AWS EC2 FAQ/Notes

How can I see which Spot fleet owns my Spot instances?

You can identify the Spot instances associated with your Spot Fleet by describing your fleet request. Fleet requests are available for 48 hours after all its Spot instances have been terminated.

Do Initial CPU credits expire?

Initial CPU credits do not expire, but they are used first when an instance uses CPU credits

What defines billable EC2 instance usage?

Instance usages are billed for any time your instances are in a "running" state. If you no longer wish to be charged for your instance, you must "stop" or "terminate" the instance to avoid being billed for additional instance usage. Billing starts when an instance transitions into the running state.

Can you walk me through a conversion between No Upfront Convertible RIs?

Unlike conversions between Convertible RIs with an upfront value, since you're converting between RIs without an upfront cost, there will not be a true-up charge. However, the amount you pay on an hourly basis before the exchange will need to be greater than or equal to the amount you pay on a total hourly basis after the exchange. For example, let's say you purchased one No Upfront Convertible RI (A) with a $0.10/hr rate, and you decide to exchange Convertible RI A for another RI (B) that costs $0.06/hr. When you convert, you will receive two RIs of B because the amount that you pay on an hourly basis must be greater than or equal to the amount you're paying for A on an hourly basis.

What happens when an instance exhausts it's CPU credit balance?

When credit balance is completely exhausted, the instance will perform at its baseline performance

What is the pricing for Amazon EC2 Fleet?

EC2 Fleet comes at no additional charge, you only pay for the underlying resources that EC2 Fleet launches.

How is this service different than a plain hosting service?

"Traditional hosting services generally provide a pre-configured resource for a fixed amount of time and at a predetermined cost. Amazon EC2 differs fundamentally in the flexibility, control and significant cost savings it offers developers, allowing them to treat Amazon EC2 as their own personal data center with the benefit of Amazon.com's robust infrastructure. When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals. Secondly, many hosting services don't provide full control over the compute resources being provided. Using Amazon EC2, developers can choose not only to initiate or shut down instances at any time, they can completely customize the configuration of their instances to suit their needs - and change it at any time. Most hosting services cater more towards groups of users with similar system requirements, and so offer limited ability to change these. Finally, with Amazon EC2 developers enjoy the benefit of paying only for their actual resource consumption - and at very low rates. Most hosting services require users to pay a fixed, up-front fee irrespective of their actual computing power used, and so users risk overbuying resources to compensate for the inability to quickly scale up resources within a short time frame.

What is the difference between a Dedicated Instance and a Dedicated Host?

* Dedicated Host gives you additional visibility and control over how instances are placed on a physical server * Dedicated Host provides visibility to sockets, cores, host ID,etc * Dedicated host maintains affinity between host and instance

What are the T2 instance type requirements?

* can be launched only with HVM AMI * can be launched into a VPC only, and not supported on the EC2-Classic platform * are available as EBS-backed instances only * are available as On-Demand or Reserved instances, but do not allow spot instances * By default, 20 (soft limit) T2 instances can run simultaneously * cannot be launched as a Dedicated instance

What are the C4 instance type requirements?

* requires 64-bit HVM AMI * can be launched into a VPC only, and not supported on the EC2-Classic platform

What are the G2 instance type requirements?

* requires HVM AMI * can't access GPU unless NVIDIA drivers installed

What are the Compute Optimized instance types and when would they be used?

1. C5 - optimized for compute-intensive workloads and deliver very cost-effective high performance at a low price per compute ratio. Use Cases include high performance web servers, scientific modelling, batch processing, distributed analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), machine/deep learning inference, ad serving, highly scalable multiplayer gaming, and video encoding. 2. C4 - This family provides is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and deliver very cost-effective high performance at a low price per compute ratio. Use cases include high performance front-end fleets, web-servers, batch processing, distributed analytics, high performance science and engineering applications, ad serving, MMO gaming, and video-encoding.

What are the features and use cases of Spot Instances EC2 Pricing?

1. Cost-effective choice but does NOT guarantee availability 2. Useful for Applications flexible in the timing when they can run and also able to handle interruption by storing the state externally 3. AWS will give a two minute warning if the instance is to be terminated to save any unsaved work Recommended for: * Applications that have flexible start and end times * Applications that are only feasible at very low compute prices * Big data, high-performance computing

What are the instance type families in Amazon EC2?

1. General Purpose - t2,m5,m4 2. Compute Optimized - c4,c5, 3. Memory Optimized - X1e, X1, R5, R4, z1d 4. Storage Optimized - H1, I3, D2 5. Accelerated Computing - P3, P2, G3, F1

What are the Storage Optimized instance types and when would they be used?

1. H1 - feature up to 16 TB of HDD-based local storage, deliver high disk throughput, and a balance of compute and memory. Use cases include MapReduce-based workloads, distributed file systems such as HDFS and MapR-FS, network file systems, log or data processing applications such as Apache Kafka, and big data workload clusters. 2. I3 - provides Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD-backed instance storage optimized for low latency, very high random I/O performance, high sequential read throughput and provide high IOPS at a low cost. I3 also offers Bare Metal instances (i3.metal), powered by the Nitro System, for non-virtualized workloads, workloads that benefit from access to physical resources, or workloads that may have license restrictions. Use cases include NoSQL databases (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis), in-memory databases (e.g. Aerospike), scale-out transactional databases, data warehousing, Elasticsearch, analytics workloads. 3. D2 - feature up to 48 TB of HDD-based local storage, deliver high disk throughput, and offer the lowest price per disk throughput performance on Amazon EC2. Use cases include Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) data warehousing, MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing, distributed file systems, network file systems, log or data-processing applications.

What are the different purchasing options from EC2 instances?

1. On-Demand 2. Reserved Instances 3. Spot Instances 4. Dedicated Hosts

What are the Accelerated Computing instance types and when would they be used?

1. P3 - latest generation of general purpose GPU instances. Use cases include Machine/Deep learning, high performance computing, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, speech recognition, autonomous vehicles, drug discovery. 2. P2 - intended for general-purpose GPU compute applications. Use cases include machine learning, high performance databases, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, rendering, and other server-side GPU compute workloads. 3. G3 - optimized for graphics-intensive applications. Use cases include 3D visualizations, graphics-intensive remote workstation, 3D rendering, application streaming, video encoding, and other server-side graphics workloads. 4. F1 - offer customizable hardware acceleration with field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Use cases include Genomics research, financial analytics, real-time video processing, big data search and analysis, and security.

What are the features and use cases of Dedicated Hosts EC2 Pricing?

1. Physical EC2 server dedicated for your use 2. Helps reduce costs for server bound licensing (e.g. Windows, SQL Server). 3. Can be purchased on-Demand or as a reservation. Recommended/Used for: * Used to meet compliance requirements. * Meet server bound licensing requirements.

What are the features and use cases of Reserved Instances EC2 Pricing?

1. Provides lower hourly running costs by providing a billing discount vs on-demand. 2. capacity reservation that is applied to instances 3. Consolidated billing 4. Pay for entire term regardless of usage (i.e. money could be wasted) Recommended for: 1. Applications with heavy, predictable usage 2. Applications requiring reserved capacity

What are the different types of Reserved Instances (RIs)?

1. Standard RI: Provides the most significant discount. Best suited for steady-state usage 2. Convertible RI: Provides the capability to change the attributes of the RI as long as the exchange results in the creation of Reserved Instances of equal or greater value (Normalization factor) 3. Schedule RI: Available to launch within the time window reserved. Allows you to match your capacity reservation to a predictable recurring schedule (fraction of day/wee/month)

What are the General Purpose Instance types and when would they be used?

1. T2 - Burstable Performance Instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline. Use Cases include Websites and web applications, development environments, build servers, code repositories, micro services, test and staging environments, and line of business applications. 2. M5 - This family provides a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and it is a good choice for many applications. Use cases include small and mid-size databases, data processing tasks that require additional memory, caching fleets, and for running backend servers for SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, cluster computing, and other enterprise applications. 3. M4 - This family provide a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, and it is a good choice for many applications. Use cases include small and mid-size databases, data processing tasks that require additional memory, caching fleets, and for running backend servers for SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, cluster computing, and other enterprise applications.

What are the Memory Optimized instance types and when would they be used?

