General purpose instances

General purpose instances provide a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources, and can be used for a wide range of workloads.

M5 and M5a instances

These instances provide an ideal cloud infrastructure, offering a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources for a broad range of applications that are deployed in the cloud. They are well-suited for the following:

• Small and midsize databases

• Data processing tasks that require additional memory

• Caching fleets

• Backend servers for SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, cluster computing, and other enterprise applications

For more information, see Amazon EC2 M5 Instances.

Bare metal instances, such as m5.metal, m5n.metal, and m5zn.metal provide your applications with direct access to physical resources of the host server, such as processors and memory.

M5zn

These instances are ideal for applications that benefit from extremely high single-thread performance, high throughput, and low latency networking. They are well-suited for the following:

• Gaming

• High performance computing

• Simulation modeling

For more information, see Amazon EC2 M5 Instances.

M6g and M6gd instances

These instances are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and deliver balanced compute, memory, and networking for a broad range a general purpose workloads. They are well suited for the following:

• Application servers

• Microservices

• Gaming servers

• Midsize data stores

• Caching fleets

Bare metal instances such as m6g.metal provide your applications with direct access to physical resources of the host server, such as processors and memory. For more information, see Amazon EC2 M6g Instances.

M6i and M6id instances

These instances are well suited for general-purpose workloads such as the following:

• Application servers and web servers

• Microservices

• High performance computing

• App development

• Small and midsize databases

• Caching fleets

Bare metal instances such as m6i.metal provide your applications with direct access to physical resources of the host server, such as processors and memory.

For more information, see Amazon EC2 M6i Instances.

Mac1 instances

These instances are powered by Apple Mac mini computers. They provide up to 10 Gbps of network bandwidth and 8 Gbps EBS bandwidth through high-speed Thunderbolt 3 connections. They are well suited to develop, build, test, and sign applications for Apple devices, such as iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

For more information, see Amazon EC2 Mac instances.

T2, T3, T3a, and T4g instances

These instances provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst to a higher level when required by your workload. An Unlimited instance can sustain high CPU performance for any period of time whenever required. For more information, see Burstable performance instances. They are well-suited for the following:

• Websites and web applications

• Code repositories

• Development, build, test, and staging environments

• Microservices

For more information, see Amazon EC2 T2 Instances, Amazon EC2 T3 Instances, and Amazon EC2 T4g Instances.

Contents

• Hardware specifications
• Instance performance
• Network performance
• Amazon EBS I/O performance
• Instance store volume I/O performance
• Release notes
• Burstable performance instances

Hardware specifications

The following is a summary of the hardware specifications for general purpose instances. A virtual central processing unit (vCPU) represents a portion of the physical CPU assigned to a virtual machine (VM). For x86 instances, there are two vCPUs per core. For Graviton instances, there is one vCPU per core.

