Amazon EC2 I4i Instances
The highest local storage performance in Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 I4i instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and feature up to 30 TB of local AWS Nitro SSD storage. Nitro SSDs are NVMe-based and custom-designed by AWS to provide high I/O performance, low latency, minimal latency variability, and security with always-on encryption. I4i instances deliver up to 30% better compute price performance, 60% lower storage I/O latency, and 75% lower storage I/O latency variability compared to I3 instances.
These instances are a great fit for databases such as MySQL, Oracle DB, and Microsoft SQL Server, and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, Couchbase, Aerospike, and Redis where low latency local NVMe storage is needed in order to meet application service level agreements (SLAs).
Benefits
Lower TCO
I4i instances deliver up to 30% better compute price performance than I3 instances. I4i instances also offer a new size with up to 128 vCPUs and 1,024 GiB of memory, which is twice the size of the largest I3 instance. The higher instance size lets you to consolidate workloads on fewer instances and save on per core licensing costs.
Faster application performance
While some SSD-based instances are created to achieve high results for benchmark tests that may not represent real workloads, I4i instances are designed to increase the number of transactions that can be processed per second (TPS). This allows you to meet or exceed application service level agreements (SLAs) and deliver higher performance to end-users.
Maximized resource efficiency
I4i 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.
Features
Powered by 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors
I4i instances are powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code named Ice Lake) with an all-core turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz, and include support for always-on memory encryption using Intel Total Memory Encryption (TME).
High performance remote storage and networking
I4i instances support 40 Gbps bandwidth to Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) in the largest size and up to 10 Gbps in the four smallest sizes, which is twice that of I3 instances. I4i instances also support up to 75 Gbps networking bandwidth, which is three times more than I3 instances.
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.
Featuring AWS Nitro SSDs
AWS Nitro SSDs build on AWS’s 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 which continuously 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 enable AWS to 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.
Product Details
| Instance Size | vCPU | Memory (GiB) | Instance Storage (GB) | Network Bandwidth (Gbps) | EBS Bandwidth (Gbps) |
| i4i.large | 2 | 16 | 1 x 468 AWS Nitro SSD | Up to 10 | Up to 10 |
| i4i.xlarge | 4 | 32 | 1 x 937 AWS Nitro SSD | Up to 10 | Up to 10 |
| i4i.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | 1 x 1,875 AWS Nitro SSD | Up to 12 | Up to 10 |
| i4i.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | 1 x 3,750 AWS Nitro SSD | Up to 25 | Up to 10 |
| i4i.8xlarge | 32 | 256 | 2 x 3,750 AWS Nitro SSD | 18.75 | 10 |
| i4i.16xlarge | 64 | 512 | 4 x 3,750 AWS Nitro SSD | 37.5 | 20 |
| i4i.32xlarge | 128 | 1,024 | 8 x 3,750 AWS Nitro SSD | 75 | 40 |
| i4i.metal | 128 | 1,024 | 8 x 3,750 AWS Nitro SSD | 75 | 40 |
Customers
Redis
Redis Enterprise powers mission-critical apps and services for over 8,000 organizations globally by enabling software teams to create a high-performance data layer for the real-time world.
"We are thrilled with the performance we are seeing from the Amazon EC2 I4i instances which use the new low latency AWS Nitro SSDs. Our testing shows I4i instances delivering an astonishing 2.9x higher query throughput than the previous generation I3 instances. We have also tested with various read and write mixes, and observed consistent and linearly scaling performance."
Yiftach Shoolman, Co-Founder and CTO - Redis
ScyllaDB
ScyllaDB is a high-performance NoSQL database that can take advantage of high performance cloud computing instances.
"When we tested I4i instances, we observed up to 2.7x increase in throughput per vCPU compared to I3 instances for reads. With an even mix of reads and writes, we observed 2.2x higher throughput per vCPU, with a 40% reduction in average latency than I3 instances. We are excited for the incredible performance and value these new instances will enable for our customers going forward."
Avi Kivity, Co-Founder and CTO - ScyllaDB
Amazon Quicksight
"I4i instances have demonstrated superior performance over previous generation I3 instances, with a 30% improvement across operations. We look forward to using I4i to further elevate performance for our customers."
Tracy Daugherty, General Manager - Amazon QuickSight
Aerospike
"Aerospike running on EC2 I3en instances already delivers industry leading real-time performance for read/write workloads. With EC2 I4i instances, we have observed a 70% increase in performance on read workloads alone. This combined with the proven ability of Aerospike to deliver high throughput of writes means Aerospike running on I4i instances will deliver the best price/performance in the industry for real-time access to petabytes of data running on EC2."
Srini Srinivasan, CTO and Founder - Aerospike
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