EC2 Updates: New Medium Instance, 64-bit Ubiquity, SSH Client

Big News
I have three important announcements for EC2 users:

1. We have introduced a new instance type, the Medium (m1.medium).
2. You can now launch 64-bit operating systems on the m1.small and c1.medium instances.
3. You can now log in to an EC2 instance from the AWS Management Console using an integrated SSH client.

New Instance Type
The new Medium instance type fills a gap in the m1 family of instance types, splitting the difference, price and performance-wise, between the existing Small and Large types and bringing our instance count to thirteen (other EC2 instance types). Here are the specs:

• 3.75 GB of RAM
• 1 virtual core running at 2 ECU (EC2 Compute Unit)
• 410 GB of instance storage
• 32 and 64-bit
• Moderate I/O performance

The Medium instance type is available now in all 8 of the AWS Regions. See the EC2 Pricing page for more information on the On Demand and Reserved Instance pricing (you can also acquire Medium instances in Spot form).

64-bit Ubiquity
You can now launch 64-bit operating systems on the Small and Medium instance types. This means that you can now create a single Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and run it on an extremely wide range of instance types, from the Micro all the way up to the High-CPU Extra Large and and the High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large, as you can see from the console menu:

This will make it easier for you to scale vertically (to larger and smaller instances) without having to maintain parallel (32 and 64-bit) AMIs.

SSH Client
We've integrated the MindTerm SSH client into the AWS Management console to simplify the process of connecting to an EC2 instance. There's now  second option on the Connect window:

And there you have it! What do you think?

-- Jeff;

 

Comments

[Niall]

This is fantastic!! Well done AWS, great to see the medium instance type, it was something we were wating for. Pricing for the medium instance is reasonable too.

Thanks

[Ismael Juma]

Hi Jeff,

Impressive day of announcements. :) It's great to finally have 64-bit support across the instance types and to have an instance type between small and large. DynamoDB in Europe is also great news.

Best,
Ismael

[Cirronix]

Fantastic feature release. I have a few clients with legacy 32 bit Server 2008 instances whose needs don't stretch to higher instance types but would benefit from 64 bit architecture at their current level, great to know I can now implement a migration plan for them.

Loving the new reserved pricing structure too. Everyone wins.

[Wonksauce]

Good job on the 64 bit, now I can scale up my instances easy.

[Robin Speekenbrink]

Sweet!

But, after just having upgraded our reserved instances for the next three years as 'small', you go and introduce the *sweet spot* m1.medium! Thats a shame, will there be something like an 'upgrade' path for reserved instances? (i'd really like to utilize the medium in comparisson to our current small... )

Also on the 64bit: finally! This way we, as you've noted yourself, can move our images around and not have to worry about the 32/64 bits in our app! (integer size does matter when processing large files) Ssshhweet!

Keep this up and you've officially blown all competitors out of the water by sheer room of choice :)

[Sam Westcott]

Guys, this is great news. We've been waiting a looooong time (better part of 3 years) to switch all our hosting servers to AWS but we couldn't because smalls were too small and only allowed x86 but larges were too expensive. Combined with the recent price drop, we're able to move over and are gladly beginning the process. Awesome news!!

[Ezdsf]

You just made my day. Awesome!

[Stevefram]

This is great news. We run some applications that don't work well in 32 bit mode (mongodb for example). No big deal to run large instances in production, but it's been a challenge to support our development environments at reasonable cost.

[Bobveznat]

The SSH client is neat but I really wish it were a connection to the instance console rather than an ssh connection. I really wish I could see the console and debug boot problems interactively ("get system log" is invaluable but a real console would be so much better).

[Rob Linton]

Hi Jeff,

The 64bit Small instance type is big, really big. (not literally :-)

I know you'll be taking a hit as a LOT of people migrate 64 bit dev environments down from Large, but in the long run the traction from new clients moving onto AWS because of it's new cost availability will far outweigh this.

On a much smaller note, cutting and pasting the SSH Url out of the AWS web console was driving me crazy, one more small annoying thingy bites the dust.

Now, if only I could get multiple range scan attributes in Dynamo...

[Adrian Cole]

great news!

[Mike Rooney]

Excellent to see these changes. However I noticed when deploying to 64-bit Beanstalk, m1.small is still not a choice. Is there a plan to allow this?

[Pothi Kalimuthu]

That's incredible. Appreciate the changes. I've been waiting for long for the support of 64 bit in small instances.

[Sangram Anand]

new m1.medium & integrated ssh from AWS management console is awesome, it reduces teh pain of logging from putty client...:)

[Salman Abbas]

Made by day. <3 Long live AWS

[Anonymous]

This doesn't work for spot instances, i.e., requesting an m1.small instance type with a 64-bit AMI.