New EC2 High-Memory Instances

In many cases, scaling out (by launching additional instances) is the best way to bring additional CPU processing power and memory to bear on a problem, while also distributing network traffic across multiple NICs (Network Interface Controllers). Certain workloads, however, are better supported by scaling up with a more capacious instance. Examples of these workloads include commercial and open source relational databases, mid-tier caches such as memcache, and media rendering.

To enable further scaling up for these workloads, we are introducing a new family of memory-heavy EC2 instances with the Double and Quadruple Extra Large High-Memory instance types. Here are the specs (note that an ECU is an EC2 compute unit, equivalent in CPU power to a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007-era AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processor):

• Double Extra Large - 34.2 GB of RAM, and 13 ECU (4 virtual cores with 3.25 ECU each), 64-bit platform.
• Quadruple Extra Large - 68.4 GB of RAM, and 26 ECU (8 virtual cores with 3.25 ECU each), 64-bit platform.

These new instance types are available now in multiple Availability Zones of both EC2 regions (US and Europe). Double Extra Large instances cost $1.20 per instance hour and the Quadruple Extra Large instances cost $2.40 per instance hour (these prices are for Linux instances in the US region).

These new instances use the most recent generation of processor and platform architectures. In order to get the best possible performance you should experiment with compiler settings and may also want to check out specialized compilers such as Intel's Professional Edition and AMD's Open64 Compiler Suite. As with all EC2 instances where the processor architecture underlying the virtualized compute resources may vary, you may want to think about ways to detect and adapt to the processor type at launch time if this will make a difference for your particular workload.

You can launch new Double Extra Large and Quadruple Extra Large instances today using the AWS Management Console or ElasticFox.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[Eric Hammond]

AWS keeps adding features and capabilities shortly before my startup really needs them. You're making it easy to grow!

Here's a minor typo with the AWS console. The "Instance Type" pulldown in the "Launch Instance Wizard" isn't consistent in how it talks about ECUs. For example, the c1.xlarge claims 20 ECUs with 8 Cores, but the m2.4xlarge lists 3.25 ECUs and 8 Cores. The latter should probably show 26 ECUs with 8 Cores as the standard to date has been to list the total ECU power of all the cores combined.

[Eric Hammond]

This page can use updating: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/DeveloperGuide/index.html?instance-types.html

[Mike Kavis]

This is great. Looking forward to the reserved instances!

[Dr Lars Wendowski]

What happened to all of the Windows reserved instances?

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681196592]

Jeff,
By surfacing the proprietary nature of the compute environment, did AWS just cross the line? I remember you telling me that the brand/internals of the computing environment were intentionally abstracted to enable a higher degree of portability and freedom from vendors. AWS has/had the opportunity to enable a new level of true commodity compute, but this appears to be orthogonal to all prior efforts.

What am I missing??
Jeff