Network-Optimized EC2 C8ine Lands in Frankfurt With 2.5x Packet Performance!

Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan! Today I've got news that a super network-focused EC2 instance is now available in Europe too!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to the AWS What's New post, the Amazon EC2 C8ine instance is now available in the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) region!

C8ine is a "network optimized" instance type. It's a special one built for network-heavy workloads that need to handle lots of packets. It used to be limited to a few regions, and now Frankfurt joins the club!

The story so far

Until now, C8ine was available in three regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

So customers in Europe who wanted to use C8ine had to pick a faraway region, which was a little tricky in terms of latency and data residency.

What changes

With Frankfurt added, customers in Europe can now run C8ine in a region close to them!

Here are the workloads C8ine is designed for:

• Security and network virtual appliances, such as virtual firewalls and load balancers
• Telco 5G UPF (User Plane Function) workloads

These all need to process packets at a blazing pace, so they pair perfectly with the network-focused C8ine.

Dive Deep

Let's take a closer look at what's inside C8ine!

• The processor is a custom sixth generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor, available only on AWS
• Equipped with the latest sixth generation AWS Nitro cards
• Up to 43% higher performance compared to the previous generation C6in instances
• Up to 2.5 times higher packet performance per vCPU versus prior generation network optimized instances
• Up to 2x higher network throughput for traffic going through Internet gateways compared to existing C6in instances

The standout point is how much the network performance numbers have grown!

The available regions are the newly added Europe (Frankfurt), plus US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

Pricing is available via Savings Plans and On-Demand instances. If you want more detailed specs, check out the Amazon EC2 C8i instance pages!

Wrap-up

• The network-optimized Amazon EC2 C8ine instance is now available in the Europe (Frankfurt) region
• Powered by a custom sixth generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor and sixth generation Nitro cards
• Up to 43% higher performance than C6in, up to 2.5x packet performance per vCPU, and up to 2x network throughput
• Aimed at network-focused workloads like virtual firewalls, load balancers, and 5G UPF

This one hits home for everyone running network virtual appliances or 5G infrastructure in Europe!