Amazon EC2 I4g Instances

Storage-optimized instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors
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Get started with Im4gn and IS4gen instances

Why Amazon EC2 I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen Instances?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances are next-generation, storage-optimized instances designed to run applications that require high throughput and low-latency access to large amounts of data on local SSD storage. They are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and provide up to 30 TB of local NVME storage using AWS Nitro SSDs. AWS Nitro System SSDs are custom built by AWS and offer high I/O performance, low latency, minimal latency variability, and security with always-on encryption.

I4g instances offer similar memory and storage ratios to existing I4i instances and are optimized for workloads with small to medium sized datasets that perform a high mix of random read/write and require very low I/O latency, such as databases and real-time analytics. I4g instances deliver the best compute price performance for a storage optimized instance, and best storage performance per TB for a Graviton-based storage instance. Amazon EC2 I4g instances deliver up to 15% better compute performance compared to similar storage-optimized instances.

Im4gn and Is4gen instances are optimized for workloads that manage larger datasets and need a higher storage density per vCPU such as large-scale online analytical processing (OLAP), distributed file systems and Apache Hadoop distributed file systems. Im4gn and Is4gen instances provide up to 56% lower cost per TB than I4g. Is4gen provides highest density per vCPU of SSD storage and lowest cost per TB in Amazon EC2. In combination with highest network throughput per vCPU among storage-optimized instances, Im4gn and Is4gen instances are suitable for distributed file systems and distributed databases that need to rapidly move data across nodes in a cluster.

Benefits

Im4gn and Is4gen instances based on AWS Nitro SSD offer up to 30TB of local NVMe storage and provide up to 45% and 60% lower cost per TB respectively, compared to I4i instances. Is4gen instances provide the lowest cost per TB of SSD storage in Amazon EC2.

I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors, feature AWS Nitro SSDs, and are built on the AWS Nitro System. AWS Graviton2 processors feature always-on 256-bit DRAM encryption. The data on the AWS Nitro SSDs is always encrypted using ephemeral keys for maximum security. The AWS Nitro System features the AWS Nitro Security Chip, which provides the most secure cloud platform with a minimized attack surface and prohibited administrative access to prevent human error and tampering. These instances also support encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes by default.

I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor that delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances for better overall performance.

With I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances, you can optimize your infrastructure based on your workload needs for the best price performance or for the lowest cost per TB of storage in Amazon EC2. I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances add to the broadest and deepest portfolio of instances in the cloud and provide you with six different instances sizes that feature varying amounts of vCPU, memory, networking, and storage.

AWS Graviton-based instances are supported by popular Linux operating systems, including Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Many popular applications and services for security, monitoring and management, containers, and CI/CD from AWS and software partners also support AWS Graviton-based instances. The AWS Graviton Ready program provides customers with certified solutions from partner software vendors that can be used on Graviton-based instances.

Features

AWS Graviton2 Processors are custom designed by AWS and based on 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores for optimized performance and cost. AWS Graviton2 Processors deliver 7x more performance, 4x more compute cores, 5x faster memory, and 2x larger caches versus first-generation AWS Graviton Processors.

I4g, Im4gn, and Is4gen instances feature AWS Nitro SSDs that are custom built by AWS to provide up to 60% lower I/O latency and up to 75% reduced latency variability compared to third-generation storage-optimized instances for workloads sensitive to I/O performance. Im4gn instances provide up to 100 Gbps networking bandwidth. I4g and Im4gn instances offer support for Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA).

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.

Featuring AWS Nitro SSD

AWS Nitro SSDs build on the AWS silicon innovation with the AWS Nitro System and are custom-designed to deliver the best storage performance for your I/O intensive workloads running in Amazon EC2. Traditionally, SSDs maximize the peak read and write I/O performance. AWS Nitro SSDs are architected to minimize latency and latency variability of I/O intensive workloads, such as SQL and NoSQL databases, search engines, distributed file systems, and data analytics that continually read and write from the SSDs in a sustained manner, for fast and more predictable performance. AWS Nitro SSDs deliver up to 60% lower storage I/O latency and up to 75% reduced storage I/O latency variability compared to third generation EC2 storage-optimized instances. Data on the AWS Nitro SSDs is always encrypted using ephemeral keys. AWS Nitro SSDs also help AWS innovate faster by providing firmware updates at cloud scale and speed. AWS Nitro SSDs support Torn Write Prevention (TWP), which improves database performance and service level agreements (SLAs) without compromising data resiliencies, for workloads using MySQL and MariaDB database.