AWS News Blog

C3 Instance Update

As you know, we launched our new compute optimized instance family (C3) a few weeks ago, and wow, are we seeing unprecedented demand across all sizes and all Regions!  As one of our product managers just told me, these instances are simply “fast in every dimension.” They have a high performance CPU, matched with SSD-based instance storage and EC2’s new enhanced networking capabilities, all at a very affordable price.

We believed that this instance type would be popular, but would not have imagined just how popular they’ve been.  The EC2 team took a look back and found that growth in C3 usage to date has been higher than they have seen for any other newly introduced instance type. We’re not talking about some small percentage difference here. It took just two weeks for C3 usage to exceed the level that the former fastest-growing instance type achieved in twenty-two weeks!  This is why some of you are not getting the C3 capacity you’re asking for when you request it.

In the face of this growth, we have enlarged, accelerated, and expedited our orders for additional capacity across all Regions.  We are working non-stop to get it in-house, and hope to be back to more normal levels of capacity in the next couple of weeks.

— Jeff;

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr is Chief Evangelist for AWS. He started this blog in 2004 and has been writing posts just about non-stop ever since.