1. X1e - optimized for high-performance databases, in-memory databases and other memory intensive enterprise applications. X1e instances offer one of the lowest price per GiB of RAM among Amazon EC2 instance types. Use Cases includeHigh performance databases, in-memory databases (e.g. SAP HANA) and memory intensive applications. x1e.32xlarge instance certified by SAP to run next-generation Business Suite S/4HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), and Data Mart Solutions on HANA on the AWS cloud. 2. X1 - optimized for large-scale, enterprise-class and in-memory applications, and offer one of the lowest price per GiB of RAM among Amazon EC2 instance types. Use cases include In-memory databases (e.g. SAP HANA), big data processing engines (e.g. Apache Spark or Presto), high performance computing (HPC). Certified by SAP to run Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Suite on HANA (SoH), Business Suite S/4HANA. 3. R5 - deliver 5% additional memory per vCPU than R4 and the largest size provides 768 GiB of memory. In addition, R5 instances deliver a 10% price per GiB improvement and a ~20% increased CPU performance over R4. Use cases applications that are well suited for memory intensive applications such as high performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, mid-size in-memory databases, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications. 4. R4 - optimized for memory-intensive applications and offer better price per GiB of RAM than R3. Use cases include high performance databases, data mining & analysis, in-memory databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, applications performing real-time processing of unstructured big data, Hadoop/Spark clusters, and other enterprise applications. 5. z1d - offer both high compute capacity and a high memory footprint. High frequency z1d instances deliver a sustained all core frequency of up to 4.0 GHz, the fastest of any cloud instance. Use cases include electronic design automation (EDA) and certain relational database workloads with high per-core licensing costs

What are the features and use cases of On-Demand EC2 Pricing?

1. pay for instances and compute capacity that you use by the hour 2. No long-term commitments or up-front payments 3. Can increase or decrease your compute capacity depending on the demands of your application Recommended for: 1. Prefer the low cost and flexibility of Amazon EC2 without any up-front payment or long-term commitment 2. Applications with short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted. 3. Applications being developed or tested on EC2 for the first time.

What is a Convertible RI?

A Convertible RI is a type of Reserved Instance with attributes that can be changed during the term.

What is a Reserved Instance?

A Reserved Instance (RI) is an EC2 offering that provides you with a significant discount on EC2 usage when you commit to a one-year or three-year term.

What is a Spot fleet?

A Spot Fleet allows you to automatically request and manage multiple Spot instances that provide the lowest price per unit of capacity for your cluster or application, like a batch processing job, a Hadoop workflow, or an HPC grid computing job.

What is a Spot capacity pool?

A Spot capacity pool is a set of unused EC2 instances with the same instance type, operating system, Availability Zone, and network platform (EC2-Classic or EC2-VPC). Each spot capacity pool can have a different price based on supply and demand.

What are PV and HVM virtualization types?

AMI's use one of 2 types, Paravirtual (PV) and Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM). The main differences between PV and HVM AMIs are the way in which they boot and whether they can take advantage of special hardware extensions (CPU, network, and storage) for better performance.

What is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides *resizable compute capacity in the cloud*. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Why would using VPC based instance types be preferred over EC2-classic instance type?

AWS recommends VPC to take advantage of enhanced networking, multiple IP addresses, finer security control, etc.

What are Accelerated Computing instances?

Accelerated Computing instance family is a family of instances which use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform some functions, such as floating-point number calculation and graphics processing, more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs. Amazon EC2 provides three types of Accelerated Computing instances. 1. GPU compute instances for general-purpose computing. 2. GPU graphics instances for graphics intensive applications. 3. FPGA programmable hardware compute instances for advanced scientific workloads.

How will my monthly bill show per-second versus per-hour?

Although EC2 charges in your monthly bill will now be calculated based on a per second basis, for consistency, the monthly EC2 bill will show cumulative usage for each instance that ran in a given month in decimal hours. An example would be an instance running for 1 hour 10 minutes and 4 seconds would look like 1.1677. Below is an example of a detailed billing report. The two highlighted areas show how the new report will look based on decimal hours.

Which operating systems does Amazon CloudWatch support?

Amazon CloudWatch receives and provides metrics for all Amazon EC2 instances and should work with any operating system currently supported by the Amazon EC2 service.

How do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances differ from Amazon EBS?

Amazon EBS offers simple, elastic, reliable (replicated), and persistent block level storage for Amazon EC2 while abstracting the details of the underlying storage media in use. Amazon EC2 instance storage provides directly attached non-persistent, high performance storage building blocks that can be used for a variety of storage applications. Dense-storage instances are specifically targeted at customers who want high sequential read/write access to large data sets on local storage, e.g. for Hadoop distributed computing and massively parallel processing data warehousing.

What are burstable performance instances?

Amazon EC2 allows you to choose between Fixed Performance Instances (e.g. M3, C3, and R3) and Burstable Performance Instances (e.g. T2). Burstable Performance Instances provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline.

How do I load and store my systems with Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 allows you to set up and configure everything about your instances from your operating system up to your applications. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is simply a packaged-up environment that includes all the necessary bits to set up and boot your instance. Your AMIs are your unit of deployment. You might have just one AMI or you might compose your system out of several building block AMIs (e.g., webservers, appservers, and databases). Amazon EC2 provides a number of tools to make creating an AMI easy. Once you create a custom AMI, you will need to bundle it. If you are bundling an image with a root device backed by Amazon EBS, you can simply use the bundle command in the AWS Management Console. If you are bundling an image with a boot partition on the instance store, then you will need to use the AMI Tools to upload it to Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 uses Amazon EBS and Amazon S3 to provide reliable, scalable storage of your AMIs so that we can boot them when you ask us to do so.Or, if you want, you don't have to set up your own AMI from scratch. You can choose from a number of globally available AMIs that provide useful instances. For example, if you just want a simple Linux server, you can choose one of the standard Linux distribution AMIs.

What operating system environments are supported?

Amazon EC2 currently supports a variety of operating systems including: Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD. We are looking for ways to expand it to other platforms.

How do I access my EFS file system from outside my VPC?

Amazon EC2 instances within your VPC can access your file system directly, and Amazon EC2 Classic instances outside your VPC can mount a file system via ClassicLink. On-premises servers can mount your file systems via an AWS Direct Connect connection to your VPC.

How quickly can I scale my capacity both up and down?

Amazon EC2 provides a truly elastic computing environment. Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. When you need more instances, you simply call RunInstances, and Amazon EC2 will typically set up your new instances in a matter of minutes. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.

Why am I asked to verify my phone number when signing up for Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 registration requires you to have a valid phone number and email address on file with AWS in case we ever need to contact you. Verifying your phone number takes only a couple of minutes and involves receiving a phone call during the registration process and entering a PIN number using the phone key pad.

What Amazon EC2 instance types and AMIs work with Amazon EFS?

Amazon EFS is compatible with all Amazon EC2 instance types and is accessible from Linux-based AMIs.

How many Amazon EC2 instances can connect to an EFS file system?

Amazon EFS supports one to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances connecting to a file system concurrently.

What is an Amazon EBS-Optimized instance?

An Amazon EBS-optimized instance uses an optimized configuration stack and provides additional, dedicated capacity for Amazon EBS I/O. EBS-optimized instances enable you to get consistently high performance for the EBS volumes by eliminating contention between EBS I/O and other network traffic from the instance

What is an Elastic IP Address?

An Elastic IP address is a static IPv4 address designed for dynamic cloud computing. With an Elastic IP address, you can mask the failure of an instance or software by rapidly remapping the address to another instance in your account. An Elastic IP address is a public IPv4 address, which is reachable from the internet. If your instance does not have a public IPv4 address, you can associate an Elastic IP address with your instance to enable communication with the internet; for example, to connect to your instance from your local computer.

What are Availability Zone and instance size flexibility?

Availability Zone and instance size flexibility make it easier for you to take advantage of your regional RI's discounted rate. Availability Zone flexibility applies your RI's discounted rate to usage in any Availability Zone in a region, while instance size flexibility applies your RI's discounted rate to usage of any size within an instance family.

When does billing of my Amazon EC2 systems begin and end?

Billing commences when Amazon EC2 initiates the boot sequence of an AMI instance. Billing ends when the instance terminates, which could occur through a web services command, by running "shutdown -h", or through instance failure. When you stop an instance, we shut it down but don't charge hourly usage for a stopped instance, or data transfer fees, but we do charge for the storage for any Amazon EBS volumes. To learn more, visit the AWS Documentation.

How can I allocate resources in an Amazon EC2 Fleet?

By default, EC2 Fleet will launch the On-Demand option that is lowest price. For Spot Instances, EC2 Fleet provides two allocation strategies: lowest price and diversified. The lowest price strategy allows you to provision Spot Instances in pools that provide the lowest price per unit of capacity at the time of the request. The diversified strategy allows you to provision Spot Instances across multiple Spot pools and you can maintain your fleet's target capacity to increase application

What IP addresses do EC2 instances come with by default?

By default, every instance comes with a private IP address and an internet routable public IP address. The private address is associated exclusively with the instance and is only returned to Amazon EC2 when the instance is stopped or terminated. The public address is associated exclusively with the instance until it is stopped, terminated or replaced with an Elastic IP address.

What are C4 instances ideal for?

C4 instances are ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit from high performance processors. This includes: * Batch processing workloads, * Media transcoding, * High-traffic web servers, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming servers, and ad serving engines, * High-traffic web servers, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming servers, and ad serving engines

Which instances are available within Compute Optimized instances category?

C5 instances: C5 instances are the latest generation of EC2 Compute Optimized instances. C4 instances: C4 instances are based on Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (codenamed Haswell) processors.

What are CPU credits?

CPU Credits (Similar to I/O Credits in case of the EBS general purpose storage) provides the performance of a full CPU core for one minute.

When do CPU credits expire?

