring no additional setup for these services.
For users seeking full control, Nitro Sandboxes can be deployed directly on EC2 using custom AMIs, orchestration tools, and virtual machine monitors. Amazon Linux and Firecracker are natively supported, with additional patch options available. The service is available at no extra charge on most Nitro-based EC2 instances across all commercial AWS regions.