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EC2's Network/EBS-Optimized Instances Finally Land in Tokyo and Europe!

AWS What's New ★★★ View Markdown
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Hi everyone, it's Shii! Today's news is about EC2 instances landing in more regions. It might sound low-key, but it's actually a pretty welcome update.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS's "What's New" post, Amazon EC2's R8in, R8ib, R8idn, and R8idb instances are now available in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland) regions. These instances run on custom sixth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors paired with the latest sixth-generation AWS Nitro cards, delivering up to 43% better compute performance per vCPU compared to the previous-generation R6in and R6idn instances.

  • R8in / R8idn: 600 Gbps of network bandwidth, the highest among enhanced-networking EC2 instances
  • R8ib / R8idb: up to 300 Gbps of EBS bandwidth, the highest among non-accelerated-compute EC2 instances

As for use cases: R8in fits real-time big data analytics, large-scale distributed in-memory caches, caching fleets for AI/ML clusters, and telco applications like 5G User Plane Function (UPF). R8idn suits network-intensive general-purpose workloads that need local storage, such as distributed compute, data analytics, and high-performance file systems.

R8ib is a good match for workloads where block storage performance matters most, like high-performance file systems and NoSQL databases, while R8idb targets storage-intensive general-purpose workloads such as large commercial databases, data lakes, and NoSQL databases that need both high EBS throughput and low-latency local NVMe storage.

Why it matters

Network and storage bandwidth are common bottlenecks for real-time analytics and distributed systems. The R8 family is built specifically to strengthen that area, so teams running these kinds of workloads get a straightforward performance win just by moving up from the previous generation. Until now these instances were only available in US regions, so extending to Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Ireland finally brings them within reach for teams based in Asia and Europe.

What changes

Teams operating services in Asia Pacific (Tokyo) or Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland) can now use R8in, R8ib, R8idn, and R8idb directly in their own region. On top of that, the 48xlarge, 96xlarge, metal-48xl, and metal-96xl sizes support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) networking, so you can also aim for lower latency and better cluster performance on tightly coupled clusters.

Wrap-up

  • R8in, R8ib, R8idn, and R8idb are now available in Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland)
  • Current availability spans US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Europe (Spain, Frankfurt, Ireland)
  • Up to 43% better per-vCPU performance than the previous generation (R6in/R6idn); R8in/R8idn offer 600 Gbps networking, R8ib/R8idb offer up to 300 Gbps of EBS bandwidth
  • Larger sizes support EFA networking too
  • Available via On-Demand, Spot, and Savings Plans — great news if you're running network- or storage-heavy workloads out of Asia or Europe

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