CPU credit balance is available for a period of 24 hours and it expires 24 hours after they were earned. Expired credits are removed from the balance before new ones are added

Do CPU credits persist between instance stops?

CPU credit cease to persist between an instance stop - start. However, after the start, the instance receives the initial CPU credits again

What is a Cluster Compute Instance?

Cluster Compute Instances combine high compute resources with a high performance networking for High Performance Compute (HPC) applications and other demanding network-bound applications. Amazon EC2 cluster placement group functionality allows users to group Cluster Compute Instances in clusters - allowing applications to get the low-latency network performance necessary for tightly-coupled node-to-node communication typical of many HPC applications.

Does use of Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU Instances differ from other Amazon EC2 instance types?

Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU Instances use differs from other Amazon EC2 instance types in two ways. 1. Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU Instances use Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) based virtualization and run only Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) based on HVM virtualization. Paravirtual Machine (PVM) based AMIs used with other Amazon EC2 instance types cannot be used with Cluster Compute or Cluster GPU Instances. 2. In order to fully benefit from the available low latency, full bisection bandwidth between instances, Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU Instances must be launched into a cluster placement group through the Amazon EC2 API or AWS Management Console.

What is a Cluster GPU Instance?

Cluster GPU Instances provide general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs) with proportionally high CPU and increased network performance for applications benefiting from highly parallelized processing that can be accelerated by GPUs using the CUDA and OpenCL programming models. Common applications include modeling and simulation, rendering and media processing.

When should I use Compute Optimized instances?

Compute Optimized instances are designed for applications that benefit from high compute power. These applications include compute-intensive applications like high-performance web servers, high-performance computing (HPC), scientific modelling, distributed analytics and machine learning inference.

What are D2 instance types?

D2 (Density Intensive) instances are designed for workloads with very high storage density and that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage. This is well suited for: * Massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse * MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing * Log or data processing applications

What is a Dense-storage Instance?

Dense-storage instances are designed for workloads that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets, such as Hadoop distributed computing, massively parallel processing data warehousing, and log processing applications.

How does instance size flexibility work?

EC2 uses the scale shown below, to compare different sizes within an instance family. In the case of instance size flexibility on RIs, this scale is used to apply the discounted rate of RIs to the normalized usage of the instance family. For example, if you have an m5.2xlarge RI that is scoped to a region, then your discounted rate could apply towards the usage of 1 m5.2xlarge or 2 m5.xlarge instances. Click here to learn more about how instance size flexibility of RIs applies to your EC2 usage. And click here to learn about how instance size flexibility of RIs is presented in the Cost and Usage Report.

What does the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) do?

ENA is one of two ways that enhanced networking can be enabled for certain instances. Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) supports network speeds of up to 25 Gbps for supported instance types.

Can I launch C4 instances as Amazon EBS-optimized instances?

Each C4 instance type is EBS-optimized by default. C4 instances 500 Mbps to 4,000 Mbps to EBS above and beyond the general-purpose network throughput provided to the instance. Since this feature is always enabled on C4 instances, launching a C4 instance explicitly as EBS-optimized will not affect the instance's behavior.

How do T2 instances receive CPU credits?

Each T2 instance then continuously (at a millisecond-level resolution) receives a set rate of CPU credits per hour, depending on instance size. Each T2 instance accumulates the CPU credit when it uses fewer CPU resources than its allowed baseline performance levels.

If I have two instances in different availability zones, how will I be charged for regional data transfer?

Each instance is charged for its data in and data out at corresponding Data Transfer rates. Therefore, if data is transferred between these two instances, it is charged at "Data Transfer Out from EC2 to Another AWS Region" for the first instance and at "Data Transfer In from Another AWS Region" for the second instance. Please refer to this page for detailed data transfer.Q. If I have two instances in different regions, how will I be charged for data transfer?Each instance is charged for its data in and data out at Internet Data Transfer rates. Therefore, if data is transferred between these two instances, it is charged at Internet Data Transfer Out for the first instance and at Internet Data Transfer In for the second instance.

Are EBS snapshots versioned? Can I read an older snapshot to do a point-in-time recovery?

Each snapshot is given a unique identifier, and customers can create volumes based on any of their existing snapshots.

What load balancing options does the Elastic Load Balancing service offer?

Elastic Load Balancing offers two types of load balancers that both feature high availability, automatic scaling, and robust security. These include the Classic Load Balancer that routes traffic based on either application or network level information, and the Application Load Balancer that routes traffic based on advanced application level information that includes the content of the request.

What is Enhanced Networking?

Enhanced networking uses single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide high-performance networking capabilities on supported instance types. SR-IOV is a method of device virtualization that provides higher I/O performance and lower CPU utilization when compared to traditional virtualized network interfaces. Enhanced networking provides higher bandwidth, higher packet per second (PPS) performance, and consistently lower inter-instance latencies. Not all instance types support enhanced networking.

Do your prices include taxes?

Except as otherwise noted, our prices are exclusive of applicable taxes and duties, including VAT and applicable sales tax. For customers with a Japanese billing address, use of AWS services is subject to Japanese Consumption Tax. Learn more.

What are G2 Instances ideal for?

G2 instances provide high parallel processing capability. This is well suited for: * to accelerate many scientific, engineering, and rendering applications by leveraging the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) or OpenCL parallel computing frameworks * graphics applications, including game streaming, 3-D application streaming, and other graphics workloads

When should I use GPU Graphics and Compute instances?

GPU instances work best for applications with massive parallelism such as workloads using thousands of threads.

Why should customers use GPU-powered Amazon P3 instances for AI/ML and HPC?

GPU-based compute instances provide greater throughput and performance because they are designed for massively parallel processing using thousands of specialized cores per GPU, versus CPUs offering sequential processing with a few cores.

How do I calculate the list value of an RI?

Here is a sample list value calculation for three-year Partial Upfront Reserved Instances: 3yr Partial Upfront Volume Discount Value in US-East Upfront $ Recurring Hourly $ Recurring Hourly Value List Value m3.xlarge $ 1,345 $ 0.060 $ 1,577 $ 2,922 c3.xlarge $ 1,016 $ 0.045 $ 1,183 $ 2,199

How do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances compare to High I/O instances?

High I/O instances (I2) are targeted at workloads that demand low latency and high random I/O in addition to moderate storage density and provide the best price/IOPS across other EC2 instance types. Dense-storage instances (D2) and HDD-storage instances (H1) are optimized for applications that require high sequential read/write access and low cost storage for very large data sets and provide the best price/GB-storage and price/disk-throughput across other EC2 instances.

AWS has other database and Big Data offerings. When or why should I use High I/O instances?

High I/O instances are ideal for applications that require access to millions of low latency IOPS, and can leverage data stores and architectures that manage data redundancy and availability. Example applications are: * NoSQL databases like Cassandra and MongoDB * In-memory databases like Aerospike * Elasticsearch and analytics workloads * OLTP systems

What is a High I/O instance?

High I/O instances use NVMe based local instance storage to deliver very high, low latency, I/O capacity to applications, and are optimized for applications that require millions of IOPS. Like Cluster instances, High I/O instances can be clustered via cluster placement groups for low latency networking.

What is a High Memory Cluster Instance?

High Memory Cluster Instances provide customers with large amounts of memory and CPU capabilities per instance in addition to high network capabilities. High Memory Cluster Instances use the same cluster placement group functionality as Cluster Compute Instances for grouping instances into clusters - allowing applications to get the low-latency, high bandwidth network performance required for tightly-coupled node-to-node communication typical of many HPC and other network intensive applications.

What is High Performance computing (HPC)?

High Performance Computing (HPC) allows scientists and engineers to solve complex, compute-intensive problems. HPC applications often require high network performance, fast storage, large amounts of memory, very high compute capabilities, or all of these.

What needs to be set on an EBS volume if using the volume as the root partition and you want to access the data outside the life of the instance?

If you are using an Amazon EBS volume as a root partition, you will need to set the Delete On Terminate flag to "N" if you want your Amazon EBS volume to persist outside the life of the instance.

When should I purchase a regional RI?

If you do not require the capacity reservation, then you should buy a regional RI. Regional RIs provide AZ and instance size flexibility, which offers broader applicability of the RI's discounted rate.

How are volume discounts calculated if I use Consolidated Billing?

If you leverage Consolidated Billing, AWS will use the aggregate total list price of active RIs across all of your consolidated accounts to determine which volume discount tier to apply. Volume discount tiers are determined at the time of purchase, so you should activate Consolidated Billing prior to purchasing RIs to ensure that you benefit from the largest possible volume discount that your consolidated accounts are eligible to receive.

What charges apply when using Amazon EBS shared snapshots?

If you share a snapshot, you won't be charged when other users make a copy of your snapshot. If you make a copy of another user's shared volume, you will be charged normal EBS rates.

When should I purchase a zonal RI?

If you want to take advantage of the capacity reservation, then you should buy an RI in a specific Availability Zone.

What happens if my Spot Fleet request tries to launch Spot instances but exceeds my regional Spot request limit?

