When I introduced the Nitro system last year I said:

The Nitro system is a rich collection of building blocks that can be assembled in many different ways, giving us the flexibility to design and rapidly deliver EC2 instance types with an ever-broadening selection of compute, storage, memory, and networking options. We will deliver new instance types more quickly than ever in the months to come, with the goal of helping you to build, migrate, and run even more types of workloads.

Today I am happy to make good on that promise, with the introduction of two additional sizes of the Intel and AMD-powered M5 and R5 instances, including optional NVMe storage. These additional sizes will make it easier for you to find an instance size that is a perfect match for your workload.

M5 Instances

These instances are designed for general-purpose workloads such as web servers, app servers, dev/test environments, gaming, logging, and media processing. Here are the specs:

Instance Name vCPUs RAM Storage EBS-Optimized Bandwidth Network Bandwidth m5.8xlarge

32 128 GiB EBS Only 5 Gbps 10 Gbps m5.16xlarge

64 256 GiB EBS Only 10 Gbps 20 Gbps m5a.8xlarge

32 128 GiB EBS Only 3.5 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps m5a.16xlarge

64 256 GiB EBS Only 7 Gbps 12 Gbps m5d.8xlarge

32 128 GiB 2 x 600 GB NVMe SSD 5 Gbps 10 Gbps m5d.16xlarge

64 256 GiB 4 x 600 GB NVMe SSD 10 Gbps 20 Gbps

If you are currently using m4.10xlarge or m4.16xlarge instances, you now have several upgrade paths.

To learn more, read M5 – The Next Generation of General-Purpose EC2 Instances, New Lower-Cost, AMD-Powered M5a and R5a EC2 Instances, and EC2 Instance Update – M5 Instances with Local NVMe Storage.

R5 Instances

These instances are designed for data mining, in-memory analytics, caching, simulations, and other memory-intensive workloads. Here are the specs:

Instance Name vCPUs RAM Storage EBS-Optimized Bandwidth Network Bandwidth r5.8xlarge

32 256 GiB EBS Only 5 Gbps 10 Gbps r5.16xlarge

64 512 GiB EBS Only 10 Gbps 20 Gbps r5a.8xlarge

32 256 GiB EBS Only 3.5 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps r5a.16xlarge

64 512 GiB EBS Only 7 Gbps 12 Gbps r5d.8xlarge

32 256 GiB 2 x 600 GB NVMe SSD 5 Gbps 10 Gbps r5d.16xlarge

64 512 GiB 4 x 600 GB NVMe SSD 10 Gbps 20 Gbps

If you are currently using r4.8xlarge or r4.16xlarge instances, you now have several easy and powerful upgrade paths.

To learn more, read Amazon EC2 Instance Update – Faster Processors and More Memory.

Things to Know

Here a couple of things to keep in mind when you use these new instances:

Processor Choice – You can choose between Intel and AMD EPYC processors (instance names include an “a”). Read my post, New Lower-Cost AMD-Powered M5a and R5a EC2 Instances, to learn more.

AMIs – You can use the same AMIs that you use with your existing M5 and R5 instances.

Regions – The new sizes are available in all AWS Regions where the existing sizes are already available.

Local NVMe Storage – On “d” instances with local NVMe storage, the devices are encrypted using the XTS-AES-256 block cipher and a unique key. Each key is destroyed when the instance is stopped or terminated. The local devices have the same lifetime as the instance they are attached to, and do not stick around after the instance has been stopped or terminated.

Available Now

The new sizes are available in On-Demand, Spot, and Reserved Instance form and you can start using them today!

— Jeff;