AWS Update – New M3 Sizes & Features + Reduced EBS Prices + Reduced S3 Prices

I’ve got lots of great AWS news today! Here’s a summary:

• M3 instances are now available in two additional sizes.
• Several additional features are now available for newly launched M3 instances.
• Prices for S3 storage have been reduced by up to 22%.
• Prices for EBS Standard volume storage and I/O operations have been reduced by up to 50%.

Let’s take a closer look!

M3 Instance Type News
We announced the M3 instance type a little over a year ago. Our customers and our partners have found them to be very attractive. For example, a wide variety of top software is available to run on M3, with offerings such as aiScaler, Syncsort, Riak, NITRC available with 1-click deployment on AWS Marketplace

The M3 is our Second Generation General-purpose EC2 instance type. They have a balance of CPU power, RAM, and networking capacity that is suitable for a very wide variety of applications. Today we are making the M3 instance type even more useful, with support for two new instance sizes and some new features.

New Instance Sizes
We are adding medium and large M3 instances. Here’s the full lineup:

The M3 instances feature high frequency Intel Xeon E5-2670 (Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge) processors.

When compared to the venerable M1 instance type, the M3 instances offer higher clock frequencies, significantly improved memory performance, and SSD-based instance storage, all at a lower price. If you are currently using M1 instances, switching to M3 instances will provide your users with better and more consistent performance while also decreasing your AWS bill. We reduced the prices for the M3 instances late last year and they are now more cost-effective than the M1 instances.

SSD-Based Storage
As you can see from the table above, the M3’s now include fast, SSD-based instance storage. You can add instance storage for M3 instances by specifying block device mappings in the instance launch parameters.

Instance Store-Backed AMIs
M3 instances have always supported launching from EBS-backed AMIs. They now support the use of instance store-backed AMIs (previously known as S3-backed AMIs) as well. This will allow you to make use of older AMIs that have not been converted to the newer, EBS-backed format. To learn more about the two types of AMIs, read the EC2 Root Volume documentation.

The new sizes and features are available in all of the public AWS Regions. They are not yet available in AWS GovCloud (US); however, the original M3 instance sizes (m3.xlarge and m3.2xlarge) are already available in GovCloud.

S3 Price Reduction
We are reducing the price for Amazon S3 storage in all Regions by up to 22%, with a proportionate reduction in the price of Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS). Here are the new prices for Standard Storage in the US Standard Region (see the New S3 Pricing page for more information):

The new pricing take effect on February 1, 2014 and will be applied automatically.

EBS Price Reduction
We are reducing prices for Elastic Block Store (EBS) Standard volume storage and I/O requests across all AWS Regions. The reductions vary by Region, and are as high as 50% in some locations. Here’s the new pricing in the US East (Northern Virginia) Region:

Again, the new pricing takes effect on February 1, 2014 and will be applied automatically. See the New EBS Pricing page for additional information.

— Jeff;