Previous Generation Nodes

AWS offers Previous Generation Nodes for users who have optimized their applications around these nodes and have yet to upgrade. Previous Generation Nodes are still fully supported and retain the same features and functionality. Previous Generation Nodes are available through the CLI and API tools.

As part of the AWS Free Tier, you can get started with Amazon ElastiCache for free. Upon signup, new AWS customers receive 750 hours of ElastiCache cache.t2.micro or cache.t3.micro node usage for free for up to 12 months.

The Amazon AWS Free Tier applies to participating services across our global regions. Your free usage under the AWS Free Tier is calculated each month across all regions and automatically applied to your bill – free usage does not accumulate. The AWS Free Tier is not available in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions or the China (Beijing) region at this time.

We encourage you to use the lastest generation of nodes to get the best performance, but we will continue to support Previous Generation Nodes after new nodes launch. If you are currently using a Previous Generation Node and would like to see which one would be a suitable upgrade, see the table below and learn how the latest generation of nodes could benefit you.

M5 instances provide the latest Intel Xeon processors paired with the new Nitro Hypervisor which delivers practically all of the compute and memory resources of the host hardware to your instances. With M5, you get a higher performing CPU with support for AVX-512 instructions, up to 384 GiB of RAM, and up to 25 Gbps of networking bandwidth, all at a lower price point then our previous generation instances.

The R5 family of instances provide a newer Intel Xeon processor, up to 636.61 GiB of RAM, are EBS optimized and support Enhanced Networking with up to 25 Gbps offering lower latency, and low jitter.

T2 and T3 nodes are Burstable Performance Nodes that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline. They are recommended for workloads that don't use the full CPU often or consistently, but occasionally need to burst to higher CPU performance, such as test and development environments, as well as small workloads. Both T2 and T3 nodes are less expensive than m1.small, m1.medium, and t1.micro nodes in most regions.

On-demand | Reserved

Just like our current nodes, Previous Generation Nodes give you access to the capabilities of a familiar Memcached and Redis engines.

Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the time an instance is launched until it is terminated or stopped. Each partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.

Reserved Nodes give you the option to make a low, one-time payment for each node you want to reserve and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly charge for that instance. Amazon ElastiCache provides three Reserved Node types (Light, Medium, and Heavy Utilization Reserved Nodes) that enable you to balance the amount you pay upfront with your effective hourly price.

Based on your application workloads and the amount of time you plan to run them, Amazon ElastiCache Reserved Nodes may provide substantial savings over running on-demand nodes.

Please note the one-time fee per node is non-refundable.

* This is the average monthly payment over the course of the Reserved Instance term. For each month, the actual monthly payment will equal the actual number of hours in that month multiplied by the hourly usage rate or number of seconds in that month multiplied by the hourly usage rate divided by 3600, depending on the Elasticache instance type you run. The hourly usage rate is equivalent to the total average monthly payments over the term of the Reserved Instance divided by the total number of hours (based on a 365 day year) over the term of the Reserved Instance.