AWS EC2 Instance Types - Curated

February 07, 2020

Acronyms

FPGAs - field programmable gate arrays
HDD - Hard Disk Drive
SSD - Solid State Drive
NVMe - Non-Volatile Memory Express
AVX - Advanced Vector Extensions
MPP - Massively Parallel Processing

Before we Set-off

This article aims to be the best up-to-date summary of AWS EC2 instance types.
At the end of this article you should have a coherent mental model comprising

of up-to-date info on AWS EC2 instance types.

You should also refer to this article from time to time to refresh that

mental model.

This article is an estimated 16 - minute read.

TL;DR

Read the Takeaways at the end of this article.

Introduction

This is a gentle visual introduction. Start by glancing deliberately through the table below.

Class	Types
General Purpose	A, T, M
Compute Optimized	C
Memory Optimized	R, X, High Memory, z
Accelerated Computing	P, Inf1, G, F
Storage Optimized	I, D, H

Memory Guide

A, T and M (ATM) - general purpose.
C for compute
G for graphics - accelerated computing
I for I/O performance - storage optimized
D for dense storage - storage optimized
H for HDD - storage optimized

General Purpose

General Purpose instances provide a balance of compute, memory and networking resources.. ideal for scale out workloads, web servers and code repositories.

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)
A1	Save cost. For scale out arm workloads.	EBS only	Up to 10	1 - 16	2 - 32
T	Burstable CPU usage	EBS only	Up to 5	1 - 8	0.5 - 32
M	General purpose (M5n = network optimized)	EBS, m5?d? = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	1 - 96	4 - 384

a1.metal provides 16 physical cores
T provides burst performance. While your instance is idle, credits accrue.

When extra load comes the credits are used to burst performance.

Enhanced Networking, AVX and AVX2 are only available on instances launched

with HVM AMIs.

Compute Optimized

Compute Optimized instances are ideal for compute bound applications that benefit from high performance processors.. ideal for batch processing workloads, media transcoding, high performance web servers, high performance computing (HPC), scientific modeling, dedicated gaming servers and ad server engines, machine learning inference and other compute intensive applications.

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)
C	Compute optimized (C5n=network optimized)	EBS, C5d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	2 - 96	3.75 - 192

Enhanced Networking, AVX and AVX2 are only available on instances launched

with HVM AMIs.

c4.8xlarge instance type provides the ability for an operating system to

control processor C-states and P-states. This feature is currently available only on Linux instances.

Memory Optimized

Memory optimized instances provide fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory.

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)
R	Memory intensive workloads	EBS, R?d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	2 - 96	15.25 - 768
X	High performance in-mem applications	SSD, EBS optimized	Up to 25	4 -128	122 - 3,904
High Memory	For large in-mem db e.g SAP HANA		100		6144 - 24,576
z1d	Compute + Memory + High frequency	NVMe SSD	Up to 25	2 - 48	16 - 384

r5.metal and r5d.metal provide 96 logical processors on 48 physical

cores; they run on single servers with two physical Intel sockets.

X type - Up to 3,904 of DRAM-based instance memory with SSD instance

storage for temporary block-level storage.

High Memory - Names are of format u-(\d{1,2})tb1.metal (i.e u- followed

by 1 or 2 digits followed by tb1.metal)

High Memory - 448 logical processors, each a hyperthread on 224 cores
z1d.metal provides 48 logical processors on 24 physical cores
High frequency z1d instances deliver the fastest of any cloud instance; a

sustained all core frequency of up to 4.0 GHz.

