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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation#Master_boot_record_.28MBR.29_or_DOS_boot_sector While installing Gentoo, I came across a segment talking about GPT and UEFI being the more modern option, while MBR and BIOS are legacy options. However, it is mentioned that MBR is used in cloud providers like AWS. This surprised me but I can't find any information online about why? Could you guys please enlighten me?

Chien Hao Tan
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    This demonstrates the relative priority of a security feature (UEFI/SecureBoot), compared to other pressures such as losing potential customers. There will never be a cloud provider that is known for being "more secure", or for having only UEFI instances and no MBR. – Greg Askew Mar 16 '22 at 12:46

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Any commentary about what a service offers should be scrutinized about what technical perspective they have at what point in time. Various OS distros wikis have great information, but they also might not be updated very frequently.

Not surprising that a ubiquitous technology like how a computer boots has legacy junk that stays around for a long time. If this breaks, there are a vast number of VM instances that will not boot. Inventory your own VMs, how much of your fleet is GPT and UEFI only?

An opportunity to get rid of legacy cruft sometimes occurs with major changes in platform. In AWS, Graviton instances are UEFI only. Makes sense, an Arm server is already an architecture change from x86, and has no need for a legacy BIOS.

John Mahowald
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Looks like this might be out of date information, based on the AWS Docs. I suspect it's due to what modes the underlying virtualization stack supports, which may have changed since your link was written.

shearn89
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