Posted On: Nov 30, 2021

Today, we are announcing the next generation storage optimized Amazon EC2 Im4gn and Is4gen instances. These instances are built on the AWS Nitro System and are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors. They feature up to 30TB of storage with the new AWS Nitro SSDs that are custom-designed by AWS to maximize the storage performance of I/O intensive workloads such as SQL/NoSQL databases, search engines, distributed file systems and data analytics which continuously read and write from the SSDs in a sustained manner. AWS Nitro SSDs enable up to 60% lower latency and up to 75% reduced latency variability in Im4gn and Is4gen instances compared to the third generation of storage optimized instances. These instances maximize the number of transactions processed per second (TPS) for I/O intensive workloads such as relational databases (e.g. MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL), and NoSQL databases (KeyDB, ScyllaDB, Cassandra) which have medium-large size data sets and can benefit from high compute performance and high network throughput. They are also an ideal fit for search engines, and data analytics workloads that require very fast access to data sets on local storage.

The Im4gn instances provide the best price performance for storage-intensive workloads in Amazon EC2. They offer up to 40% better price performance and up to 44% lower cost per TB of storage compared to I3 instances for running applications such as MySQL, NoSQL, and file systems, which require dense local SSD storage and higher compute performance. They also feature up to 100 Gbps networking and support for Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for applications that require high levels of inter-node communication.

The Is4gen instances provide the lowest cost per TB and highest density per vCPU of SSD storage in Amazon EC2 for applications such as stream processing and monitoring, real-time databases, and log analytics, that require high random I/O access to large amounts of local SSD data. These instances enable 15% lower cost per TB of storage and up to 48% better compute performance compared to I3en instances.

AWS Graviton2 processors are custom-built by AWS using 64-bit Arm Neoverse N1 cores to enable the best price performance for cloud workloads running in Amazon EC2. They deliver a major leap in performance and capabilities over first-generation AWS Graviton processors, with 7x performance, 4x the number of compute cores, 2x larger caches, and 5x faster memory. AWS Graviton2 processors feature always-on 256-bit DRAM encryption and 50% faster per core encryption performance compared to the first-generation AWS Graviton processors. Amazon EC2 instances powered by the AWS Graviton2, including Im4gn and Is4gen instances, are supported by many popular Linux operating systems including Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Many popular applications and services for security, monitoring and management, containers, and CI/CD from AWS and Independent Software Vendors also support AWS Graviton2-based instances. The AWS Nitro System is a collection of AWS-designed hardware and software innovations that enable the delivery of efficient, flexible, and secure cloud services with isolated multi-tenancy, private networking, and fast local storage.

The Im4gn instances are now available in the AWS US East (N. Virginia and Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) regions and are purchasable On-Demand, as Reserved instances, as Spot instances, or as part of Savings Plans. They are available in 6 sizes providing up to 64 vCPUs, 30 TB SSD storage, 256 GB memory, 100 Gbps of networking bandwidth, and 38 Gbps of Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) bandwidth. The Is4gen instances will be available soon in 6 sizes providing up to 32 vCPUs, 30 TB SSD storage, 192 GB memory, 50 Gbps of networking bandwidth, and 19 Gbps of Amazon EBS bandwidth.

To get started, visit the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS SDKs. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Im4gn and Is4gen page or the AWS Graviton page.