Accelerated Computing

Accelerated computing instances use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform functions, such as floating point number calculations, graphics processing, or data pattern matching, more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)	GPU	GPU Mem (GiB)
P	General Purpose GPU	EBS, p?d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	4 - 96	61 - 768	1 - 16	12 - 256
Inf1	For machine learning inference	EBS	Up to 100	4 - 96	8 - 192
G	Graphics intensive and machine learning		Up to 100	4 - 96	16 - 488	1 - 8	8 - 128
F	Customizable hardware acceleration with FPGAs	SSD up to 4x950GiB	Up to 25	8 - 64	122 - 976	1 - 8 FPGAs

For peer-to-peer GPU Communications:
- P3 type supports NVLink
- P2 type supports GPUDirect

Storage Optimized

Storage optimized instances provide high, sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage. They are optimized to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random I/O operations per second (IOPS) to applications.

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)
I	Low latency, high random I/O and sequential disk throughput	NVMe SSD	Up to 25	2 - 72	15.25 - 512
D	MPP data warehouse, distributed computing	HDD up to 24 x 2000	Up to 10	4 - 36	30.5 - 244
H	high disk throughput, balance of compute & memory	HDD up to 8 x 2000	Up to 25	8 - 64	32 - 256

Enhanced networking, AVX, AVX2, and AVX-512 are only available on instances

launched with HVM AMIs.

There is an overlap of the use cases of memory optimized and storage

optimized. You can choose a memory optimized instance type and impl an EBS volume that gives storage optimization

Curated Use Cases

Micro services - A, T, M
Small and mid-sized database - A, T, M
Development environments - A, T
Web servers - A
Test and staging environments - T2
High performance web servers - C
Distributed analytics - C
Distributed web scale in-memory caches - R
Mid sized in-memory databases - R
Real time big data - R
Graphics-intensive workloads - G
In-memory databases - X, I
NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis) - I
Distributed computing - D2
Distributed file systems - I3en, D2, H1

Specialized Instances

z1d - Ideal for electronic design automation (EDA) and certain relational

database workloads with high per-core licensing costs.

Inf1 - Built from the ground up to support machine learning inference applications.
G3 - 3D visualizations and rendering in addition to other graphics - intensive workloads.
F1 - Offers customizable hardware acceleration with field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

Network and Storage Specialized

n variants (e.g m5n, c5n, R5n) are network optimized.
d variants (e.g m5d, c5d, R5ad) use NVMe SSD storage.
I and F instance types use NVMe SSD storage

SAP Certified

x1e.32xlarge - certified by SAP to run next-generation Business Suite S/4HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), and Data Mart Solutions on HANA on the AWS cloud.
X1 - Certified by SAP to run Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Suite S/4HANA.
High Memory - Certified by SAP for running Business Suite on HANA, the next-generation Business Suite S/4HANA, Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA, and SAP BW/4HANA in production environments.

Use Cases

General Purpose

Types	Use cases
A1	Scale-out workloads such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, and distributed data stores, as well as development environments
T3,T3a	Micro-services, low-latency interactive applications, small and medium databases, virtual desktops, development environments, code repositories, and business-critical applications
T2	Websites and web applications, development environments, build servers, code repositories, micro services, test and staging environments, and line of business applications.
M6g	Applications built on open-source software such as application servers, microservices, gaming servers, mid-size data stores, and caching fleets.
M5,M5a	Small and mid-size databases, data processing tasks that require additional memory, caching fleets, and for running backend servers for SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, cluster computing, and other enterprise applications
M5n	Web and application servers, small and mid-sized databases, cluster computing, gaming servers, caching fleets, and other enterprise applications
M4	Small and mid-size databases, data processing tasks that require additional memory, caching fleets, and for running backend servers for SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, cluster computing, and other enterprise applications.

Compute Optimized

Types	Use cases
C5,C5n	High performance web servers, scientific modelling, batch processing, distributed analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), machine/deep learning inference, ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding.
C4	High performance front-end fleets, web-servers, batch processing, distributed analytics, high performance science and engineering applications, ad serving, MMO gaming, and video-encoding.