If your Spot Fleet request exceeds your regional Spot instance request limit, individual Spot instance requests will fail with a Spot request limit exceeded request status.

How will I be charged if my Spot instance is interrupted?

If your Spot instance is terminated or stopped by Amazon EC2 in the first instance hour, you will not be charged for that usage. However, if you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged to the nearest second. If the Spot instance is terminated or stopped by Amazon EC2 in any subsequent hour, you will be charged for your usage to the nearest second. If you are running on Windows and you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged for an entire hour.

What happens to CPU performance if my T2 instance is running low on credits (CPU Credit balance is near zero)?

If your T2 instance has a zero CPU Credit balance, performance will remain at baseline CPU performance.

Why am I charged when my Elastic IP address is not associated with a running instance?

In order to help ensure our customers are efficiently using the Elastic IP addresses, we impose a small hourly charge for each address when it is not associated to a running instance.

Does Amazon EC2 use ECC memory?

In our experience, ECC memory is necessary for server infrastructure, and all the hardware underlying Amazon EC2 uses ECC memory.

What is the difference between Stop and Hibernate interruption behaviors?

In the case of Hibernate, your instance gets hibernated and the RAM data persisted. In the case of Stop, your instance gets shutdown and RAM is cleared. In both the cases, data from your EBS root volume and any attached EBS data volumes is persisted. Private and Elastic IP (If applicable) also remain the same.

How quickly will systems be running?

It typically takes less than 10 minutes from the issue of the RunInstances call to the point where all requested instances begin their boot sequences. This time depends on a number of factors including: the size of your AMI, the number of instances you are launching, and how recently you have launched that AMI. Images launched for the first time may take slightly longer to boot.

What can I do with Amazon EC2?

Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the cloud, Amazon EC2 enables "compute" in the cloud. Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.

What term length options are available on Convertible RIs?

Like Standard RIs, Convertible RIs are available for purchase for a one-year or three-year term.

Do High I/O instances provide any failover mechanisms or redundancy?

Like other Amazon EC2 instance types, instance storage on i3.16xlarge instances persists during the life of the instance. Customers are expected to build resilience into their applications. We recommend using databases and file systems that support redundancy and fault tolerance. Customers should back up data periodically to Amazon S3 for improved data durability.

Which operating systems are available as Spot instances?

Linux/UNIX and Windows Server are available. Windows Server with SQL Server is not currently available.

What types of RIs provide instance size flexibility?

Linux/Unix regional RIs with the default tenancy provide instance size flexibility. Instance size flexibility is not available on RIs of other platforms such as Windows, Windows with SQL Standard, Windows with SQL Server Enterprise, Windows with SQL Server Web, RHEL, and SLES.

What are the various storage options available to M5 customers?

M5 instances leverage EBS volumes for storage. There is currently no local storage option for M5 instances.

What are the key use cases for Amazon EC2 M5 Instances?

M5 instances offer a good choice for running development and test environments, web, mobile and gaming applications, analytics applications, and business critical applications including ERP, HR, CRM, and collaboration apps.

Is there a maximum number of earned CPU credits?

Maximum earned credit balance for an instance is equal to the number of CPU credits received per hour times 24 hours

When should I use Memory-optimized instances?

Memory-optimized instances offer large memory size for memory intensive applications including in-memory applications, in-memory databases, in-memory analytics solutions, High Performance Computing (HPC), scientific computing, and other memory-intensive applications.

What is the minimum time interval granularity for the data that Amazon CloudWatch receives and aggregates?

Metrics are received and aggregated at 1 minute intervals.

Will I be able to access my EBS snapshots using the regular Amazon S3 APIs?

No, EBS snapshots are only available through the Amazon EC2 APIs.

Will Amazon EC2 Fleet failover to On-Demand if EC2 Spot capacity is not fully fulfilled?

No, EC2 Fleet will continue to attempt to meet your desired Spot capacity based on the number of Spot instances you requested in your Fleet launch specification.

Can I customize the number of instances that I receive as a result of a Convertible RI exchange?

No, EC2 uses the value of the Convertible RIs you're trading in to calculate the minimal number of Convertible RIs you'll receive while ensuring the result of the exchange gives you Convertible RIs of equal or greater value.

Do RIs apply to Spot instances or instances running on a Dedicated Host?

No, RIs do not apply to Spot instances or instances running on Dedicated Hosts. To lower the cost of using Dedicated Hosts, purchase Dedicated Host Reservations.

Does a Spot Fleet request terminate Spot instances when they are no longer running in the lowest priced Spot pools and relaunch them in the lowest priced pools?

No, Spot Fleet requests do not automatically terminate and re-launch instances while they are running. However, if you terminate a Spot instance, Spot Fleet will replenish it with a new Spot instance in the new lowest priced pool.

Can I transfer a Convertible or Standard RI from one region to another?

No, a RI is associated with a specific region, which is fixed for the duration of the reservation's term.

Does my T2 instance credit balance persist at stop / start?

No, a stopped instance does not retain its previously earned credit balance.

Do Convertible RIs qualify for Volume Discounts?

No, however the value of each Convertible RI that you purchase contributes to your volume discount tier standing.

Is Enhanced networking available for all EC2 instances?

No, only those within a VPC. Amazon VPC allows us to deliver many advanced networking features to you that are not possible in EC2-Classic. Enhanced Networking is another example of a capability enabled by Amazon VPC.

How do RIs work with Consolidated Billing?

Our system automatically optimizes which instances are charged at the discounted rate to ensure that the consolidated accounts always pay the lowest amount. If you own RIs that apply to an Availability Zone, then only the account which owns the RI will receive the capacity reservation. However, the discount will automatically apply to usage in any account across your consolidated billing family.

Do EBS volumes need to be un-mounted in order to take a snapshot? Does the snapshot need to complete before the volume can be used again?

No, snapshots can be done in real time while the volume is attached and in use. However, snapshots only capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume, which might exclude any data that has been locally cached by your application or OS. In order to ensure consistent snapshots on volumes attached to an instance, we recommend cleanly detaching the volume, issuing the snapshot command, and then reattaching the volume. For Amazon EBS volumes that serve as root devices, we recommend shutting down the machine to take a clean snapshot.

Does the Amazon CloudWatch monitoring charge change depending on which type of Amazon EC2 instance I monitor?

No, the Amazon CloudWatch monitoring charge does not vary by Amazon EC2 instance type.

Are there exchange limits for Convertible RIs?

No, there are no exchange limits for Convertible RIs.

Is there any additional charge for making Spot Fleet requests

No, there is no additional charge for Spot Fleet requests.

Do AMI's span across regions?

No, they must be copied

Can I sell Reserved Instances purchased from the public volume pricing tiers?

No, this capability is not yet available.

Can I submit a multi-region Amazon EC2 Fleet request?

No, we do not support multi-region EC2 Fleet requests.

Can I submit a multi-region Spot Fleet request?

No, we do not support multi-region Fleet requests.

Do I have the freedom to choose any instance type when I exchange my Convertible RIs?

No, you can only exchange into Convertible RIs that are currently offered by AWS.

Do I need to pay a fee when I exchange my Convertible RIs?

No, you do not pay a fee when you exchange your RIs. However may need to pay a one-time true-up charge that accounts for differences in pricing between the Convertible RIs that you have and the Convertible RIs that you want.

Do I need to take any action at the time of purchase to receive volume discounts?

No, you will automatically receive volume discounts when you use the existing PurchaseReservedInstance API or EC2 Management Console interface to purchase RIs. If you purchase more than $10M worth of RIs contact us about receiving discounts beyond those that are automatically provided.

Can I restart a stopped instance or resume a hibernated instance?

No, you will not be able to re-start a stopped instance or resume a hibernated instance directly. Stop-start and hibernate-resume cycles are controlled by Amazon EC2. If an instance is stopped or hibernated by Spot, it will be restarted or resumed by Amazon EC2 when the capacity becomes available.

If I sell my Reserved Instance in the Reserved Instance Marketplace, will I get refunded for the Premium Support I was charged too?

No, you will not receive a pro-rated refund for the upfront portion of the AWS Premium Support Fee.

Can I control which instances are billed at the discounted rate?

No. AWS automatically optimizes which instances are charged at the discounted rate to ensure you always pay the lowest amount. For information about billing, and how it applies to RIs, see Billing Benefits and Payment Options.

If I transfer data between Availability Zones using public IP addresses, will I be charged twice for Regional Data Transfer (once because it's across zones, and a second time because I'm using public IP addresses)?

No. Regional Data Transfer rates apply if at least one of the following is true, but is only charged once for a given instance even if both are true: * The other instance is in a different Availability Zone, regardless of which type of address is used. * Public or Elastic IP addresses are used, regardless of which Availability Zone the other instance is in.

Are Spot fleet requests guaranteed to be fulfilled?

No. Spot fleet requests allow you to place multiple Spot instance requests simultaneously, and are subject to the same availability and prices as a single Spot instance request. For example, if no resources are available for the instance types listed in your Spot Fleet request, we may be unable to fulfill your request partially or in full. We recommend you to include all the possible instance types and availability zones that are suitable for your workloads in the Spot Fleet.

