AWS News Blog

New – Amazon EC2 M6id and C6id Instances with Up to 7.6 TB Local NVMe Storage

Voiced by Polly

Last year, we launched the Amazon EC2 M6i instances and C6i instances, our sixth-generation offerings that include 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

Today we are expanding Amazon EC2 M6id and C6id instances, backed by NVMe-based SSD block-level instance storage physically connected to the host server. These instances are powered by the Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake) with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, equipped with up to 7.6 TB of local NVMe-based SSD block-level storage, and deliver up to 15 percent better price performance compared to previous generation instances.

M6id instances are ideal for workloads that require a balance of compute and memory resources along with high-speed, low-latency local block storage, including data logging and media processing. C6id is ideal for compute-intensive workloads, including those that need access to high-speed, low-latency local storage like video encoding, image manipulation, and other forms of media processing. Both M6id and C6id will also benefit applications that need temporary storage of data, such as batch and log processing and applications that need caches and scratch files.

Compared to previous generation instances, new instance types provide:

  • Up to 58 percent higher storage per vCPU and 34 percent lower cost per TB compared to M5d instances, and up to 138 percent higher storage per vCPU and 56 percent lower cost per TB compared with C5d instances.
  • Larger instance sizes (32xlarge) with up to 128 vCPUs and 512 GiB (M6id) or 256 GiB (C6id) of memory that make it easier and more cost-efficient to consolidate workloads and scale up applications.
  • Up to 15 percent improvement in compute price performance and 20 percent higher memory bandwidth.
  • 2 times increased bandwidth up to 40 Gbps for Amazon EBS and 50 Gbps for networking.

Here are the specs of M6id instances in detail:

Instance Name vCPUs RAM (GiB) Local NVMe SSD Storage (GB) EBS Throughput (Gbps) Network Bandwidth (Gbps)
m6id.large 2 8 1 x 118 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
m6id.xlarge 4 16 1 x 237 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
m6id.2xlarge 8 32 1 x 474 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
m6id.4xlarge 16 64 1 x 950 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
m6id.8xlarge 32 128 1 x 1900 10 12.5
m6id.12xlarge 48 192 2 x 1425 15 18.75
m6id.16xlarge 64 156 2 x 1900 20 25
m6id.24xlarge 96 384 4 x 1425 30 37.5
m6id.32xlarge 128 512 4 x 1900 40 50
m6id.metal 128 512 4 x 1900 40 50

Here are also the specs of C6id instances in detail:

Instance Name vCPUs RAM (GiB) Local NVMe SSD Storage (GB) EBS Throughput (Gbps) Network Bandwidth (Gbps)
c6id.large 2 4 1 x 118 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
c6id.xlarge 4 8 1 x 237 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
c6id.2xlarge 8 16 1 x 474 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
c6id.4xlarge 16 32 1 x 950 Up to 10 Up to 12.5
c6id.8xlarge 32 64 1 x 1900 10 12.5
c6id.12xlarge 48 96 2 x 1425 15 18.75
c6id.16xlarge 64 128 2 x 1900 20 25
c6id.24xlarge 96 192 4 x 1425 30 37.5
c6id.32xlarge 128 256 4 x 1900 40 50
c6id.metal 128 256 4 x 1900 40 50

You can use any Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that include drivers for the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) and NVMe. For optimal networking performance on these new instances, ENA driver update may be required. For more information on optimal ENA driver for M6id and C6id instances, see this article on migrating instances.

Here are a couple of things to remind you about the local NVMe storage on these instances:

  • You don’t have to specify a block device mapping in your AMI or during the instance launch; the local storage will show up as one or more devices (/dev/nvme*1 on Linux) after the guest operating system has booted.
  • Each local NVMe device is hardware encrypted using the XTS-AES-256 block cipher and a unique key. Each key is destroyed when the instance is stopped or terminated.
  • Local NVMe devices have the same lifetime as the instance they are attached to and do not stick around after the instance has been stopped or terminated.

Now Available
You can launch M6id and C6id instances today in the AWS US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) Regions as On-Demand, Spot, and Reserved Instances or as part of a Savings Plan. As usual with EC2, you pay for what you use. For more information, see the EC2 pricing page.

To learn more, visit our Amazon EC2 M6i instances or C6i instances page, and please send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

– Channy

Channy Yun

Channy Yun

Channy Yun is a Principal Developer Advocate for AWS, and passionate about helping developers to build modern applications on latest AWS services. A pragmatic developer and blogger at heart, he loves community-driven learning and sharing of technology, which has funneled developers to global AWS Usergroups. His main topics are open-source, container, storage, network & security, and IoT. Follow him on Twitter at @channyun.