Posted On: Aug 25, 2021
The Amazon EC2 Instance Metadata Service, Amazon Time Sync Service, and Amazon VPC DNS server can now be accessed over IPv6 endpoints by instances built on the Nitro System. These local instance services have IPv6 addresses that can be accessed from your Amazon EC2 instances. These IPv6 endpoints use Unique Local Addresses (ULA); IPv6 for local instance services is useful for running software and containers in an IPv6-only single stack configuration. Additionally, if you are starting your transition to IPv6 in a dual-stack environment, the endpoints for the Instance Metadata Service, Amazon Time Sync Service, and Amazon VPC DNS are available over both IPv4 and IPv6.
To get started, you need to enable the IPv6 endpoint for IMDS on your EC2 Instances. The Amazon Time Sync and Amazon VPC DNS IPv6 endpoints are accessible without any changes.
These new IPv6 endpoints are now available in all commercial regions, including the Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and the Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD. More details, including the IPv6 addresses, are in the user guides linked below.
To learn more about the configuring the EC2 Instance Metadata Service, see the EC2 user guide.
To learn more about the Amazon Time Sync Service, see setting your time in the EC2 user guide.
Amazon VPC DNS is also known as Amazon Route 53 Resolver. For additional information, see the VPC user guide.
Modified 10/28/2021 – In an effort to ensure a great experience, expired links in this post have been updated or removed from the original post.