Memory Optimized

Types	Use cases
R5,R5a	Memory intensive applications such as high performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, mid-size in-memory databases, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications.
R5n	High performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, mid-sized in-memory database, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications
R4	High performance databases, data mining & analysis, in-memory databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, applications performing real-time processing of unstructured big data, Hadoop/Spark clusters, and other enterprise applications.
X1e	High performance databases, in-memory databases (e.g. SAP HANA) and memory intensive applications. `x1e.32xlarge` instance certified by SAP to run next-generation Business Suite S/4HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), and Data Mart Solutions on HANA on the AWS cloud.
X1	In-memory databases (e.g. SAP HANA), big data processing engines (e.g. Apache Spark or Presto), high performance computing (HPC). Certified by SAP to run Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Suite S/4HANA.
High Memory	Large enterprise databases, including production installations of SAP HANA in-memory database in the cloud. Certified by SAP for running Business Suite on HANA, the next-generation Business Suite S/4HANA, Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA, and SAP BW/4HANA in production environments.
z1d	Ideal for electronic design automation (EDA) and certain relational database workloads with high per-core licensing costs.

Accelerated computing

Types	Use cases
P3	Machine/Deep learning, high performance computing, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, speech recognition, autonomous vehicles, drug discovery.
P2	Machine learning, high performance databases, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, rendering, and other server-side GPU compute workloads.
Inf1	Recommendation engines, forecasting, image and video analysis, advanced text analytics, document analysis, voice, conversational agents, translation, transcription, and fraud detection.
G4	Machine learning inference for applications like adding metadata to an image, object detection, recommender systems, automated speech recognition, and language translation. G4 instances also provide a very cost-effective platform for building and running graphics-intensive applications, such as remote graphics workstations, video transcoding, photo-realistic design, and game streaming in the cloud.
G3	3D visualizations, graphics-intensive remote workstation, 3D rendering, application streaming, video encoding, and other server-side graphics workloads.
F1	Genomics research, financial analytics, real-time video processing, big data search and analysis, and security.

Storage Optimized

Types	Use cases
I3	NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis), in-memory databases (e.g. Aerospike), scale-out transactional databases, data warehousing, Elasticsearch, analytics workloads.
I3en	NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis), in-memory databases (e.g. SAP HANA, Aerospike), scale-out transactional databases, distributed file systems, data warehousing, Elasticsearch, analytics workloads.
D2	Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) data warehousing, MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing, distributed file systems, network file systems, log or data-processing applications.
H1	MapReduce-based workloads, distributed file systems such as HDFS and MapR-FS, network file systems, log or data processing applications such as Apache Kafka, and big data workload clusters.

Instance Features

Burstable Performance

Amazon EC2 allows you to choose between Fixed Performance Instances (e.g. M5, C5, and R5) and Burstable Performance Instances (T instances). Many applications such as web servers, developer environments and small databases don’t need consistently high levels of CPU, but benefit significantly from having full access to very fast CPUs when the need arises. T instances are engineered specifically for these use cases. While your T instance is idle, credits accrue. On occasion of extra load, the credits are used to burst performance.

T Unlimited instances can sustain high CPU performance for as long as a workload needs it. For most general-purpose workloads, T Unlimited instances will provide ample performance without any additional charges. The hourly T instance price automatically covers all interim spikes in usage when the average CPU utilization of a T instance is at or less than the baseline over a 24-hour window. If the instance needs to run at higher CPU utilization for a prolonged period, it can do so at a flat additional charge of 5 cents per vCPU-hour.

Also, with T Unlimited enabled, a T instance can burst above the baseline even after its CPU Credit balance is drawn down to zero.

Storage Options

Amazon EC2 allows you to choose between multiple storage options based on your requirements.

EBS - Block-level storage volume that you can attach to a single, running

Amazon EC2 instance.

Instance Stores - Block level storage from disks that are physically attached

to the host computer. Data persists only during the life of the associated EC2 instance.

S3 - Amazon managed highly durable, highly available object storage.

