M5 – The Next Generation of General-Purpose EC2 Instances

I always advise new EC2 users to start with our general-purpose instances, run some stress tests, and to get a really good feel for the compute, memory, and networking profile of their application before taking a look at other instance types. With a broad selection of instances optimized for compute, memory, and storage, our customers have many options and the flexibility to choose the instance type that is the best fit for their needs.

As you can see from my EC2 Instance History post, the general-purpose (M) instances go all the way back to 2006 when we launched the m1.small. We continued to evolve along this branch of our family tree, launching the the M2 (2009), M3 (2012), and the M4 (2015) instances. Our customers use the general-purpose instances to run web & app servers, host enterprise applications, support online games, and build cache fleets.

New M5 Instances
Today we are taking the next step forward with the launch of our new M5 instances. These instances benefit from our commitment to continued innovation and offer even better price-performance than their predecessors. Based on Custom Intel^® Xeon^® Platinum 8175M series processors running at 2.5 GHz, the M5 instances are designed for highly demanding workloads and will deliver 14% better price/performance than the M4 instances on a per-core basis. Applications that use the AVX-512 instructions will crank out twice as many FLOPS per core. We’ve also added a new size at the high-end, giving you even more options.

Here are the M5 instances (all VPC-only, HVM-only, and EBS-Optimized):

At the top end of the lineup, the m5.24xlarge is second only to the X instances when it comes to vCPU count, giving you more room to scale up and to consolidate workloads. The instances support Enhanced Networking, and can deliver up to 25 Gbps when used within a Placement Group.

In addition to dedicated, EBS-Optimized bandwidth to EBS, access to EBS storage is enhanced by the use of NVMe (you’ll need to install the proper drivers if you are using older AMIs). The combination of more bandwidth and NVMe will increase the amount of data that your M5 instances can chew through.

Launch One Today
You can launch M5 instances today in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) Regions in On-Demand and Spot form (Reserved Instances are also available), with additional Regions in the works.

Update (January 2018): When we launched the M5 instances last November we did not recommend them for use in conjunction with sc1 or st1 volumes. The underlying performance issue has since been addressed and the instances can now be used with both types of volumes.

— Jeff;