AWS announces new high memory EC2 instances with up to 12TB of memory

As enterprises manage and process large volumes of data in real time, they increasingly turn to in-memory databases to handle those tasks. That is why Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced new EC2 high memory instances with up to 12TB of memory designed to run large in-memory databases in the cloud such as SAP HANA.

AWS' EC2 high memory instances are now widely available, additionally offering lower tiers including 6TB and 9TB of memory for good measure. Next year, Amazon also plans to offer EC2 instances to 18TB and 24TB. With these high memory virtual machines, customers will be able to run in-memory databases in the same Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that also hosts their other business applications.

Matt Garman, Vice President of Compute Services at AWS, said:

With 12 TB instances available in AWS, and 24 TB instances coming next year, Amazon EC2 High Memory instances give our customers the ability to scale their in-memory database with predictable performance in the same VPC as their other AWS services. Customers can grow their in-memory database and easily connect it to their storage, networking, analytics, IoT, and machine learning services – helping them make faster and better business decisions.

In order to meet its growing business demand, Fast Retailing (also known as UNIQLO) plans to switch to the new EC2 high memory 6TB instance after years of running HANA on Amazon EC2 X1e VMs with 4TB memory, according to the company's chief information officer, Makoto Hoketsu.

By default, the high memory VMs are elastic block storage (EBS)-optimized and provide 14Gbps of storage bandwidth to encrypted and unencrypted EBS volumes. Amazon claimed that the EC2 instances are capable of delivering 25Gbps of aggregate network bandwidth with high networking throughput and low-latency. The company also noted that these are the first Amazon EC2 VMs to be powered by an eight-socket platform with Intel's Xeon Platinum 8176M (Skylake) processors.

Other cloud computing providers have also recently bolstered their own offerings. In June, Microsoft announced improvements to its Azure cloud offerings including the M-series virtual machines with up to 12TB of memory and 192GB of memory on the cheaper side of the spectrum.