Customers running database workloads like Oracle and SQL Server on EC2 today want high memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth but do not require a high vCPU count since these workloads are rarely compute-bound. Memory-optimized instance families such as Amazon EC2 X1 instances and Amazon EC2 R4 instances offer high RAM-to-vCPU ratio to help customers select appropriately sized EC2 instances. With Optimize CPUs, customers now have the added flexibility of specifying a custom number of vCPUs for new instances, while enjoying the same memory, storage, and bandwidth of a full-sized instance. For example, a x1.4xlarge instance currently offers 16 vCPUs by default but customers can now launch x1.4xlarge with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14 vCPUs. This enables Bring Your Own license (BYOL) customers to optimize their vCPU-based licensing costs. Please note that CPU optimized instances will have the same price as full-sized EC2 instances of the same size.
We are also offering customers ability to disable Intel HT Technology on EC2 instances. While, Intel HT Technology is enabled by default on EC2 instance types, certain applications such as high-performance computing (HPC) applications are not designed to benefit from Intel HT Technology. Compute-intensive workloads experience performance degradation due to context switching when Intel HT Technology is enabled. By disabling Intel HT, customers can fine-tune their application performance, optimize BYOL usage and save on license costs.
