Amazon EC2 A1 Instances
Optimized cost and performance for scale-out workloads
Amazon EC2 A1 instances deliver significant cost savings for scale-out and Arm-based applications such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, and distributed data stores that are supported by the extensive Arm ecosystem. A1 instances are the first EC2 instances powered by AWS Graviton Processors that feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS. These instances will also appeal to developers, enthusiasts, and educators across the Arm developer community. Most architecture-agnostic applications that can run on Arm cores could also benefit from A1 instances.
Benefits
Flexibility and Choice
A1 instances add to the broadest and deepest selection of EC2 instances. Developers can now access instances with the Arm instruction set and experience the flexibility, security, reliability, and scalability of running on EC2. Familiar AWS and Amazon EC2 capabilities, such as EBS, Networking, and AMIs work seamlessly with A1 instances.
Lower Cost
A1 instances deliver significant cost saving for workloads that are supported by the extensive Arm ecosystem. These include general purpose workloads such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, and distributed data stores that that can be spread across multiple cores and can fit within the available A1 instance memory footprint.
Maximized Resource Efficiency
A1 instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor which delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance and security.
Key Features
Powered by AWS Graviton Processors
AWS Graviton Processors feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS delivering optimized performance and cost. AWS Graviton Processors are built exclusively for the cloud, utilizing AWS and Annapurna Labs' expertise in running hyperscale cloud platforms and cloud applications.
High Performance Networking and Storage
Next generation Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) and NVM Express (NVMe) technology provide A1 instances with high throughput, low latency bandwidth interfaces for networking and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).
Built on AWS Nitro System
The AWS Nitro System is a rich collection of building blocks that offloads many of the traditional virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and software to deliver high performance, high availability, and high security while also reducing virtualization overhead.
Product Details
| Model | vCPUs | Memory (GiB) |
Instance Storage | Network Bandwidth (Gbps) |
EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a1.medium | 1 | 2 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
| a1.large | 2 | 4 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
| a1.xlarge | 4 | 8 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
| a1.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | Up to 3,500 |
| a1.4xlarge | 16 | 32 | EBS-Only | Up to 10 | 3,500 |
Customer Success Stories
SmugMug is a service that allows users to upload, store, and share photos and videos. They achieved a 40% cost savings by migrating their photo-serving tier to EC2 A1 instances. SmugMug was able to move their software stack (PHP, Nginx, HAProxy) to A1 instances with minimal effort. And getting everything up and running on A1 instances was like any other EC2 instance for SmugMug.
Geodata processes logs of server activity for both near-real-time and long-term purposes. The processing is performed using custom software written in Python with various open-source libraries, and runs on EC2 along with other AWS technologies such as Lambda and CloudWatch Logs. Geodata found the migration of the EC2 components to EC2 A1 instances to be effortless, and the A1 instances to be optimal.
Reamp, a provider of consulting and media solutions, collects and processes data through multiple 3rd party APIs to deliver meaningful marketing insights for their customers. They seamlessly transitioned their in-house Java application using the same Ubuntu + OpenJDK software environment and found the A1 instances to deliver optimal cost and performance for their data processing workloads. Based on this positive experience with A1 instances they are currently exploring additional workloads for migration.
When we introduced k3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution built for the edge, we needed to run our CI infrastructure on ARM servers. Amazon EC2 A1 instances made a huge difference in our development and test process, and ensured we could efficiently develop, build and release k3s entirely on ARM without the need for cross-compiling and emulation.
Blogs and Articles
Blog
Getting started with the A1 instance
Ali Saidi
Mar 14, 2019
Blog
EC2 A1 Instance with AWS Graviton Processor: Easy Way to Save 40%
Tung Nguyen
Dec 16, 2018
Blog
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM: Now supported on AWS
Scott Herold and Jon Masters
Nov 27, 2018
Blog
AWS Designed Processor: Graviton
James Hamilton
Nov 27, 2018
Blog
EC2 Instances (A1) Powered by Arm-Based AWS Graviton Processors
Jeff Barr
Nov 26, 2018
Recent News
- SmugMug demonstrates Photoserve tier running on A1 instances at Mobile World Congress (Feb’19)
- Amazon Inspector now supports Arm and EC2 A1 instances (Feb’19)
- Debian 9.8 AMI with EC2 A1 support is now available (Feb’19)
- AWS Batch adds support for EC2 A1 instances (Feb ’19)
- Amazon Corretto adds support for Arm64 architecture (Jan’19)
- Fedora AMIs are now available for EC2 A1 instances and Arm64 architecture (Jan’19)
