December 22, 2020 / Nirav Shah
In Dec-2020 AWS has announced the latest additions in AWS EC2 services
Let’s figure out what’s the latest changes in AWS EC2 instance type and how it works. But before we move forward we believe that you already know about the default function and application of EC2 instances. If not, you can find more information about AWS EC2 by referring to the below blogs.
We recommend before moving forward please go through with the above blog for more clear understanding.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Amazon EC2 is a web and cli based service that allows organizations and individuals to spin-up servers on-demand without any explicit long term monetary commitment. It is designed to minimize the capital expense and convert the same to operational expense.
1. General Purpose
General Purpose instances are the most widely used and are an excellent first step if you’re new to AWS or cloud computing in general. They offer a great mix of cost and functionality, with their typical use being geared towards web servers, running development environments for your mobile or gaming apps, and running enterprise applications such as CRMs and ERPs.
2. Compute Optimized
These instances are ideal for applications where you prioritize raw compute power, such as gaming servers, scientific modelling, high-performance web servers, and media transcoding.
3. Memory-Optimized
This instance family is memory-optimized, which you might use for in-memory databases, real-time processing of unstructured big data, or Hadoop/Spark clusters. These instances are ideal for memory-intensive applications such as real-time big data analytics, large in-memory caches, and high-performance databases. The R5 and R5a instances benefit from the AWS Nitro System, which gives you access to almost all of the compute and memory resources of a server (i.e. allocating as little as possible to the OS).
4. Accelerated Computing
These instances use hardware accelerators to perform some functions and applications. They are best used for applications such as machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, molecular modelling, genomics, and other high-performance computing workloads.
5. Storage Optimized
The i3 instance type is similar to h1, but it is SSD backed, so if you need an NVMe drive, choose this type. Use it for NoSQL databases, in-memory databases, Elasticsearch, and more.
| Instance Type | Instance family | Description | Notation |
| General Purpose | A1 | Good for Scale-out workloads | a is for Arm processor |
| t-family | Burstable, good for changing workloads | t is for tiny or turbo | |
| m-family | Balanced, good for consistent workloads | m is for main or happy medium | |
| Compute Optimized | c-family | High ratio of commute to memory | c is for compute |
| Memory-Optimized | r family | Good for full in memory databases | r is for RAM |
| x family | Good for full in memory applications | x is for xtreme | |
| High memory | Good for large in memory databases | for High memory | |
| z1d | Both high compute and high memory | z is for zippy | |
| Accelerated Computing | p family | Good for graphics processing and other GPU uses | p is for picture |
| inf1 | Support machine learning inference applications | inf is for inference | |
| g family f | Accelerate machine learning inference and graphics intensive workloads | g is for graphics | |
| f1 | customizable hardware acceleration with field programmable gate arrays | f is for FPGA or feel as in hardware | |
| Storage Optimized | I family | SSD-backed, balance of compute and memory | I is for IOPS |
| d2 | Highest disk ratio | d is for dense | |
| h1 | HDD-backed, balance of compute and memory | H is for HDD |
Now let’s understand What latest changes AWS has made in instance type,
1. AWS has added instance type in Compute Optimized with EC2 C6gn Instances – 100 Gbps Networking with AWS Graviton2 Processors.
2. AWS has added instance type in Memory-Optimized with Amazon EC2 R5b Instances Provide 3x Higher EBS Performance
3. AWS has added instance type in Accelerated Computing with Amazon EC2 G4ad Instances Featuring AMD GPUs for Graphics Workloads
Hope now you have a clear idea about AWS EC2 instance type and instance family!! Stay tuned for the latest updates about AWS in our blog!!
As a Director of Eternal Web Private Ltd an AWS consulting partner company, Nirav is responsible for its operations. AWS, cloud-computing and digital transformation are some of his favorite topics to talk about. His key focus is to help enterprises adopt technology, to solve their business problem with the right cloud solutions.
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