Instance type	Default vCPUs	Memory (GiB)
m4.large	2	8
m4.xlarge	4	16
m4.2xlarge	8	32
m4.4xlarge	16	64
m4.10xlarge	40	160
m4.16xlarge	64	256
m5.large	2	8
m5.xlarge	4	16
m5.2xlarge	8	32
m5.4xlarge	16	64
m5.8xlarge	32	128
m5.12xlarge	48	192
m5.16xlarge	64	256
m5.24xlarge	96	384
m5.metal	96	384
m5a.large	2	8
m5a.xlarge	4	16
m5a.2xlarge	8	32
m5a.4xlarge	16	64
m5a.8xlarge	32	128
m5a.12xlarge	48	192
m5a.16xlarge	64	256
m5a.24xlarge	96	384
m5ad.large	2	8
m5ad.xlarge	4	16
m5ad.2xlarge	8	32
m5ad.4xlarge	16	64
m5ad.8xlarge	32	128
m5ad.12xlarge	48	192
m5ad.16xlarge	64	256
m5ad.24xlarge	96	384
m5d.large	2	8
m5d.xlarge	4	16
m5d.2xlarge	8	32
m5d.4xlarge	16	64
m5d.8xlarge	32	128
m5d.12xlarge	48	192
m5d.16xlarge	64	256
m5d.24xlarge	96	384
m5d.metal	96	384
m5dn.large	2	8
m5dn.xlarge	4	16
m5dn.2xlarge	8	32
m5dn.4xlarge	16	64
m5dn.8xlarge	32	128
m5dn.12xlarge	48	192
m5dn.16xlarge	64	256
m5dn.24xlarge	96	384
m5dn.metal	96	384
m5n.large	2	8
m5n.xlarge	4	16
m5n.2xlarge	8	32
m5n.4xlarge	16	64
m5n.8xlarge	32	128
m5n.12xlarge	48	192
m5n.16xlarge	64	256
m5n.24xlarge	96	384
m5n.metal	96	384
m5zn.large	2	8
m5zn.xlarge	4	16
m5zn.2xlarge	8	32
m5zn.3xlarge	12	48
m5zn.6xlarge	24	96
m5zn.12xlarge	48	192
m5zn.metal	48	192
m6a.large	2	8
m6a.xlarge	4	16
m6a.2xlarge	8	32
m6a.4xlarge	16	64
m6a.8xlarge	32	128
m6a.12xlarge	48	192
m6a.16xlarge	64	256
m6a.24xlarge	96	256
m6a.32xlarge	128	256
m6a.48xlarge	192	256
m6a.metal	192	256
m6g.medium	1	4
m6g.large	2	8
m6g.xlarge	4	16
m6g.2xlarge	8	32
m6g.4xlarge	16	64
m6g.8xlarge	32	128
m6g.12xlarge	48	192
m6g.16xlarge	64	256
m6g.metal	64	256
m6gd.medium	1	4
m6gd.large	2	8
m6gd.xlarge	4	16
m6gd.2xlarge	8	32
m6gd.4xlarge	16	64
m6gd.8xlarge	32	128
m6gd.12xlarge	48	192
m6gd.16xlarge	64	256
m6gd.metal	64	256
m6i.large	2	8
m6i.xlarge	4	16
m6i.2xlarge	8	32
m6i.4xlarge	16	64
m6i.8xlarge	32	128
m6i.12xlarge	48	192
m6i.16xlarge	64	256
m6i.24xlarge	96	384
m6i.32xlarge	128	512
m6i.metal	128	512
m6id.large	2	8
m6id.xlarge	4	16
m6id.2xlarge	8	32
m6id.4xlarge	16	64
m6id.8xlarge	32	128
m6id.12xlarge	48	192
m6id.16xlarge	64	256
m6id.24xlarge	96	384
m6id.32xlarge	128	512
m6id.metal	128	512
mac1.metal	12	32
t2.nano	1	0.5
t2.micro	1	1
t2.small	1	2
t2.medium	2	4
t2.large	2	8
t2.xlarge	4	16
t2.2xlarge	8	32
t3.nano	2	0.5
t3.micro	2	1
t3.small	2	2
t3.medium	2	4
t3.large	2	8
t3.xlarge	4	16
t3.2xlarge	8	32
t3a.nano	2	0.5
t3a.micro	2	1
t3a.small	2	2
t3a.medium	2	4
t3a.large	2	8
t3a.xlarge	4	16
t3a.2xlarge	8	32
t4g.nano	2	0.5
t4g.micro	2	1
t4g.small	2	2
t4g.medium	2	4
t4g.large	2	8
t4g.xlarge	4	16
t4g.2xlarge	8	32

The general purpose instances use the following processors.

AWS Graviton processors

• AWS Graviton2: M6g, M6gd, T4g

AMD processors

• AMD EPYC 7000 series processors (AMD EPYC 7571): M5a, M5ad, T3a

• 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors (AMD EPYC 7R13): M6a

Intel processors

• Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Haswell E5-2676 v3 or Broadwell E5-2686 v4): M4, T2

• Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Skylake 8175M or Cascade Lake 8259CL): M5, M5d, T3

• 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake 8259CL): M5n

• 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Cascade Lake 8252C): M5zn

• 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake 8375C): M6i, M6id

For more information, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types.

Instance performance

EBS-optimized instances enable you to get consistently high performance for your EBS volumes by eliminating contention between Amazon EBS I/O and other network traffic from your instance. Some general purpose instances are EBS-optimized by default at no additional cost. For more information, see Amazon EBS–optimized instances.

Some general purpose instance types provide the ability to control processor C-states and P-states on Linux. C-states control the sleep levels that a core can enter when it is inactive, while P-states control the desired performance (in CPU frequency) from a core. For more information, see Processor state control for your EC2 instance.

