AWS News Blog

New M5n and R5n EC2 Instances, with up to 100 Gbps Networking

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AWS customers build ever-demanding applications on Amazon EC2. To support them the best we can, we listen to their requirements, go to work, and come up with new capabilities. For instance, in 2018, we upgraded the networking capabilities of Amazon EC2 C5 instances, with up to 100 Gbps networking, and significant improvements in packet processing performance. These are made possible by our new virtualization technology, aka the AWS Nitro System, and by the Elastic Fabric Adapter which enables low latency on 100 Gbps networking platforms.

In order to extend these benefits to the widest range of workloads, we’re happy to announce that these same networking capabilities are available today for both Amazon EC2 M5 and R5 instances.

Introducing Amazon EC2 M5n and M5dn instances
Since the very early days of Amazon EC2, the M family has been a popular choice for general-purpose workloads. The new M5(d)n instances uphold this tradition, and are a great fit for databases, High Performance Computing, analytics, and caching fleets that can take advantage of improved network throughput and packet rate performance.

The chart below lists out the new instances and their specs: each M5(d) instance size now has an M5(d)n counterpart, which supports the upgraded networking capabilities discussed above. For example, whereas the regular m5(d).8xlarge instance has a respectable network bandwidth of 10 Gbps, its m5(d)n.8xlarge sibling goes to 25 Gbps. The top of the line m5(d)n.24xlarge instance even hits 100 Gbps.

Here are the specs:

Instance Name Logical Processors Memory Local Storage
(m5dn only)
EBS-Optimized Bandwidth Network Bandwidth
m5n.large
m5dn.large
2 8 GiB 1 x 75 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
m5n.xlarge
m5dn.xlarge
4 16 GiB 1 x 150 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
m5n.2xlarge
m5dn.2xlarge
8 32 GiB 1 x 300 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
m5n.4xlarge
m5dn.4xlarge
16 64 GiB 2 x 300 GB
NVMe SSD
3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
m5n.8xlarge
m5dn.8xlarge
32 128 GiB 2 x 600 GB
NVMe SSD
5 Gbps 25 Gbps
m5n.12xlarge
m5dn.12xlarge
48 192 GiB 2 x 900 GB
NVMe SSD
7 Gbps 50 Gbps
m5n.16xlarge
m5dn.16xlarge
64 256 GiB 4 x 600 GB
NVMe SSD
10 Gbps 75 Gbps
m5n.24xlarge
m5dn.24xlarge
96 384 GiB 4 x 900 GB
NVMe SSD
14 Gbps 100 Gbps

Introducing Amazon EC2 R5n and R5dn instances
The R5 family is ideally suited for memory-hungry workloads, such as high performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, mid-size in-memory databases, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications.

The logic here is exactly the same: each R5(d) instance size has an R5(d)n counterpart. Here are the specs:

Instance Name Logical Processors Memory Local Storage
(r5dn only)
EBS-Optimized Bandwidth Network Bandwidth
r5n.large
r5dn.large
2 16 GiB 1 x 75 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
r5n.xlarge
r5dn.xlarge
4 32 GiB 1 x 150 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
r5n.2xlarge
r5dn.2xlarge
8 64 GiB 1 x 300 GB
NVMe SSD
Up to 3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
r5n.4xlarge
r5dn.4xlarge
16 128 GiB 2 x 300 GB
NVMe SSD
3.5 Gbps Up to 25 Gbps
r5n.8xlarge
r5dn.8xlarge
32 256 GiB 2 x 600 GB
NVMe SSD
5 Gbps 25 Gbps
r5n.12xlarge
r5dn.12xlarge
48 384 GiB 2 x 900 GB
NVMe SSD
7 Gbps 50 Gbps
r5n.16xlarge
r5dn.16xlarge
64 512 GiB 4 x 600 GB
NVMe SSD
10 Gbps 75 Gbps
r5n.24xlarge
r5dn.24xlarge
96 768 GiB 4 x 900 GB
NVMe SSD
14 Gbps 100 Gbps

These new M5(d)n and R5(d)n instances are powered by custom second generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (based on the Cascade Lake architecture) with sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.1 GHz and maximum single core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz. Cascade Lake processors enable new Intel Vector Neural Network Instructions (AVX-512 VNNI) which will help speed up typical machine learning operations like convolution, and automatically improve inference performance over a wide range of deep learning workloads.

Now Available!
You can start using the M5(d)n and R5(d)n instances today in the following regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), and Asia Pacific (Singapore).

We hope that these new instances will help you tame your network-hungry workloads! Please send us feedback, either on the AWS Forum for Amazon EC2, or through your usual support contacts.

Julien;

Julien Simon

Julien Simon

As an Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Evangelist for EMEA, Julien focuses on helping developers and enterprises bring their ideas to life.