AWS EC2 Instance Type

An AWS EC2 Instance Type is a server computer type for EC2 server instances (available in AWS EC2).

• Context:
  • It can range from being a General Purpose EC2 Instance Type, to being Storage Optimized EC2 Instance Type, to being Memory Optimized EC2 Instance Type to being a Compute Optimized EC2 Instance Type to being Accelerated/GPU Optimized EC2.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • Amazon EC2 R8g Instance Type, announced 2023-11-28.
  • Amazon EC2 A1 Instance Type.
  • Amazon EC2 M7i Instance Type, 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors
  • Amazon EC2 M7 Instance Type, announced 2023-02-13, AWS Graviton3 processors.
  • Amazon EC2 M6 Instance Type, announced 2023-04-03, Arm-based AWS Graviton2 processors.
  • Amazon EC2 T4g Instance Type.
  • Amazon EC2 M5 Instance Type, Intel Xeon-based.
  • Amazon EC2 M4 Instance Type.
  • Amazon EC2 T3 Instance Type, announced 2018-08-21.
  • Amazon EC2 T2 Instance Type.
  • Amazon EC2 P4d Instance Type.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Google Cloud Server Type.
  • Microsoft Azure Server Type.
• See: Amazon EC2 Dedicated Host, Amazon EC2 Spot Instance, Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance, Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instance, AWS CPU Credit.

---

---

References

2024

• (Wikipedia, 2024) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Elastic_Compute_Cloud#Instance_types Retrieved:2024-1-14.
  • Initially, EC2 used Xen virtualization exclusively. However, on November 6, 2017, Amazon announced the new C5 family of instances that were based on a custom architecture around the KVM hypervisor, called Nitro. Each virtual machine, called an "instance", functions as a virtual private server. Amazon sizes instances based on "Elastic Compute Units". The performance of otherwise identical virtual machines may vary. On November 28, 2017, AWS announced a bare-metal instance type offering marking a remarkable departure from exclusively offering virtualized instance types.
  • As of January 2019, the following instance types were offered:
    • General Purpose: A1, T3, T2, M5, M5a, M4, T3a
    • Compute Optimized: C5, C5n, C4
    • Memory Optimized: R5, R5a, R4, X1e, X1, High Memory, z1d
    • Accelerated Computing: P3, P2, G3, F1
    • Storage Optimized: H1, I3, D2
  • the following payment methods by instance were offered:
    • On-demand: pay by the hour without commitment.
    • Reserved: rent instances with one-time payment receiving discounts on the hourly charge.
    • Spot: bid-based service: runs the jobs only if the spot price is below the bid specified by bidder. The spot price is claimed to be supply-demand based, however a 2011 study concluded that the price was generally not set to clear the market, but was dominated by an undisclosed reserve price.

2020

• (Amazon EC2, 2020) ⇒ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ Retieved:2020-10-25.
  • QUOTE: Amazon EC2 provides a wide selection of instance types optimized to fit different use cases. Instance types comprise varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity and give you the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for your applications. Each instance type includes one or more instance sizes, allowing you to scale your resources to the requirements of your target workload.

---