AWS development on a Mac
An AWS control panel on your desktop — manage S3, EC2, RDS, Route 53, CloudFront, budgets and IAM keys without living in the AWS console.
If you build on AWS, FrontierStack is a control panel for your account right on the desktop. It uses your existing aws CLI profiles and regions (and your STS identity), so you switch context with a click instead of bouncing between console tabs.
Your AWS account, without the console
See and act on the services you use every day: S3 buckets, EC2 instances (start / stop / reboot), Lightsail, RDS databases (start / stop), Route 53 DNS, CloudFront distributions, and CloudWatch log groups — across every profile and region from one window.
Keep spend and keys in check
Read your Budgets and month-to-date cost with billing alerts, and get IAM key warnings that flag stale access keys to rotate. Pair it with the central AI cost monitor for your AI subscriptions and API spend, and you have your cloud bills in one place.
From localhost to EC2
Develop locally — many sites, local Docker containers — then SSH straight into your EC2 boxes and ship. The fleet treats an EC2 instance like any other Linux node: run a command across all of them, check config drift, tail logs and deploy with rsync.
Let the AI drive it
Ask the AI Administrator in plain English — “why is this instance unreachable?” — and it investigates and proposes a fix you approve, locally or on your cloud servers.
Services we install or monitor for this
132 services across 10 categories that FrontierStack can install, connect and monitor for this use-case — revealed together when you pick this preset in the app.
Containers40
- Apple Container — Apple's native `container` tool — Linux containers in per-container VMs
- Azure Local — Azure Stack HCI successor — monitored via Azure ARM, no local API
- Colima — Container runtimes on macOS via Lima (Docker/containerd/k8s)
- Dev Containers (VS Code) — Reproducible dev environments in a container
- Docker Swarm — Docker-native clustering (docker swarm / stack)
- Helm — The Kubernetes package manager (charts)
- HPE Morpheus — Hybrid-cloud management & orchestration (REST API)
- Hyper-V Live Migration — Move running Hyper-V VMs between hosts with no downtime
- k0s — Zero-friction single-binary Kubernetes
- k3d — k3s in Docker — lightweight multi-node clusters
- K3s — Lightweight certified Kubernetes (self-hosted)
- kind — Kubernetes IN Docker — disposable clusters
- kubeadm — The official cluster bootstrapper (vanilla K8s)
- Kubernetes — The container orchestrator (kubectl)
- Lima — Linux virtual machines (container machines) on macOS
- MicroK8s — Canonical's low-ops Kubernetes (snap)
- Microsoft Hyper-V — Windows Server hypervisor (Type-1)
- minikube — Local single-node Kubernetes for development
- nerdctl — Docker-compatible CLI for containerd
- Nomad — HashiCorp workload orchestrator (self-hosted)
- Nutanix — HCI platform — AHV hypervisor + Prism management
- OpenShift / OKD — Red Hat's enterprise Kubernetes platform
- OpenShift Virtualization — Run VMs alongside containers on OpenShift (KubeVirt)
- OpenStack — Open-source private-cloud IaaS platform
- OrbStack — Fast Docker & Linux machines for macOS
- Platform9 — Managed Kubernetes / private cloud (SaaS control plane)
- Podman — Daemonless, Docker-compatible containers
- Portainer — Web UI for Docker & Kubernetes (self-hosted)
- Proxmox VE — Open-source virtualization — KVM VMs + LXC containers
- Proxmox VE Live Migration — Live-migrate KVM VMs across Proxmox cluster nodes
- Rancher — Multi-cluster Kubernetes management (self-hosted)
- Rancher Desktop — Desktop Kubernetes + container runtime for Mac
- RKE2 — Rancher's security-focused Kubernetes (Gov-grade)
- Scale Computing HyperCore — SC//HyperCore HCI appliance (HC3) — REST API on :443
- Talos Linux — API-managed immutable OS purpose-built for Kubernetes
- VergeOS — Verge.io — integrated virtualization, storage and networking
- VMware vMotion — Live-migrate running VMs between ESXi hosts
- VMware vSphere — Enterprise virtualization — ESXi hypervisor + vCenter
- Watchtower — Auto-update running Docker containers
- XCP-ng — Open-source Xen hypervisor (XenServer alternative)
Monitoring28
- Alertmanager — Route and deduplicate Prometheus alerts (self-hosted)
- Beszel — Lightweight server monitoring hub + agents
- Checkmk — Auto-discovering IT monitoring (self-hosted)
- Datadog — Hosted metrics, logs, traces and synthetics (SaaS)
- Dynatrace — Enterprise observability and AIOps platform
- Glances — Cross-platform system monitor (web/API)
- GoAccess — Real-time access-log analyser (CLI/HTML)
- Grafana — Dashboards for any data source (self-hosted)
- Healthchecks.io — Cron & heartbeat monitoring (cloud or self-hosted)
- Homepage — Self-hosted services dashboard (gethomepage.dev)
- Honeycomb — Observability for high-cardinality events and traces
- Matomo — Full-featured self-hosted web analytics
- Nagios Core — The classic check-based monitor (self-hosted)
- Netdata — Real-time system metrics dashboard
- New Relic — Hosted APM, infrastructure and logs (SaaS)
- Node Exporter — Unix host metrics for Prometheus (self-hosted)
