Cloud users are presented with an abundance of choices when trying to choose Amazon Web Services® (AWS®) cloud services and instances. This report sponsored by Intel demystifies the intricacies of Amazon® Elastic Compute Cloud™ (Amazon EC2®) instance types and helps you select Amazon EC2 instances that deliver the best value.
The challenge of trying to find the right Amazon EC2 instance type for your needs from among a selection of over 600 instance types can lead many users to rely on a recommender system such as AWS Compute Optimizer. However, the convenience of using an automated instance setup may result in higher cloud-computing costs.
Remember the following when choosing cloud instances:
- Time is money in the cloud and selecting a higher-performing processor can help lower your operational and cloud licensing costs.
- Your instance type choice can affect performance per dollar.
- Manually selecting instances maximizes your resource choices and your control over costs.
- Migrating to a newer Intel instance can deliver a host of performance, functionality, and total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits.
Our research indicates that the easiest instance selection method may not deliver the best business value. We suggest that a basic understanding of how Amazon EC2 instance types are named can help you make informed instance choices that align with your organization’s performance requirements, financial constraints, and cloud strategy goals.