EC2 Instance Types - Overview

EC2 instance types are like different flavors of virtual machines, each designed for specific use cases. Choosing the right instance type is crucial for optimizing performance and cost.

Key takeaways​

• Decoding the Name: Every instance name is like a little sentence that tells you about its life story: (e.g, m5.2xlarge):
  • M (Instance Class): The family name. Tells you what it's optimized for (e.g., M = General Purpose)
  • 5 (Generation): The version of the hardware. Higher number means newer, faster, and usually more cost-effective hardware.
  • 2xlarge (Size): How "beefy" the instance is. As you go from small to large to 2xlarge, the CPU and RAM typically double.
• The Big Four Instance Families:

  Family	Key Resource	Use Cases	Mnemonic
  General Purpose	Balanced	"Web servers, small databases, code repos."	M is for Middle (Balanced)
  Compute Optimized	CPU	"Batch processing, media transcoding, gaming servers, machine learning."	C is for Compute
  Memory Optimized	RAM	"In-memory databases (Redis), real-time big data processing."	R is for RAM
  Storage Optimized	Local Disk I/O	"NoSQL databases, data warehousing, high-frequency OLTP."	I is for I/O

• The "Burstable" Family (T-Series):
  • The T-Series (like the t3.micro) is unique. These are Burstable Performance Instances.
  • They provide a baseline level of CPU but can "burst" to higher performance when our app gets hit with sudden traffic.
  • Pro tip: This is the go-to for the free tier and small workloads, but if you have consistent traffic, consider a non-burstable instance for better performance.
• Stephane tips
  • If you ever feel overwhelmed by the options, Stephane recommends using ec2instances.info. It's a community-driven site that lets you filter and compare costs, memory, and vCPUs much faster than the official AWS console.