Network performance

You can enable enhanced networking on supported instance types to provide lower latencies, lower network jitter, and higher packet-per-second (PPS) performance. Most applications do not consistently need a high level of network performance, but can benefit from access to increased bandwidth when they send or receive data. For more information, see Enhanced networking on Linux.

The following is a summary of network performance for general purpose instances that support enhanced networking.

Instance type	Network performance	Enhanced networking
T2	Up to 1 Gbps	Not supported
T3 | T3a | T4g	Up to 5 Gbps †	ENA
m4.large	Moderate	Intel 82599 VF
m4.xlarge | m4.2xlarge | m4.4xlarge	High	Intel 82599 VF
m5.4xlarge and smaller | m5a.8xlarge and smaller | m5ad.8xlarge and smaller | m5d.4xlarge and smaller | m6g.4xlarge and smaller | m6gd.4xlarge and smaller	Up to 10 Gbps †	ENA
m4.10xlarge	10 Gbps	Intel 82599 VF
m5.8xlarge | m5a.12xlarge | m5ad.12xlarge | m5d.8xlarge | m5d.12xlarge | mac1.metal	10 Gbps	ENA
m5.12xlarge | m5a.16xlarge | m5ad.16xlarge | m6g.8xlarge | m6gd.8xlarge	12 Gbps	ENA
m6a.4xlarge and smaller | m6i.4xlarge and smaller | m6id.4xlarge and smaller	Up to 12.5 Gbps †	ENA
m6a.8xlarge | m6i.8xlarge | m6id.8xlarge	12.5 Gbps	ENA
m6a.12xlarge | m6i.12xlarge | m6id.12xlarge	18.75 Gbps	ENA
m5.16xlarge | m5a.24xlarge | m5ad.24xlarge | m5d.16xlarge | m6g.12xlarge | m6gd.12xlarge	20 Gbps	ENA
m5dn.4xlarge and smaller | m5n.4xlarge and smaller | m5zn.3xlarge and smaller	Up to 25 Gbps †	ENA
m4.16xlarge | m5.24xlarge | m5.metal | m5d.24xlarge | m5d.metal | m5dn.8xlarge | m5n.8xlarge | m6a.16xlarge | m6g.16xlarge | m6g.metal | m6gd.16xlarge | m6gd.metal | m6i.16xlarge | m6id.16xlarge	25 Gbps	ENA
m6a.24xlarge | m6i.24xlarge | m6id.24xlarge	37.5 Gbps	ENA
m5dn.12xlarge | m5n.12xlarge | m5zn.6xlarge | m6a.32xlarge | m6a.48xlarge | m6a.metal | m6i.32xlarge | m6i.metal | m6id.32xlarge | m6id.metal	50 Gbps	ENA
m5dn.16xlarge | m5n.16xlarge	75 Gbps	ENA
m5dn.24xlarge | m5dn.metal | m5n.24xlarge | m5n.metal | m5zn.12xlarge | m5zn.metal	100 Gbps	ENA, EFA

† These instances have a baseline bandwidth and can use a network I/O credit mechanism to burst beyond their baseline bandwidth on a best effort basis. For more information, see instance network bandwidth.

