AWS I3 Instances for Demanding I/O Intensive Applications that like Super Fast Disk

I had some time at AWS re:invent to play with these I3 instances and a few others which are designed for I/O intensive workloads and are equipped with super fast NVMe SSD storage.  These instances can deliver lots of fast read and write IOPS making them a great fit for any workload that requires high throughput and low latency including relational databases for Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases server. When compared to the I2 instances, I3 instances deliver storage that is less expensive and more dense, with the ability to deliver substantially more IOPS and more network bandwidth per CPU core.  Additional, if you take advanatage of the 

I will show some of the Read and Write benchmarks using the Diskspd Utility: A Robust Storage Testing Tool (superseding SQLIO) with DiskSpd Batch that was created by HeraFlux Technologies which can be found HERE  as well as the quick button push of CrystalDiskMark.  So if you want to see all the numbers look below and click on the google sheets link at the bottom for the full numbers.  All I can say is that when you strip 8 NVMe SSD disks to make over 14TB of space it is FAST! 

The Specs
Here are the instance sizes and the associated specs:
Instance NamevCPU CountMemoryInstance Storage (NVMe SSD)Price/Hour
i3.large215.25 GiB0.475 TB$0.15
i3.xlarge430.5 GiB0.950 TB$0.31
i3.2xlarge861 GiB1.9 TB$0.62
i3.4xlarge16122 GiB3.8 TB (2 disks)$1.25
i3.8xlarge32244 GiB7.6 TB (4 disks)$2.50
i3.16xlarge64488 GiB15.2 TB (8 disks)$4.99
The prices shown are for On-Demand instances in the US East (N. Virginia) Region; see the EC2 pricing page for more information.
I3 instances are available in On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot form in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), US East (Ohio), Canada (Central)  You can also use them as Dedicated Hosts and as Dedicated Instances.


For the full results click here to view in Google Sheets

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