Amazon EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances with up to 22.8 TB local NVMe storage are generally available | Amazon Web Services

Amazon has generally released the EC2 C8id, M8id, and R8id instances, combining custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with up to 22.8 TB of local NVMe SSD storage. Compared with prior sixth-generation instances, they provide up to 43% more compute performance, 3.3× higher memory bandwidth, and significant gains for I/O-intensive databases and analytics. The instances target compute-heavy, balanced, and memory-intensive workloads respectively.

Instance Families and Workloads

• C8id: Designed for compute-intensive applications such as video encoding, image processing, and media workloads requiring fast local storage.
• M8id: Balances compute and memory for data logging, media processing, and medium-sized data stores.
• R8id: Targets memory-intensive workloads, including large SQL/NoSQL databases, in-memory databases, analytics, and AI inference.

Capacity and Performance

• Scale up to 96xlarge, compared with 32xlarge in the previous generation.
• Offer up to:
  • 384 vCPUs
  • 3 TiB memory
  • 22.8 TB local NVMe storage
• Available in metal-48xl and metal-96xl configurations for workloads needing direct physical-resource access.
• Deliver up to:
  • 43% higher compute performance
  • 3.3× greater memory bandwidth
  • 46% better I/O-intensive database performance
  • 30% faster I/O-intensive real-time analytics queries

Networking, Storage, and Compatibility

• Support Instance Bandwidth Configuration, allowing network or EBS bandwidth to be increased by up to 25% depending on workload needs.
• Use sixth-generation AWS Nitro cards to offload virtualization, storage, and networking operations.
• Require AMIs with ENA and NVMe drivers; current AWS Windows and Linux AMIs include the NVMe driver by default.
• Local NVMe devices appear automatically after boot and do not require block device mappings.
• Storage is hardware-encrypted with XTS-AES-256 and unique keys.
• Local NVMe storage is temporary: it is destroyed when the instance is stopped or terminated.

Availability and Purchasing

• Available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon).
• R8id instances are also available in Europe (Frankfurt).
• Offered as On-Demand, Savings Plans, Spot Instances, Dedicated Instances, and Dedicated Hosts.

These instances are best suited to applications that can exploit high-performance, ephemeral local NVMe storage; persistent data should remain on services such as Amazon EBS.