AWS is adding a new kind of virtual machine to its growing list of EC2 options. These new machines feature local NVMe storage, which offers significantly faster throughput than standard SSDs.
These new so-called C5d instances join the existing lineup of compute-optimized C5 instances the service already offered. AWS cites high-performance computing workloads, real-time analytics, multiplayer gaming and video encoding as potential use cases for its regular C5 machines and with the addition of this faster storage option, chances are users who switch will see even better performance.
Since the local storage is attached to the machine, it’ll also be terminated when the instance is stopped, so this is meant for storing intermediate files, not long-term storage.
Both C5 and C5d instances share the same underlying platform, with 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Platinum 8000 processors.
The new instances are now available in a number of AWS’s U.S. regions, as well as in the service’s Canada regions. Prices are, unsurprisingly a bit higher than for regular C5 machines, starting at $0.096 per hour for the most basic machine with 4 in AWS’s Oregon region, for example. Regular C5 machines start at $0.085 per hour.
It’s worth noting that the EC2 F1 instances, which offer access to FPGAs, also use NVMe storage. Those are highly specialized machines, though, while the C5 instances are interesting to a far wider audience of developers.
On top of the NVMe announcement, AWS today also noted that its EC2 Bare Metal Instances are now generally available. These machines provide direct access to all the features of the underlying hardware, making them ideal for running applications that simply can’t run on virtualized hardware and for running secured container clusters. These bare metal instances also offer support for NVMe storage.