AWS for Industries

Expanding Epic on AWS: New database sizing enables larger healthcare deployments

Amazon Web Services (AWS), in collaboration with Epic, is announcing another increase in Epic on AWS customer database sizing, measured in global references per second (GRefs/s).

Epic’s Chronicles Operational Database (ODB) can now be sized to 105 million GRefs/s on AWS. This is achieved on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) U7ib-6tb.112xlarge instance combined with Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) io2 Block Express volumes, all within a horizontally scaled (ECP) ODB architecture. This announcement sets a new bar for public cloud sizing using native cloud services, and represents a 31% increase in ECP sizing since our previous update in May 2024. AWS’ global infrastructure design also provides at least 3 Availability Zones in every AWS Region, allowing for highly available infrastructure deployment to support Epic system resiliency.

The U7ib instances are powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Sapphire Rapids) supporting up to 448 vCPUs are built on the AWS Nitro System. The Nitro System is a lightweight hypervisor that provides improved compute and networking performance for EC2 instances. Nitro enables the delivery of efficient and flexible cloud services with enhanced security, isolated multi-tenancy, private networking, and fast local storage.

io2 Block Express is the next generation of EBS storage server architecture. It has been built for the purpose of meeting the performance requirements of I/O intensive applications. When attached to Nitro System-based EC2 instances, io2 Block Express provides sub-millisecond latency, providing faster and more consistent performance for your applications.

To learn more or request access to U7ib instance, contact your AWS sales representative. To learn how to migrate your workloads to AWS Intel-based instances, see the AWS Intel Getting Started Guide.

For more information on Epic on AWS, visit the solution page.

Kevin Vuong

Kevin Vuong

Kevin Vuong is a Global Healthcare Solution Architect at Amazon Web Services. With over 18 years of experience in healthcare, he is passionate about helping customers leverage AWS solutions to enhance the experiences of both clinicians and patients. In his free time, Kevin enjoys spending quality time with his wife and two children, engaging in activities like hiking, camping, and various sports.

Fred Zhang

Fred Zhang

Fred Zhang is a Senior Product Manager at AWS. He holds a master degree in computer science and has over twenty years of experience managing products including CPU, network controller and software. At AWS, he manages high network and EBS performance instances and is enthusiastic about technology innovations. When not working, he enjoys reading books, jogging, and cooking for the family.

Nithin Seenivasan

Nithin Seenivasan

Nithin Seenivasan is a Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS). At AWS, he manages Amazon EBS storage solutions, specializing in building cloud primitives at scale. Drawing from his background in technology and infrastructure industries, he works on advancing storage services for AWS customers. Outside of work, he enjoys gardening and reading books.