As the largest cloud computing company Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers various options to use compute-power on an “as-needed” basis. You can choose what size and type of machine, what number of machines – and you can choose a price model where you are “bidding” for the resource. This means you might have to wait longer to get it, but you will get an impressive discount! You can choose your machines from the AWS dashboard.
Here is a comparison of the current prices for “General Purpose – Current Generation” AWS machines in the EU (Frankfurt) region (as of 13/04/2017):
| vCPU | ECU | Memory (GiB) | Instance Storage (GB) | Linux / UNIX Usage | On-Demand Price per Hour | Spot Price per Hour | Saving % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| m4.large | 2 | 6.5 | 8 | EBS Only | $0.129 | $0.0336 | 74 |
| m4.xlarge | 4 | 13 | 16 | EBS Only | $0.257 | $0.0375 | 85 |
| m4.2xlarge | 8 | 26 | 32 | EBS Only | $0.513 | $0.1199 | 77 |
| m4.4xlarge | 16 | 53.5 | 64 | EBS Only | $1.026 | $0.3536 | 66 |
| m4.10xlarge | 40 | 124.5 | 160 | EBS Only | $2.565 | $1.1214 | 56 |
| m4.16xlarge | 64 | 188 | 256 | EBS Only | $4.104 | $0.503 | 88 |
| m3.medium | 1 | 3 | 3.75 | 1×4 SSD | $0.079 | $0.0114 | 86 |
| m3.large | 2 | 6.5 | 7.5 | 1×32 SSD | $0.158 | $0.0227 | 86 |
| m3.xlarge | 4 | 13 | 15 | 2×40 SSD | $0.315 | $0.047 | 85 |
| m3.2xlarge | 8 | 26 | 30 | 2×80 SSD | $0.632 | $0.1504 | 76 |
This only shows a selection of machine options and the prices obviously change over time – but the message should be clear…
Machine categories / families
To get an idea what the different machines are here are the current categories:
| Instance Family | Current Generation Instance Types |
|---|---|
| General purpose | t2.nano, t2.micro, t2.small, t2.medium, t2.large, t2.xlarge, t2.2xlarge, m4.large, m4.xlarge, m4.2xlarge, m4.4xlarge, m4.10xlarge, m4.16xlarge, m5.large, m5.xlarge, m5.2xlarge, m5.4xlarge, m5.12xlarge, m5.24xlarge |
| Compute optimized | c4.large, c4.xlarge, c4.2xlarge, c4.4xlarge, c4.8xlarge, c5.large, c5.xlarge, c5.2xlarge, c5.4xlarge, c5.9xlarge, c5.18xlarge |
| Memory optimized | r4.large, r4.xlarge, r4.2xlarge, r4.4xlarge, r4.8xlarge, r4.16xlarge, x1.16xlarge, x1.32xlarge, x1e.xlarge, x1e.2xlarge, x1e.4xlarge, x1e.8xlarge, x1e.16xlarge, x1e.32xlarge |
| Storage optimized | d2.xlarge, d2.2xlarge, d2.4xlarge, d2.8xlarge, h1.2xlarge, h1.4xlarge, h1.8xlarge, h1.16xlarge, i3.large, i3.xlarge, i3.2xlarge, i3.4xlarge, i3.8xlarge, i3.16xlarge |
| Accelerated computing | f1.2xlarge, f1.16xlarge, g3.4xlarge, g3.8xlarge, g3.16xlarge, p2.xlarge, p2.8xlarge, p2.16xlarge, p3.2xlarge, p3.8xlarge, p3.16xlarge |
and slightly older models:
| Instance Family | Previous Generation Instance Types |
|---|---|
| General purpose | m1.small, m1.medium, m1.large, m1.xlarge, m3.medium, m3.large, m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge |
| Compute optimized | c1.medium, c1.xlarge, cc2.8xlarge, c3.large, c3.xlarge, c3.2xlarge, c3.4xlarge, c3.8xlarge |
| Memory optimized | m2.xlarge, m2.2xlarge, m2.4xlarge, cr1.8xlarge, r3.large, r3.xlarge, r3.2xlarge, r3.4xlarge, r3.8xlarge |
| Storage optimized | hs1.8xlarge, i2.xlarge, i2.2xlarge, i2.4xlarge, i2.8xlarge |
| GPU optimized | g2.2xlarge, g2.8xlarge |
| Micro | t1.micro |
Source: AWS
