AWS finally adds nested virtualisation on some EC2 instances

No bare metal: AWS adds nested virtualisation on EC2

Want K8s in a VM in a VM on virtual EC2? That's finally turned on across AWS regions, with VMware possibilities beckoning.

Phillip de Wet

Feb 17, 2026 - 2 min read

Amazon on Monday confirmed a change already spotted in the wild: it now offers nested virtualisation on some EC2 instances.

Until recently, workloads that rely on hardware virtualisation, such as WSL2 and Docker Desktop, effectively required EC2 bare-metal instances on AWS. The company now exposes CPU virtualisation extensions to guest VMs, allowing nested virtualisation on standard C8i, M8i and R8i instances.

It may also offer a newly viable path out of on-prem VMware.

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