- NUT (Network UPS Tools) — UPS monitoring server (upsd) for many devices
- PeaNUT — Modern web dashboard for NUT UPS servers
- Plausible — Lightweight, privacy-first analytics
- Prometheus — Time-series metrics & alerting (self-hosted)
- Scrutiny — S.M.A.R.T. drive health dashboard
- Sentry — Error tracking and performance monitoring
- Speedtest Tracker — Scheduled internet speed tests + history
- Umami — Simple, privacy-focused analytics (Node)
- Uptime Kuma — Self-hosted uptime monitor
- UptimeRobot — Cloud uptime/SSL monitoring with status pages
- Windows Exporter — Windows host metrics for Prometheus (remote)
- Zabbix — Enterprise monitoring — agents, SNMP, triggers (self-hosted)
DNS10
- AdGuard Home — Network-wide ad/tracker-blocking DNS (self-hosted)
- DNSimple — Managed DNS + domain registrar — live zone/record management
- Dnsmasq — Lightweight DNS forwarder + DHCP + TFTP
- Infoblox NIOS (DDI) — Enterprise DNS / DHCP / IPAM appliance (DDI)
- ISC DHCP — Classic ISC dhcpd (EOL — migrate to Kea)
- Kea DHCP — ISC's modern DHCPv4/DHCPv6 server (REST + DB back-ends)
- Nebula Sync — Sync configuration across Pi-hole instances
- Pi-hole — Network-wide ad/tracker-blocking DNS sinkhole
- udhcpd (BusyBox) — Tiny DHCP server (BusyBox / embedded)
- Windows Server DHCP — DHCP Server role on Windows Server
Infrastructure as Code10
- Ansible — Agentless configuration management & automation (CLI)
- AWS CDK — Define AWS infra in code, synth to CloudFormation (CLI)
- AWS CloudFormation — Native AWS infrastructure as code (templates / CLI)
- Chef — Policy-as-code configuration management (Progress Chef)
- OpenTofu — Open-source, community fork of Terraform (CLI)
- Packer — Build identical machine images for any platform (CLI)
- Pulumi — Infrastructure as code in real languages (CLI / cloud)
- Puppet — Declarative configuration management at scale (Perforce)
- Salt — Event-driven remote execution & config management (CLI)
- Terraform — HashiCorp's declarative infrastructure as code (CLI)
FinOps & Cloud Cost10
- AWS Cost Explorer — Native AWS cost analysis & forecasting (API)
- Azure Cost Management — Native Azure (and AWS) cost analysis & budgets (API)
- CloudHealth — Multi-cloud cost & governance (VMware/Broadcom, cloud)
- CloudZero — Cloud cost intelligence & unit economics (cloud)
- Finout — No-agent FinOps platform with unified cost (cloud)
- GCP Cloud Billing — Google Cloud billing reports, budgets & BigQuery export (API)
- Infracost — Cost estimates for Terraform, in CI (self-hosted CLI / cloud)
- Kubecost — Kubernetes cost visibility & optimization (self-hosted / cloud)
- OpenCost — CNCF open-source Kubernetes cost monitoring (self-hosted)
- Vantage — Multi-cloud cost reporting & optimization (cloud)
Object Storage & S3-Compatible9
- Backblaze B2 — Low-cost cloud object storage, S3-compatible (cloud)
- Ceph RGW (RADOS Gateway) — S3/Swift object gateway on a Ceph cluster (self-hosted)
- Cloudflare R2 — S3-compatible object storage with zero egress fees (cloud)
- Garage — Lightweight self-hosted S3 object store (Deuxfleurs)
- MinIO — S3-compatible object storage
- OpenStack Swift — Highly-available object store (OpenStack, self-hosted)
- RustFS — High-performance S3-compatible object storage (Rust)
- SeaweedFS — Fast distributed object/file store (self-hosted)
- Wasabi — Hot cloud object storage, S3-compatible, no egress fees (cloud)
Logging & Observability9
- Dozzle — Live Docker container log viewer
- Elastic Cloud — Hosted Elasticsearch, Kibana and observability
- Fluent Bit — Ultra-light log forwarder (self-hosted)
- Graylog — Centralized log management (self-hosted)
- Kibana — ELK's search & dashboard UI (self-hosted)
- Logstash — ELK's ingest & transform pipeline (self-hosted)
- Loki — Grafana's log store — like Prometheus, for logs (self-hosted)
- Splunk — Enterprise log search, SIEM and observability
- Vector — High-performance logs/metrics pipeline (self-hosted)
Hosting7
- Abacus SuperComputer — Always-on Ubuntu VM from Abacus.AI (2 vCPU / 8 GB, SSH + root)
- CapRover — Self-hosted PaaS on Docker Swarm
- Coolify — Self-hosted PaaS (Heroku/Netlify/Vercel alt.)
- Dokku — Minimal self-hosted PaaS (git push deploy)
- Dokploy — Open-source deployment platform (PaaS)
- Fly.io — Deploy apps as microVMs on Fly's global edge (cloud CLI)
- Kamal — Deploy containers to your own servers over SSH (37signals)
CDN & Edge6
- Akamai — Enterprise CDN, security & edge compute (cloud)
- Amazon CloudFront — AWS CDN tied to S3/EC2 origins (cloud)
- Azure Front Door — Microsoft's global entry point: CDN + WAF + LB (cloud)
- Fastly — Real-time CDN with VCL/Compute edge (cloud)
- Google Cloud CDN — GCP CDN on global load balancing (cloud)
- Imperva — WAF-first CDN & DDoS protection (cloud)
Networking3
- BIND 9 (named) — Authoritative/recursive DNS server
- netboot.xyz — Network-boot OS installers via PXE/iPXE
- Zeroconf / Bonjour — Zero-configuration service discovery (mDNS/DNS-SD)
Run it all from one Mac app.
FrontierStack installs, monitors and secures the whole stack — locally and across your fleet — from a single native macOS app.
Download FrontierStack