Will the cost of my RIs change, if my future volume qualifies me for other discount tiers?

No. Volume discounts are determined at the time of purchase, therefore the cost of your RIs will continue to remain the same as you qualify for other discount tiers. Any new purchase will be discounted according to your eligible volume discount tier at the time of purchase.

Do I need one Elastic IP address for every instance that I have running?

No. You do not need an Elastic IP address for all your instances. By default, every instance comes with a private IP address and an internet routable public IP address. The public address is associated exclusively with the instance until it is stopped, terminated or replaced with an Elastic IP address.

Can I use a Spot instance with a paid AMI for third-party software (such as IBM's software packages)?

Not at this time.

When will I receive my money?

Once AWS has received funds from the customer that has bought your reservation, we will disburse funds via wire transfer to the bank account you specified when you registered for the Reserved Instance Marketplace. Then, we will send you an email notification letting you know that we've wired you the funds. Typically, funds will appear in your account within 3-5 days of when your Reserved Instance was been sold.

How do I run systems in the Amazon EC2 environment?

Once you have set up your account and select or create your AMIs, you are ready to boot your instance. You can start your AMI on any number of On-Demand instances by using the RunInstances API call. You simply need to indicate how many instances you wish to launch. If you wish to run more than 20 On-Demand instances, complete the Amazon EC2 instance request form.If Amazon EC2 is able to fulfill your request, RunInstances will return success, and we will start launching your instances. You can check on the status of your instances using the DescribeInstances API call. You can also programmatically terminate any number of your instances using the TerminateInstances API call.If you have a running instance using an Amazon EBS boot partition, you can also use the StopInstances API call to release the compute resources but preserve the data on the boot partition. You can use the StartInstances API when you are ready to restart the associated instance with the Amazon EBS boot partition.In addition, you have the option to use Spot Instances to reduce your computing costs when you have flexibility in when your applications can run. Read more about Spot Instances for a more detailed explanation on how Spot Instances work.If you prefer, you can also perform all these actions from the AWS Management Console or through the command line using our command line tools, which have been implemented with this web service API.

What is 1 CPU credit worth?

One CPU credit is equal to one vCPU running at 100% utilization for one minute

What is Optimize CPUs?

Optimize CPUs gives you greater control of your EC2 instances on two fronts. 1. You can specify a custom number of vCPUs when launching new instances to save on vCPU-based licensing costs. 2. You can disable Intel Hyper-Threading Technology (Intel HT Technology) for workloads that perform well with single-threaded CPUs, such as certain high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

When would my Spot instance get interrupted?

Over the last 3 months, 92% of Spot instance interruptions were from a customer manually terminating the instance because the application had completed its work. In the circumstance EC2 needs to reclaim your Spot instance it can be for two(2) possible reasons: 1. (primary reason) Amazon EC2 capacity requirements 2. if you have chosen to set a "maximum Spot price" and the Spot price rises above this, your instance will be reclaimed with a two-minute notification

What are some key use cases of P3 instances?

P3 instance use GPUs to accelerate numerous deep learning systems and applications including autonomous vehicle platforms, speech, image, and text recognition systems, intelligent video analytics, molecular simulations, drug discovery, disease diagnosis, weather forecasting, big data analytics, financial modeling, robotics, factory automation, real-time language translation, online search optimizations, and personalized user recommendations, to name just a few.

Who will benefit from P3 instances?

P3 instances with their high computational performance will benefit users in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) and high performance computing (HPC) applications

How do buyers pay for Reserved Instances that they've purchased?

Payment for completed Reserved Instance sales are done via ACH wire transfers to a US bank account.

Why am I limited to 5 Elastic IP addresses per region?

Public (IPV4) internet addresses are a scarce resource. There is only a limited amount of public IP space available. By default, all accounts are limited to 5 Elastic IP addresses per region. Can apply for your limit to be raised

Do I need to take any action to take advantage of Availability Zone and instance size flexibility?

Regional RIs do not require any action to take advantage of Availability Zone and instance size flexibility.

How are listed Reserved Instances displayed to buyers?

Reserved Instances (both third-party and those offered by AWS) that have been listed on the Reserved Instance Marketplace can be viewed in the Reserved Instances section of the Amazon EC2 Console. You can also use the DescribeReservedInstancesListings API call. The listed Reserved Instances are grouped based on the type, term remaining, upfront price, and hourly price. This makes it easier for buyers to find the right Reserved Instances to purchase.

For boostrap scripts, where does the output of the commands get stored?

See /var/log/cloud-init-output.log and review the end of the file to see the results.

What selection criteria for EC2 Instance Types should be considered regarding volumes/drives?

Some Instances types support only EBS volumes, while others support both EBS and Instance store volumes. Some instances that support instance store volumes use solid state drives (SSD) to deliver very high random I/O performance. See http://jayendrapatil.com/aws-ec2-instance-types/

Which instances and operating systems support hibernation?

Spot Hibernation is currently supported for Amazon Linux AMIs, Ubuntu and Microsoft Windows operating systems running on any instance type across C3, C4, C5, M4, M5, R3, R4 instances with memory (RAM) size less than 100 GiB.

Are Spot blocks (Fixed Duration Spot instances) ever interrupted?

Spot blocks are designed not to be interrupted and will run continuously for the duration you select, independent of Spot market price. In rare situations, Spot blocks may be interrupted due to AWS capacity needs. In these cases, we will provide a two-minute warning before we terminate your instance (termination notice), and you will not be charged for the affected instance(s)

Are Spot instances available for all instance families and sizes and in all regions?

Spot instances are available in all public AWS regions. Spot is available for nearly all EC2 instance families and sizes, including the newest compute-optimized instances, accelerated graphics, and FPGA instance types.

What is a Spot Instance?

Spot instances are spare EC2 capacity that can save you up 90% off of On-Demand prices that AWS can interrupt with a 2-minute notification. Best suited for fault-tolerant, flexible workloads.

How do I purchase and start up a Spot instance?

Spot instances can be launched using the same tools you use launch instances today, including AWS Management Console, Auto-Scaling Groups, Run Instances and Spot Fleet. In addition many AWS services support launching Spot instances such as EMR, ECS, Datapipeline, Cloudformation and Batch. To start up a Spot instance, you simply need to choose a Launch Template and the number of instances you would like to request.

What are the differences between Standard RIs and Convertible RIs?

Standard RIs offer a significant discount on EC2 instance usage when you commit to a particular instance family. Convertible RIs offer you the option to change your instance configuration during the term, and still receive a discount on your EC2 usage.

Can you walk me through how the true-up cost is calculated for a conversion between two All Upfront Convertible RIs?

Sure, let's say you purchased an All Upfront Convertible RI for $1000 upfront, and halfway through the term you decide to change the attributes of the RI. Since you're halfway through the RI term, you have $500 left of prorated value remaining on the RI. The All Upfront Convertible RI that you want to convert into costs $1,200 upfront today. Since you only have half of the term left on your existing Convertible RI, there is $600 of value remaining on the desired new Convertible RI. The true-up charge that you'll pay will be the difference in upfront value between original and desired Convertible RIs, or $100 ($600 - $500).

Can you help me understand how volume discounts are applied to my RI purchases?

Sure. Let's assume that you currently have $400,000 worth of active RIs in the US-east-1 region. Now, if you purchase RIs worth $150,000 in the same region, then the first $100,000 of this purchase would not receive a discount. However, the remaining $50,000 of this purchase would be discounted by 5 percent, so you would only be charged $47,500 for this portion of the purchase over the term based on your payment option.

Can T2 instances be purchased as Reserved Instances or Spot Instances?

T2 instances can be purchased as On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances or Spot Instances.

When should I choose a Burstable Performance Instance, such as T2?

T2 instances provide a cost-effective platform for a broad range of general purpose production workloads. T2 Unlimited instances can sustain high CPU performance for as long as required. If your workloads consistently require CPU usage much higher than the baseline, consider a dedicated CPU instance family such as the M or C.

When should I use the Classic Load Balancer and when should I use the Application Load Balancer?

The Classic Load Balancer is ideal for simple load balancing of traffic across multiple EC2 instances, while the Application Load Balancer is ideal for applications needing advanced routing capabilities, microservices, and container-based architectures.

How can I tell if an application needs more CPU resources than a Micro instance is providing?

The CloudWatch metric for CPU utilization will report 100% utilization if the instance bursts so much that it exceeds its available CPU resources during that CloudWatch monitored minute. CloudWatch reporting 100% CPU utilization is your signal that you should consider scaling - manually or via Auto Scaling - up to a larger instance type or scale out to multiple Micro instances.

When should I purchase a Convertible RI instead of a Standard RI?

The Convertible RI is useful for customers who can commit to using EC2 instances for a three-year term in exchange for a significant discount on their EC2 usage, are uncertain about their instance needs in the future, or want to benefit from changes in price.

How does Spot Fleet allocate resources across the various Spot instance pools specified in the launch specifications?