Instance type	Baseline bandwidth (Gbps)	Burst bandwidth (Gbps)
m5.large	.75	10
m5.xlarge	1.25	10
m5.2xlarge	2.5	10
m5.4xlarge	5	10
m5a.large	.75	10
m5a.xlarge	1.25	10
m5a.2xlarge	2.5	10
m5a.4xlarge	5	10
m5ad.large	.75	10
m5ad.xlarge	1.25	10
m5ad.2xlarge	2.5	10
m5ad.4xlarge	5	10
m5d.large	.75	10
m5d.xlarge	1.25	10
m5d.2xlarge	2.5	10
m5d.4xlarge	5	10
m5dn.large	2.1	25
m5dn.xlarge	4.1	25
m5dn.2xlarge	8.125	25
m5dn.4xlarge	16.25	25
m5n.large	2.1	25
m5n.xlarge	4.1	25
m5n.2xlarge	8.125	25
m5n.4xlarge	16.25	25
m5zn.large	3	25
m5zn.xlarge	5	25
m5zn.2xlarge	10	25
m5zn.3xlarge	15	25
m6a.large	.781	12.5
m6a.xlarge	1.562	12.5
m6a.2xlarge	3.125	12.5
m6a.4xlarge	6.25	12.5
m6g.medium	.5	10
m6g.large	.75	10
m6g.xlarge	1.25	10
m6g.2xlarge	2.5	10
m6g.4xlarge	5	10
m6gd.medium	.5	10
m6gd.large	.75	10
m6gd.xlarge	1.25	10
m6gd.2xlarge	2.5	10
m6gd.4xlarge	5	10
m6i.large	.781	12.5
m6i.xlarge	1.562	12.5
m6i.2xlarge	3.125	12.5
m6i.4xlarge	6.25	12.5
m6id.large	.781	12.5
m6id.xlarge	1.562	12.5
m6id.2xlarge	3.125	12.5
m6id.4xlarge	6.25	12.5
t3.nano	.032	5
t3.micro	.064	5
t3.small	.128	5
t3.medium	.256	5
t3.large	.512	5
t3.xlarge	1.024	5
t3.2xlarge	2.048	5
t3a.nano	.032	5
t3a.micro	.064	5
t3a.small	.128	5
t3a.medium	.256	5
t3a.large	.512	5
t3a.xlarge	1.024	5
t3a.2xlarge	2.048	5
t4g.nano	.032	5
t4g.micro	.064	5
t4g.small	.128	5
t4g.medium	.256	5
t4g.large	.512	5
t4g.xlarge	1.024	5
t4g.2xlarge	2.048	5

Amazon EBS I/O performance

Amazon EBS optimized instances use an optimized configuration stack and provide additional, dedicated capacity for Amazon EBS I/O. This optimization provides the best performance for your Amazon EBS volumes by minimizing contention between Amazon EBS I/O and other traffic from your instance.

For more information, see Amazon EBS–optimized instances.

Instance store volume I/O performance

If you use a Linux AMI with kernel version 4.4 or later and use all the SSD-based instance store volumes available to your instance, you can get up to the IOPS (4,096 byte block size) performance listed in the following table (at queue depth saturation). Otherwise, you get lower IOPS performance.

Instance Size	100% Random Read IOPS	Write IOPS
m5ad.large	30,000	15,000
m5ad.xlarge	59,000	29,000
m5ad.2xlarge	117,000	57,000
m5ad.4xlarge	234,000	114,000
m5ad.8xlarge	466,666	233,333
m5ad.12xlarge	700,000	340,000
m5ad.16xlarge	933,333	466,666
m5ad.24xlarge	1,400,000	680,000
m5d.large	30,000	15,000
m5d.xlarge	59,000	29,000
m5d.2xlarge	117,000	57,000
m5d.4xlarge	234,000	114,000
m5d.8xlarge	466,666	233,333
m5d.12xlarge	700,000	340,000
m5d.16xlarge	933,333	466,666
m5d.24xlarge	1,400,000	680,000
m5d.metal	1,400,000	680,000
m5dn.large	30,000	15,000
m5dn.xlarge	59,000	29,000
m5dn.2xlarge	117,000	57,000
m5dn.4xlarge	234,000	114,000
m5dn.8xlarge	466,666	233,333
m5dn.12xlarge	700,000	340,000
m5dn.16xlarge	933,333	466,666
m5dn.24xlarge	1,400,000	680,000
m5dn.metal	1,400,000	680,000
m6gd.medium	13,438	5,625
m6gd.large	26,875	11,250
m6gd.xlarge	53,750	22,500
m6gd.2xlarge	107,500	45,000
m6gd.4xlarge	215,000	90,000
m6gd.8xlarge	430,000	180,000
m6gd.12xlarge	645,000	270,000
m6gd.16xlarge	860,000	360,000
m6gd.metal	860,000	360,000
m6id.large	33,542	16,771
m6id.xlarge	67,083	33,542
m6id.2xlarge	134,167	67,084
m6id.4xlarge	268,333	134,167
m6id.8xlarge	536,666	268,334
m6id.12xlarge	804,999	402,501
m6id.16xlarge	1,073,332	536,668
m6id.24xlarge	1,609,998	805,002
m6id.32xlarge	2,146,664	1,073,336
m6id.metal	2,146,664	1,073,336

As you fill the SSD-based instance store volumes for your instance, the number of write IOPS that you can achieve decreases. This is due to the extra work the SSD controller must do to find available space, rewrite existing data, and erase unused space so that it can be rewritten. This process of garbage collection results in internal write amplification to the SSD, expressed as the ratio of SSD write operations to user write operations. This decrease in performance is even larger if the write operations are not in multiples of 4,096 bytes or not aligned to a 4,096-byte boundary. If you write a smaller amount of bytes or bytes that are not aligned, the SSD controller must read the surrounding data and store the result in a new location. This pattern results in significantly increased write amplification, increased latency, and dramatically reduced I/O performance.

