H1 Instances – Fast, Dense Storage for Big Data Applications

The scale of AWS and the diversity of our customer base gives us the opportunity to create EC2 instance types that are purpose-built for many different types of workloads. For example, a number of popular big data use cases depend on high-speed, sequential access to multiple terabytes of data. Our customers want to build and run very large MapReduce clusters, host distributed file systems, use Apache Kafka to process voluminous log files, and so forth.

New H1 Instances
The new H1 instances are designed specifically for this use case. In comparison to the existing D2 (dense storage) instances, the H1 instances provide more vCPUs and more memory per terabyte of local magnetic storage, along with increased network bandwidth, giving you the power to address more complex challenges with a nicely balanced mix of resources.

The instances are based on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 processors running at a base clock frequency of 2.3 GHz and come in four instance sizes (all VPC-only and HVM-only):

The two largest sizes support Intel Turbo and CPU power management, with all-core Turbo at 2.7 GHz and single-core Turbo at 3.0 GHz.

Local storage is optimized to deliver high throughput for sequential I/O; you can expect to transfer up to 1.15 gigabytes per second if you use a 2 megabyte block size. The storage is encrypted at rest using 256-bit XTS-AES and one-time keys.

Moving large amounts of data on and off of these instances is facilitated by the use of Enhanced Networking, giving you up to 25 Gbps of network bandwidth within Placement Groups.

Launch One Today
H1 instances are available today in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), and Europe (Ireland) Regions. You can launch them in On-Demand or Spot Form. Dedicated Hosts, Dedicated Instances, and Reserved Instances (both 1-year and 3-year) are also available.

Read the new H1 Instances for more info!

— Jeff;