The RequestSpotFleet API provides two allocation strategies: lowestPrice and diversified. The lowestPrice strategy allows you to provision your Spot Fleet resources in instance pools that provide the lowest price per unit of capacity at the time of the request. The diversified strategy allows you to provision your Spot Fleet resources across multiple Spot instance pools. This enables you to maintain your fleet's target capacity and increase your application's availability as Spot capacity fluctuates.

What is the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

The Reserved Instance Marketplace is an online marketplace that provides AWS customers the flexibility to sell their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Reserved Instances to other businesses and organizations. Customers can also browse the Reserved Instance Marketplace to find an even wider selection of Reserved Instance term lengths and pricing options sold by other AWS customers.

How do I access my systems?

The RunInstances call that initiates execution of your application stack will return a set of DNS names, one for each system that is being booted. This name can be used to access the system exactly as you would if it were in your own data center. You own that machine while your operating system stack is executing on it.

Do High I/O instances support TRIM?

The TRIM command allows the operating system to inform SSDs which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally. In the absence of TRIM, future write operations to the involved blocks can slow down significantly. I3 instances support TRIM.

When are RIs activated?

The billing discount and capacity reservation (if applicable) is activated once your payment has successfully been authorized. You can view the status (pending | active | retired) of your RIs on the Reserved Instances page of the Amazon EC2 Console.

What information is exchanged between the buyer and seller to help with the transaction tax calculation?

The buyer's city, state, zip+4, and country information will be provided to the seller via a disbursement report. This information will enable sellers to calculate any necessary transaction taxes they need to remit to the government (e.g., sales tax, value-added tax, etc.). The legal entity name of the seller will also be provided on the purchase invoice.

Are HDD-storage instances offered in EC2 Classic?

The current generation of HDD-storage instances (H1 instances) can only be launched in Amazon VPC. With Amazon VPC, you can leverage a number of features that are available only on the Amazon VPC platform - such as enabling enhanced networking, assigning multiple private IP addresses to your instances, or changing your instances' security groups.

Do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances provide any failover mechanisms or redundancy?

The primary data storage for Dense-storage instances is HDD-based instance storage. Like all instance storage, these storage volumes persist only for the life of the instance. Hence, we recommend that you build a degree of redundancy (e.g. RAID 1/5/6) or use file systems (e.g. HDFS and MapR-FS) that support redundancy and fault tolerance. You can also back up data periodically to more durable data storage solutions such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for additional data durability.

How long does it take to remap an Elastic IP address?

The remap process currently takes several minutes from when you instruct us to remap the Elastic IP until it fully propagates through our system.

Can you define total value?

The total value is the sum of all expected payments that you'd make during the term for the RI.

What are the Processor State Control settings that can be controlled for EC2 instances?

There are C-state and P-state controls. C-states control the sleep levels that a core can enter when it is idle. C-states are numbered starting with C0 (the shallowest state where the core is totally awake and executing instructions) and go to C6 (the deepest idle state where a core is powered off). P-states control the desired performance (in CPU frequency) from a core. P-states are numbered starting from P0 (the highest performance setting where the core is allowed to use Intel Turbo Boost Technology to increase frequency if possible), and they go from P1 (the P-state that requests the maximum baseline frequency) to P15 (the lowest possible frequency).

Can you provide a real world example of how I can use Amazon EC2 Fleet?

There are a number of ways to take advantage of Amazon EC2 Fleet, such as in big data workloads, containerized application, grid processing workloads etc.

Do I have to pay for hibernating my Spot instance?

There is no additional charge for hibernating your instance beyond the EBS storage costs and any other EC2 resources you may be using. You are not charged instance usage fees once your instance is hibernated.

Is there a limit on the number of Cluster Compute or Cluster GPU Instances I can use and/or the size of cluster I can create by launching Cluster Compute Instances or Cluster GPU into a cluster placement group?

There is no limit specific for Cluster Compute Instances. For Cluster GPU Instances, you can launch 2 Instances on your own. A request can be made to increase this.

How do I access an Elastic File System (EFS) file system from an Amazon EC2 instance?

To access your file system, you mount the file system on an Amazon EC2 Linux-based instance using the standard Linux mount command and the file system's DNS name. Amazon EFS uses the NFSv4.1 protocol

How do I purchase an RI?

To get started, you can purchase an RI from the EC2 Management Console or by using the AWS CLI. Simply specify the instance type, platform, tenancy, term, payment option, and region or Availability Zone.

How will I register as a seller for the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

To register for the Reserved Instance Marketplace, you can enter the registration workflow by selling a Reserved Instance from the EC2 Management Console or setting up your profile from the Account Settings page on the AWS portal.

How can I get started with Amazon EC2?

To sign up for Amazon EC2, click the "Sign up for This Web Service" button on the Amazon EC2 detail page. You must have an Amazon Web Services account to access this service; if you do not already have one, you will be prompted to create one when you begin the Amazon EC2 sign-up process. After signing up, please refer to the Amazon EC2 documentation, which includes our Getting Started Guide.

What can developers now do that they could not before?

Until now, small developers did not have the capital to acquire massive compute resources and ensure they had the capacity they needed to handle unexpected spikes in load. Amazon EC2 enables any developer to leverage Amazon's own benefits of massive scale with no up-front investment or performance compromises. Developers are now free to innovate knowing that no matter how successful their businesses become, it will be inexpensive and simple to ensure they have the compute capacity they need to meet their business requirements.The "Elastic" nature of the service allows developers to instantly scale to meet spikes in traffic or demand. When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals.

Can users of my Amazon EBS shared snapshots change any of my data?

Users who have permission to create volumes based on your shared snapshots will first make a copy of the snapshot into their account. Users can modify their own copies of the data, but the data on your original snapshot and any other volumes created by other users from your original snapshot will remain unmodified.

Which pricing dimensions can I set for the Reserved Instances I want to list?

Using the Reserved Instance Marketplace, you can set an upfront price you'd be willing to accept. You cannot set the hourly price (which will remain the same as was set on the original Reserved Instance), and you will not receive any funds collected from payments associated with the hourly prices.

What is VHD?

VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is a file format that that specifies a virtual machine hard disk encapsulated within a single file. The VHD image format is used by virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen.

What is VM Import/Export?

VM Import/Export enables customers to import Virtual Machine (VM) images in order to create Amazon EC2 instances. Customers can also export previously imported EC2 instances to create VMs. Customers can use VM Import/Export to leverage their previous investments in building VMs by migrating their VMs to Amazon EC2.

How can I make sure that I am in the same Availability Zone as another developer?

We do not currently support the ability to coordinate launches into the same Availability Zone across AWS developer accounts. One Availability Zone name (for example, us-east-1a) in two AWS customer accounts may relate to different physical Availability Zones.

What are the best practices to use Spot instances?

We highly recommend using multiple Spot capacity pools to maximize the amount of Spot capacity available to you. EC2 provides built-in automation to find the most cost-effective capacity across multiple Spot capacity pools using Spot Fleet. From the best practices site: * Be flexible about instance types * Choose pools where prices haven't changed much

Are there any ways to optimize the likelihood that I receive the full number of instances I request for my cluster via a cluster placement group?

We recommend that you launch the minimum number of instances required to participate in a cluster in a single launch. For very large clusters, you should launch multiple placement groups, e.g. two placement groups of 128 instances, and combine them to create a larger, 256 instance cluster.

How do Convertible RI exchanges work?

When you exchange one Convertible RI for another, EC2 ensures that the total value of the Convertible RIs is maintained through a conversion. So, if you are converting your RI with a total value of $1000 for another RI, you will receive a quantity of Convertible RIs with a value that's equal to or greater than $1000. You cannot convert your Convertible RI for Convertible RI(s) of a lesser total value.

What is the difference between using the local instance store and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for the root device?

When you launch your Amazon EC2 instances you have the ability to store your root device data on Amazon EBS or the local instance store. By using Amazon EBS, data on the root device will persist independently from the lifetime of the instance. This enables you to stop and restart the instance at a subsequent time, which is similar to shutting down your laptop and restarting it when you need it again.Alternatively, the local instance store only persists during the life of the instance. This is an inexpensive way to launch instances where data is not stored to the root device. For example, some customers use this option to run large web sites where each instance is a clone to handle web traffic.

Can Cluster GPU and Cluster Compute Instances be launched into a single cluster placement group?

While it may be possible to launch different cluster instance types into a single placement group, at this time we only support homogenous placement groups.

How is a Spot instance different than an On-Demand instance or Reserved Instance?

While running, Spot instances are exactly the same as On-Demand or Reserved instances. The main differences are that Spot instances typically offer a significant discount off the On-Demand prices, your instances can be interrupted by Amazon EC2 for capacity requirements with a 2-minute notification, and Spot prices adjust gradually based on long term supply and demand for spare EC2 capacity.

Do you support multiple instances accessing a single EBS volume?

While you are able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance, attaching multiple instances to one volume is not supported at this time

What is an Amazon EC2 Fleet?

With a single API call, EC2 Fleet lets you provision compute capacity across different instance types, Availability Zones and across On-Demand, Reserved Instances (RI) and Spot Instances purchase models to help optimize scale, performance and cost.

