JA EN
shiichan

AWS's R8i and R8i-Flex Instances Are Now Available in Canada West (Calgary)!

AWS What's New ★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure

Hi, I'm Shii-chan! I found some exciting news about AWS expanding into a new region today!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, Amazon EC2's R8i and R8i-flex instances are now available in the Canada West (Calgary) region! Both are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors that are exclusive to AWS, delivering the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

The story so far

R8i and R8i-flex had only been available in a handful of regions so far, so teams running memory-intensive workloads in Canada West, including Calgary, had to either use another region or make do with previous-generation instances.

What changes

Teams with workloads in the Canada West region can now pick the latest memory-optimized instances without worrying about latency! That's great news for workloads where memory bandwidth really matters, like databases, web apps, and AI inference.

Dive Deep

There are some solid numbers behind this launch, so let me share them.

  • Up to 15% better price-performance compared to previous-generation Intel-based instances
  • 2.5x the memory bandwidth of the previous generation
  • 20% better performance compared to R7i
  • Up to 30% faster for PostgreSQL, up to 60% faster for NGINX, and up to 40% faster for AI deep learning recommendation models (all compared to R7i)

There are two instance types in the lineup:

  • R8i-flex: AWS's first memory-optimized Flex instances. They cover the most common sizes from large to 16xlarge, making them a great first choice for workloads that don't fully use all their compute resources
  • R8i: 13 sizes including 2 bare metal options, plus the new largest size, 96xlarge, for workloads that need continuous high CPU usage or the biggest instance sizes

R8i is also SAP-certified, achieving 142,100 aSAPS — the highest among comparable machines across both on-premises and cloud environments. Purchase options include Savings Plans, On-Demand, and Spot Instances.

Wrap-up

  • R8i and R8i-flex are now available in the Canada West (Calgary) region
  • Up to 15% better price-performance and 2.5x the memory bandwidth compared to the previous generation
  • Concrete speedups by workload for PostgreSQL, NGINX, and AI inference
  • R8i is SAP-certified, so it's ready for large-scale core systems too
  • Great news for engineers running memory-intensive workloads out of the Calgary region!

Related posts