Posted On: Feb 15, 2023
ENA Express now supports 15 new instances including: C6i.32xlarge, C6i.metal, C6id.32xlarge, C6id.metal, M6i.32xlarge, M6i.metal, M6id.32xlarge, M6id.metal, R6i.32xlarge, R6i.metal, R6id.32xlarge, R6id.metal, i4i.32xlarge, i4i.metal, and im4gn.16xlarge. Customers using these instances today can now enable ENA Express with a simple configuration. ENA Express is a networking feature that uses the AWS Scalable Reliable Datagram (SRD) protocol to improve network performance in two key ways: higher single flow bandwidth and lower tail latency for network traffic between EC2 instances. SRD is a proprietary protocol that delivers these improvements through advanced congestion control, multi-pathing, and packet reordering directly from the Nitro card.
Enabling ENA Express is as easy as a single command or console toggle for your EC2 instances’ network configuration. Using the SRD protocol, ENA Express increases the maximum single flow bandwidth of EC2 instances from 5 Gbps up to 25 Gbps, and it can provide up to 85% improvement in P99.9 latency for high throughput workloads. ENA Express works transparently to your applications with TCP and UDP protocols. When configured, ENA Express works between any two supported instances in an Availability Zone. ENA Express detects compatibility between your EC2 instances and establishes an SRD connection when both communicating instances have ENA Express enabled. Once a connection is established, your traffic takes advantage of SRD and its performance benefits. Detailed monitoring for these SRD connections is also available through ethtool metrics available in the latest Amazon Linux AMI.
ENA Express is available in all AWS Commercial Regions. ENA Express comes at no additional cost. To learn more and get started, please review the latest EC2 Documentation.