What is the benefit if Spot hibernates my instance on interruption?

With hibernate, Spot instances will pause and resume around any interruptions so your workloads can pick up from exactly where they left off. You can use hibernation when your instance(s) need to retain instance state across shutdown-startup cycles, i.e. when your applications running on Spot depend on contextual, business, or session data stored in RAM.

When should I use X1 instances?

X1 instances are ideal for running in-memory databases like SAP HANA, big data processing engines like Apache Spark or Presto, and high performance computing (HPC) applications.

What storage options are available for X1 customers?

X1 instances offer SSD based instance store, which is ideal for temporary storage of information such as logs, buffers, caches, temporary tables, temporary computational data, and other temporary content. X1 instance store provides the best I/O performance when you use a Linux kernel that supports persistent grants, an extension to the Xen block ring protocol. X1 instances are EBS-optimized by default and offer up to 14 Gbps of dedicated bandwidth to EBS volumes. EBS offers multiple volume types to support a wide variety of workloads

When should I use X1e instances?

X1e instances are ideal for running in-memory databases like SAP HANA, high-performance databases and other memory optimized enterprise applications. X1e instances offer twice the memory per vCPU compared to the X1 instances.

Can EBS optimization be enabled for an instance that is not EBS-optimized, by default?

Yes

Can I use my existing Windows Server license with EC2?

Yes you can. After you've imported your own Windows Server machine images using the ImportImage tool, you can launch instances from these machine images on EC2 Dedicated Hosts and effectively manage instances and report usage.

Is there a charge for selling Reserved Instances on the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

Yes, AWS charges a service fee of 12% of the total upfront price of each Reserved Instance you sell in the Reserved Instance Marketplace.

Can AWS sell subsets of my listed Reserved Instances?

Yes, AWS may potentially sell a subset of the quantity of Reserved Instances that you have listed. For example, if you list 100 Reserved instances, we may only have a buyer interested in purchasing 50 of them. We will sell those 50 instances and continue to list your remaining 50 Reserved Instances until and unless you decide not to list them any longer.

Can I purchase an RI for a running instance?

Yes, AWS will automatically apply an RI's discounted rate to any applicable instance usage from the time of purchase. Visit the Getting Started page to learn more.

Is Amazon EC2 used in conjunction with Amazon S3?

Yes, Amazon EC2 is used jointly with Amazon S3 for instances with root devices backed by local instance storage. By using Amazon S3, developers have access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. In order to execute systems in the Amazon EC2 environment, developers use the tools provided to load their AMIs into Amazon S3 and to move them between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2. See How do I load and store my systems with Amazon EC2? for more information about AMIs.We expect developers to find the combination of Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 to be very useful. Amazon EC2 provides cheap, scalable compute in the cloud while Amazon S3 allows users to store their data reliably.

Can I change the instance type of my RI during its term?

Yes, Convertible RIs offer you the option to change the instance type, operating system, tenancy or payment option of your RI during its term. Please refer to the Convertible RI section of the FAQ for additional information.

Can I get a discount on RI purchases?

Yes, EC2 provides tiered discounts on RI purchases. These discounts are determined based on the total list value (non-discounted price) for the active RIs you have per region. Your total list value is the sum of all expected payments for an RI within the term, including both the upfront and recurring hourly payments. The tier ranges and corresponding discounts are shown alongside.

Do I have to pay for Premium Support when purchasing Reserved Instances from the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

Yes, if you are a Premium Support customer, you will be charged for Premium Support when you purchase a Reserved Instance through the Reserved Instance Marketplace.

Can I specify a different AMI for each instance type that I want to use for an EC2 fleet?

Yes, simply specify the AMI you'd like to use in each launch specification you provide in your EC2 Fleet.

Can I specify a different AMI for each instance type that I want to use for a Spot Fleet?

Yes, simply specify the AMI you'd like to use in each launch specification you provide in your Spot Fleet request.

Can I use stop or Hibernation interruption behaviors with Spot Fleet?

Yes, stop-start and hibernate-resume are supported with Spot Fleet with "maintain" fleet option enabled.

Can I submit a multi-Availability Zone Spot Fleet request?

Yes, visit the Spot Fleet Examples section of the Amazon EC2 User Guide to learn how to submit a multi-Availability Zone Spot Fleet request.

Do RIs provide a capacity reservation?

Yes, when a Standard or Convertible RI is scoped to a specific Availability Zone (AZ), instance capacity matching the exact RI configuration is reserved for your use (referred to as 'zonal RIs'). You can also choose to forego the capacity reservation and purchase Standard or Convertible RIs that are scoped to a region (referred to as 'regional RIs'). Regional RIs automatically apply the discount to usage across Availability Zones and instance sizes in a region, making it easier for you to take advantage of the RI's discounted rate.

Can I configure the reverse DNS record for my Elastic IP address?

Yes, you can configure the reverse DNS record of your Elastic IP address by filling out this form. Note that a corresponding forward DNS record pointing to that Elastic IP address must exist before we can create the reverse DNS record.

Do Convertible RIs allow me to benefit from price reductions when they happen?

Yes, you can exchange your RIs to benefit from lower pricing. For example, if the price of new Convertible RIs reduces by 10%, you can exchange your Convertible RIs and benefit from the 10% reduction in price.

Can I change my RI during its term?

Yes, you can modify the Availability Zone of the RI, change the scope of the RI from Availability Zone to region (and vice-versa), change the network platform from EC2-VPC to EC2-Classic (and vice versa) or modify instance sizes within the same instance family (on the Linux/Unix platform).

Can I modify my Spot Fleet request?

Yes, you can modify the target capacity of your Spot Fleet request. You may need to cancel the request and submit a new one to change other request configuration parameters.

Can I modify my Amazon EC2 Fleet?

Yes, you can modify the total target capacity of your EC2 Fleet when in maintain mode. You may need to cancel the request and submit a new one to change other request configuration parameters.

Can I remove my Reserved Instance after I've listed it for sale?

Yes, you can remove your Reserved Instance listings at any point until a sale is pending (meaning a buyer has bought your Reserved Instance and confirmation of payment is pending).

Can I resell a Reserved Instance that I purchased from the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

Yes, you can resell Reserved Instances purchased from the Reserved Instance Marketplace just like any other Reserved Instance.

Can I exchange my Convertible RI to benefit from a Convertible RI matching a different instance type, operating system, tenancy, or payment option?

Yes, you can select a new instance type, operating system, tenancy, or payment option when you exchange your Convertible RIs. You also have the flexibility to exchange a portion of your Convertible RI or merge the value of multiple Convertible RIs in a single exchange.

Can I upgrade the payment option associated with my Convertible RI?

Yes, you can upgrade the payment option associated with your RI. For example, you can exchange your No Upfront RIs for Partial or All Upfront RIs to benefit from better pricing. You cannot change the payment option from All Upfront to No Upfront, and cannot change from Partial Upfront to No Upfront.

Are there any restrictions on the customers when purchasing third-party Reserved Instances?

Yes, you cannot purchase your own listed Reserved Instances, including those in any of your linked accounts (via Consolidated Billing).

Are there any restrictions when selling Reserved Instances?

Yes, you must have a US bank account to sell Reserved Instances in the Reserved Instance Marketplace. Support for non-US bank accounts will be coming soon. Also, you may not sell Reserved Instances in the US GovCloud region.

Can I still use my reservation while it is listed on the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

Yes, you will continue to receive the capacity and billing benefit of your reservation until it is sold. Once sold, any running instance that was being charged at the discounted rate will be charged at the On-Demand rate until and unless you purchase a new reservation, or terminate the instance.

Will I be notified about Reserved Instance Marketplace activities?

Yes, you will receive a single email once a day that details your Reserved Instance Marketplace activity whenever you create or cancel Reserved Instance listings, buyers purchase your listings, or AWS disburses funds to your bank account.

Can I access the metrics data for a terminated Amazon EC2 instance or a deleted Elastic Load Balancer?

Yes. Amazon CloudWatch stores metrics for terminated Amazon EC2 instances or deleted Elastic Load Balancers for 2 weeks.

Can I automatically scale my Amazon EC2 fleets?

Yes. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is a fully managed service designed to launch or terminate Amazon EC2 instances automatically to help ensure you have the correct number of Amazon EC2 instances available to handle the load for your application. EC2 Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability through fleet management for EC2 instances, which detects and replaces unhealthy instances, and by scaling your Amazon EC2 capacity up or down automatically according to conditions you define. You can use EC2 Auto Scaling to automatically increase the number of Amazon EC2 instances during demand spikes to maintain performance and decrease capacity during lulls to reduce costs.

Can I launch Amazon EC2 Cluster Instances in a VPC?

Yes. Cluster instances are supported in Amazon VPC, however, not all instance types are available in all regions and Availability Zones.

When I call DescribeInstances(), do I see all of my Amazon EC2 instances, including those in EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC?

