AWS EC2 (Instance Types)

General Purpose

• t2
  
  • burstable performance
    • 1 credit = 1 vCPU running at 100% for 1 minute
      • 1 vCPU running at 50% for 2 minutes
    • example: t2.small
      • vCPU: 1
        • CPU: Intel Xeon with Turbo - up to 3.3 GHz
      • Initial CPU credit: 30 (when started)
      • Credits earned per hour: 12 (=1 per 5 minutes)
      • Maximum Balance: 288
      • Baseline Performance: 20% of the CPU core
    • stop-start
      • Earned credits are lost
      • Initial balance is reset
    • earned/initial credits do not expire
    • Metrics
      
      • CPU Credit Usage
        • Calculate: How may are earned per period (e.g. 5 minutes)
        • Compare: How many are used per period
        • Ensure earned > used over longer period
  • Unlimited
    • Additional feature 
    • Allows to "borrow" additional credits when balance = 0 
      • They can be paid by
        • earning credits
        • paying for them
      • Flat rate per vCPU
    • Charged when instance is terminated or "unlimited" disabled
    • No initial credits
  • Use cases
    • development environments, build servers, code repositories, low traffic websites, micro services, experiments, beta 
  • Restrictions
    • EBS-only

• m5
  • CPU: 2.5 GHz (support for AVX-512 instructions)
  • EBS-optimized by default (NVME support)
  • Support for enhanced networking
  • Use cases
    • • small&mid-size db, SAP, SharePoint, cluster computing, enterprise apps, caching fleets, data processing tasks
  • Restrictions
    • EBS-only

• Previous Generation
  • t1, m1, m2, m3, m4

Compute Optmized

Cheapest CPU

Use cases

• HPC
• Front-end fleets, batch processing, distributed analytics, science and engineering projects, ad serving, MMO, video encoding
• c4
  • High Frequency Intel Xeon (Haswell)
  • EBS-optimized by default
  • Support for enhanced networking
  • Support for Placement Groups
  • CPU:
    • 18 cores with two hyperthreads each (36 vCPU)
    • Customized High Frequency Intel Xeon (Haswell)
    • Turbo boost: ability to increase Hz of 2 cores when other 16 are powered down
    • Ability to control
      • C-state - sleep level when core is idle
        • Cores in low power require lower energy BUT
        • It takes longer to wake them up
          • Ability to create thermal headroom for turbo boost
      • P-state - clock frequency
      • Linux only
  • Restrictions
    • EBS-only

• • c5
    • Uses new Amazon Hypervisor (not Xen anymore)

• Previous Generations
  • c1, cc2.8xlarge, cc1, c5

Memory Optimized

Cheapest RAM

• r4
  • CPU: 2.3 GHz
  • RAM 15.25-488GB (DDR4)
  • Enhanced Networking (ENA)
  • Use cases
    • high performance databases, distributed memory caches, in-memory analytics, genome assembly and analysis, large SAP and Microsoft deployments

• Previous generation
  
  •  m2, cr1 , r3

• x1/x1e
  • RAM 1TB-4TB
  • Certified by SAP HANA

GPU

• p3
  • 1-8 NVIDIA Tesla CPUs
  • Use cases
    • Machine learning, seismic analysis, computational finance

• g3
  • High Frequncy Intel Xeon (Sandy Bridge)
  • NVIDA GPU (1536 CUDA cores) + 4GB RAM
    • 1-4 such processors
    • hardware video encoder
      • 8 stream 720@30fps
      • low latency frame capture
  • Use cases
    • 3D application streaming, machine learning, video-encoding and server-side graphics
      

• f1
  • Contain Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)
    • Allows to create custom logical functions (purpose built)
  • Use case
    • Genomic research, financial analytics

• Previous Generation
  • cg1, g2, p2

Storage High I/O

• i3
  
  • CPU: Intel Xeon (Ivy Bridge)
  • SSD-based local storage 
    • Disks: 1x800 - 8x800 GB
    • TRIM
  • Supported:
    • Enhanced Networking
    • Placement Groups
    • EBS Optimization
  • Use cases
    • Cassandra, Data warehousing, Hadoop, cluster file system
  • IOPS
    • Read IOPS: 35,000 (i2.xlarge) - 365,000 (i2.8xlarge)
    • First Write IOPS: 35,000 (i2.xlarge) - 315,000 (i2.8xlarge)

• Previous Generation
  • hi1

Storage High Density

Cheapest HDD 

• h1
  • HDD Storage (2TB-16 TB)
  • Faster CPU/Network than d2
  • Use case
    • Kafka, Log processing, EMR
• d2
  • HDD Storage (6TB - 48 TB)
  • High disk throughput
  • EBS Optimized by default
  • Support for Enhanced Networking

• Previous Generation
  • hs1

Bare Metal

• i3.metal
  • Direct access to hardware
  • Use cases
    • VMWare (avoid double virtualization)