SUS05-BP02 Use instance types with the least impact - AWS Well-Architected Framework

SUS05-BP02 Use instance types with the least impact

Continually monitor and use new instance types to take advantage of energy efficiency improvements.

Common anti-patterns:

  • You are only using one family of instances.

  • You are only using x86 instances.

  • You specify one instance type in your Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling configuration.

  • You use AWS instances in a manner that they were not designed for (for example, you use compute-optimized instances for a memory-intensive workload).

  • You do not evaluate new instance types regularly.

  • You do not check recommendations from AWS rightsizing tools such as AWS Compute Optimizer.

Benefits of establishing this best practice: By using energy-efficient and right-sized instances, you are able to greatly reduce the environmental impact and cost of your workload.

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Medium

Implementation guidance

Using efficient instances in cloud workload is crucial for lower resource usage and cost-effectiveness. Continually monitor the release of new instance types and take advantage of energy efficiency improvements, including those instance types designed to support specific workloads such as machine learning training and inference, and video transcoding.

Implementation steps

Resources

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