Yes. DescribeInstances() will return all running Amazon EC2 instances. You can differentiate EC2-Classic instances from EC2-VPC instances by an entry in the subnet field. If there is a subnet ID listed, the instance is within a VPC.

When I call DescribeVolumes(), do I see all of my Amazon EBS volumes, including those in EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC?

Yes. DescribeVolumes() will return all your EBS volumes.

Do you offer encryption on Amazon EBS volumes and snapshots?

Yes. EBS offers seamless encryption of data volumes and snapshots. EBS encryption better enables you to meet security and encryption compliance requirements.

Are there any limitations in sending email from Amazon EC2 instances?

Yes. In order to maintain the quality of Amazon EC2 addresses for sending email, we enforce default limits on the amount of email that can be sent from EC2 accounts. If you wish to send larger amounts of email from EC2, you can apply to have these limits removed from your account by filling out this form.

Can I get a history of all EC2 API calls made on my account for security analysis and operational troubleshooting purposes?

Yes. To receive a history of all EC2 API calls (including VPC and EBS) made on your account, you simply turn on CloudTrail in the AWS Management Console.

Can I use Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances with Amazon VPC?

Yes. You can reserve an instance in Amazon VPC when you purchase Reserved Instances. When computing your bill, AWS does not distinguish whether your instance runs in Amazon VPC or standard Amazon EC2. AWS automatically optimizes which instances are charged at the lower Reserved Instance rate to ensure you always pay the lowest amount. However, your instance reservation will be specific to Amazon VPC. Please see the Reserved Instances page for further details.

Can I tag an Amazon EC2 Fleet?

Yes. You can tag a EC2 Fleet request to create business-relevant tag groupings to organize resources along technical, business, and security dimensions.

How many instances can I run in Amazon EC2?

You are limited to running up to a total of 20 On-Demand instances across the instance family, purchasing 20 Reserved Instances, and requesting Spot Instances per your dynamic Spot limit per region. New AWS accounts may start with limits that are lower than the limits described here. Certain instance types may further be limited per region.If you need more instances, complete the Amazon EC2 instance request form with your use case and your instance increase will be considered. Limit increases are tied to the region they were requested for.

I own zonal RIs how do I assign them to a region?

You can assign your Standard zonal RIs to a region by modifying the scope of the RI from a specific Availability Zone to a region from the EC2 management console or by using the ModifyReservedInstances API.

How do I change the configuration of a Convertible RI?

You can change the configuration of your Convertible RI using the EC2 Management Console or the GetReservedInstancesExchangeQuote API. You also have the flexibility to exchange a portion of your Convertible RI or merge the value of multiple Convertible RIs in a single exchange. Click here to learn more about exchanging Convertible RIs.

What are the different payment options for RIs?

You can choose from three payment options when you purchase an RI. With the All Upfront option, you pay for the entire RI term with one upfront payment. With the Partial Upfront option, you make a low upfront payment and are then charged a discounted hourly rate for the instance for the duration of the RI term. The No Upfront option does not require any upfront payment and provides a discounted hourly rate for the duration of the term.

What happens to my Spot instance when it gets interrupted?

You can choose to have your Spot instances terminated, stopped or hibernated upon interruption. Stop and hibernate options are available for persistent Spot requests and Spot Fleets with the "maintain" option enabled. By default, your instances are terminated.

How do I build cost-effective failover solution on X1 and X1e instances?

You can design simple and cost-effective failover solutions on X1 instances using Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery, an Amazon EC2 feature that is designed to better manage failover upon instance impairment. You can enable Auto Recovery for X1 instances by creating an AWS CloudWatch alarm. Choose the "EC2 Status Check Failed (System)" metric and select the "Recover this instance" action.

How can I determine the status of my Spot request?

You can determine the status of your Spot request via Spot Request Status code and message. You can access Spot Request Status information on the Spot Instance page of the EC2 console of the AWS Management Console, API and CLI.

How can I find what Amazon EBS snapshots are shared globally?

You can find snapshots that have been shared globally by selecting "Public Snapshots" from the viewing dropdown in the Snapshots section of the AWS Management Console.

How can I discover Amazon EBS snapshots that have been shared with me?

You can find snapshots that have been shared with you by selecting "Private Snapshots" from the viewing dropdown in the Snapshots section of the AWS Management Console. This section will list both snapshots you own and snapshots that have been shared with you.

When can I list a Reserved Instance on the Reserved Instance Marketplace?

You can list a Reserved Instance when: * You've registered as a seller in the Reserved Instance Marketplace. * You've paid for your Reserved Instance. * You've owned the Reserved Instance for longer than 30 days.

Which Reserved Instances can I list for sale?

You can list any Reserved Instances that have been active for at least 30 days, and for which we have received payment.

How do I load data into an EFS file system?

You can load data into an Amazon EFS file system from your Amazon EC2 instances or from your on-premises datacenter servers. Amazon EFS file systems can be mounted on an Amazon EC2 instance, so any data that is accessible to an Amazon EC2 instance can also be read and written to Amazon EFS. To load data that is not currently stored on the Amazon cloud, you can use the same methods you use to transfer files to Amazon EC2 today, such as Secure Copy (SCP). Amazon EFS file systems can also be mounted on an on-premises server, so any data that is accessible to an on-premises server can be read and written to Amazon EFS using standard Linux tools.

How many Spot instances can I request?

You can request Spot instances up to your Spot limit for each region. Limit increase requests can be completed to increase this limit.

Can I tag a Spot Fleet request?

You can request to launch Spot instances with tags via Spot Fleet. The Fleet by itself cannot be tagged.

Will I lose the metrics data if I disable monitoring for an Amazon EC2 instance?

You can retrieve metrics data for any Amazon EC2 instance up to 2 weeks from the time you started to monitor it. After 2 weeks, metrics data for an Amazon EC2 instance will not be available if monitoring was disabled for that Amazon EC2 instance. If you want to archive metrics beyond 2 weeks you can do so by calling mon-get-stats command from the command line and storing the results in Amazon S3 or Amazon SimpleDB.

How many Amazon EC2 instances can I use within a VPC?

You can run any number of Amazon EC2 instances within a VPC, so long as your VPC is appropriately sized to have an IP address assigned to each instance. You are initially limited to launching 20 Amazon EC2 instances at any one time and a maximum VPC size of /16 (65,536 IPs). This limit can be increased by request.

How can I see the CPU Credit balance for each T2 instance?

You can see the CPU Credit balance for each T2 instance in EC2 per-Instance metrics in Amazon CloudWatch.

How much of my Reserved Instance term can I list?

You can sell a Reserved Instance for the term remaining, rounded down to the nearest month. For example, if you had 9 months and 13 days remaining, you will list it for sale as a 9-month-term Reserved Instance.

Can I use my existing AMIs in Amazon VPC?

You can use AMIs in Amazon VPC that are registered within the same region as your VPC. For example, you can use AMIs registered in us-east-1 with a VPC in us-east-1. More information is available in the Amazon EC2 Region and Availability Zone FAQ.

Can I use Spot Fleet with Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, or Elastic MapReduce?

You can use Auto Scaling features with Spot Fleet such as target tracking, health checks, cloudwatch metrics etc and can attach instances to your Elastic load balancers (both classic and application load balancers). Elastic MapReduce has a feature named "Instance fleets" that provides capabilities similar to Spot Fleet.

How will I be charged and billed for my use of Amazon EC2?

You pay only for what you use. Displayed pricing is an hourly rate but depending on which instances you choose, you pay by the hour or second (minimum of 60 seconds) for each instance type. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed based on instance usage. Data transferred between AWS services in different regions will be charged as Internet Data Transfer on both sides of the transfer. Usage for other Amazon Web Services is billed separately from Amazon EC2.For EC2 pricing information, please visit the pricing section on the EC2 detail page.

What price will I pay for a Spot instance?

You pay the Spot price that's in effect at the beginning of each instance-hour for your running instance. If Spot price changes after you launch the instance, the new price is charged against the instance usage for the subsequent hour.

What if my EBS root volume is not large enough to store memory state (RAM) for Hibernate?

You should have sufficient space available on your EBS root volume to write data from memory. If the EBS root volume does not enough space, hibernation will fail and the instance will get shutdown instead.

Why should I use Optimize CPUs feature?

You should use Optimize CPUs if: * You are running EC2 workloads that are not compute bound and are incurring vCPU-based licensing costs. By launching instances with custom number of vCPUs you may be able to optimize your licensing spend. * You are running workloads that will benefit from disabling hyper-threading on EC2 instances.

How am I charged if Spot price changes while my instance is running?

You will pay the price per instance-hour set at the beginning of each instance-hour for the entire hour, billed to the nearest second.

What happens to EBS data if an instance is terminated?

data that is stored on an Amazon EBS volume will persist independently of the life of the instance.

What are I2 Instances ideal for?

optimized to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random I/O operations per second (IOPS) to applications. This is well suited for: * NoSQL databases (for example, Cassandra and MongoDB) * Clustered databases * Online transaction processing (OLTP) systems

What are the D2 instance type requirements?

requires 64-bit HVM AMI

What do I2 instance types require?

requires HVM AMI