EBS-optimized Instances

For an additional, low, hourly fee, customers can launch selected Amazon EC2 instances types as EBS-optimized instances. For C5, C4, M5, M4, P3, P2, G3, and D2 instances, this feature is enabled by default at no additional cost. EBS-optimized instances enable EC2 instances to fully use the IOPS provisioned on an EBS volume.

AWS recommends using Provisioned IOPS volumes with EBS-optimized instances or instances that support cluster networking for applications with high storage I/O requirements.

Cluster Networking

Select EC2 instances support cluster networking when launched into a common cluster placement group. A cluster placement group provides low-latency networking between all instances in the cluster. The bandwidth an EC2 instance can utilize depends on the instance type and its networking performance specification

Virtual CPUs per Instance Type

Instance Size	vCPUs
nano	1
micro	1
small	1
medium	1
large	2
xlarge	4
2xlarge	8
3xlarge	12
4xlarge	16
8xlarge	32
9xlarge	36
10xlarge	40
12xlarge	48
16xlarge	64
18xlarge	72
24xlarge	96
32xlarge	128

Takeaways

Type	Description	Storage	Network Gbps	vCPU	Memory (GiB)	GPU	GPU Mem (GiB)
A1	Save cost. For scale out arm workloads.	EBS only	Up to 10	1 - 16	2 - 32
T	Burstable CPU usage	EBS only	Up to 5	1 - 8	0.5 - 32
M	General purpose (M5n = network optimized)	EBS, m5?d? = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	1 - 96	4 - 384
C	Compute optimized (C5n=network optimized)	EBS, C5d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	2 - 96	3.75 - 192
R	Memory intensive workloads	EBS, R?d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	2 - 96	15.25 - 768
X	High performance in-mem applications	SSD, EBS optimized	Up to 25	4 -128	122 - 3,904
High Memory	For large in-mem db e.g SAP HANA		100		6144 - 24,576
z1d	Compute + Memory + High frequency	NVMe SSD	Up to 25	2 - 48	16 - 384
P	General Purpose GPU	EBS, p?d.* = NVMe SSD	Up to 100	4 - 96	61 - 768	1 - 16	12 - 256
Inf1	For machine learning inference	EBS	Up to 100	4 - 96	8 - 192
G	Graphics intensive and machine learning		Up to 100	4 - 96	16 - 488	1 - 8	8 - 128
F	Customizable hardware acceleration with FPGAs	SSD up to 4x950GiB	Up to 25	8 - 64	122 - 976	1 - 8 FPGAs
I	Low latency, high random I/O and sequential disk throughput	NVMe SSD	Up to 25	2 - 72	15.25 - 512
D	MPP data warehouse, distributed computing	HDD up to 24 x 2000	Up to 10	4 - 36	30.5 - 244
H	high disk throughput, balance of compute & memory	HDD up to 8 x 2000	Up to 25	8 - 64	32 - 256

While your T instance is idle, credits accrue. On occasion of extra load,

the credits are used to burst performance.

Also, with T Unlimited enabled, a T instance can burst above the baseline

even after its CPU Credit balance is drawn down to zero.

EBS-optimized instances enable EC2 instances to fully use the IOPS provisioned

on an EBS volume.

EBS-optimization enabled by default at no additional cost for

C5, C4, M5, M4, P3, P2, G3, and D2 instance types.

D2 instance type offers the lowest price per disk throughput
Curated Use Cases
- Micro services - A, T, M
- Small and mid-sized database - A, T, M
- Development environments - A, T
- Web servers - A
- Test and staging environments - T2
- High performance web servers - C
- Distributed analytics - C
- Distributed web scale in-memory caches - R
- Mid sized in-memory databases - R
- Real time big data - R
- Graphics-intensive workloads - G
- In-memory databases - X, I
- NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis) - I
- Distributed computing - D2
- Distributed file systems - I3en, D2, H1