On the surface, there is no surprise here, AWS offers a list of services, and you order what you want from the list. But the devil is always in the detail, or the operational consequence. This actual AWS surprise came when I first played with EC2 instances and looked at changing the configuration of an existing EC2 instance. One does not simply add 4GB of RAM to an instance. The sizes of EC2 instances are fixed by AWS; you choose a size option from the list. For each EC2 instance family, there is a fixed relationship between the number of CPU cores and the amount of RAM. Within the family, there are fixed sizes; most often, the next size up is exactly twice as much resource in each dimension. To get more RAM in an existing EC2 instance, you either double the size of the instance or choose a size from a whole new instance family. The M5 family has 4GB per core, so an M5.Large has two cores and 8GB, while an M5.24XLarge has 96 cores and 384GB of RAM. From the M5.Large ($0.12 per hour in Sydney), the next size up is M5.XLarge, with four cores and 16GB of RAM it is exactly twice the size of an M5.Large and twice the cost per hour at $0.24 per hour. That is a large increase in price if my application only wants 4GB more RAM. I am probably better off changing to an R5.Large, which has two cores and 16GB of RAM and will only cost me $0.15 per hour in Sydney. The R5 series is more RAM heavy; the R5.24XLarge has 96 cores and 768GB of RAM. It is not just the CPU and RAM that are fixed per instance; the available network bandwidth is related to the size and family of instance. Ephemeral local storage called Instance Store is also fixed per instance size, and most instance families don’t even have Instance Store.
While there are a few dozen instance families and a few hundred possible combinations of family and size, for any given application, there will only be a small selection that are suitable. Choosing the wrong compromise of instance resources and cost will seriously affect the viability of your application on AWS. Make sure you don’t simply consider doubling the size of an EC2 instance, choosing another instance family might be a better option. Just remember that you cannot change the resources separately, you can only select an EC2 configuration from the menu.
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