SSD controllers can use several strategies to reduce the impact of write amplification. One such strategy is to reserve space in the SSD instance storage so that the controller can more efficiently manage the space available for write operations. This is called over-provisioning. The SSD-based instance store volumes provided to an instance don't have any space reserved for over-provisioning. To reduce write amplification, we recommend that you leave 10% of the volume unpartitioned so that the SSD controller can use it for over-provisioning. This decreases the storage that you can use, but increases performance even if the disk is close to full capacity.

For instance store volumes that support TRIM, you can use the TRIM command to notify the SSD controller whenever you no longer need data that you've written. This provides the controller with more free space, which can reduce write amplification and increase performance. For more information, see Instance store volume TRIM support.

Release notes

• Instances built on the Nitro System, M4, t2.large and larger, t3.large and larger, and t3a.large and larger instance types require 64-bit HVM AMIs. They have high-memory, and require a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of that capacity. HVM AMIs provide superior performance in comparison to paravirtual (PV) AMIs on high-memory instance types. In addition, you must use an HVM AMI to take advantage of enhanced networking.

• Instances built on the Nitro System have the following requirements:

  • NVMe drivers must be installed

  • Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) drivers must be installed

  The following Linux AMIs meet these requirements:

  • Amazon Linux 2

  • Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03

  • Ubuntu 14.04 (with linux-aws kernel) or later

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 or later

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 or later

  • CentOS 7.4.1708 or later

  • FreeBSD 11.1 or later

  • Debian GNU/Linux 9 or later

• Instances with an AWS Graviton Processor have the following requirements:

  • Use an AMI for the 64-bit Arm architecture.

  • Support booting through UEFI with ACPI tables and support ACPI hot-plug of PCI devices.

  The following Linux AMIs meet these requirements:

  • Amazon Linux 2 (64-bit Arm)

  • Ubuntu 16.04 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 or later (64-bit Arm)

  • Debian 10 or later (64-bit Arm)

• To get the best performance from your M6i instances, ensure that they have ENA driver version 2.2.9 or later. Using an ENA driver earlier than version 1.2 with these instances causes network interface attachment failures. The following AMIs have a compatible ENA driver.

  • Amazon Linux 2 with kernel 4.14.186

  • Ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.4.0-1025-aws

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 with kernel 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.ARCH

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 with kernel 5.3.18-24.15.1

• Amazon EC2 Mac instances support macOS Mojave (version 10.14), macOS Catalina (version 10.15), and macOS Big Sur (version 11).

• Instances built on the Nitro System support a maximum of 28 attachments, including network interfaces, EBS volumes, and NVMe instance store volumes. For more information, see Nitro System volume limits.

• Launching a bare metal instance boots the underlying server, which includes verifying all hardware and firmware components. This means that it can take 20 minutes from the time the instance enters the running state until it becomes available over the network.

• To attach or detach EBS volumes or secondary network interfaces from a bare metal instance requires PCIe native hotplug support. Amazon Linux 2 and the latest versions of the Amazon Linux AMI support PCIe native hotplug, but earlier versions do not. You must enable the following Linux kernel configuration options:

  CONFIG_HOTPLUG_PCI_PCIE=y
  CONFIG_PCIEASPM=y

• Bare metal instances use a PCI-based serial device rather than an I/O port-based serial device. The upstream Linux kernel and the latest Amazon Linux AMIs support this device. Bare metal instances also provide an ACPI SPCR table to enable the system to automatically use the PCI-based serial device. The latest Windows AMIs automatically use the PCI-based serial device.

• Instances built on the Nitro System should have system-logind or acpid installed to support clean shutdown through API requests.

• There is a limit on the total number of instances that you can launch in a Region, and there are additional limits on some instance types. For more information, see How many instances can I run in Amazon EC2? in the Amazon EC2 FAQ.