AWS EC2 Compute Guide 2025: Instance Types and Best Practices

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What’s New in 2025

Key Updates and Changes

• 7th Generation Intel Instances: M7i, C7i, and R7i families with Sapphire Rapids processors
• 15% Better Performance: Custom Intel processors exclusive to AWS
• Graviton3 Dominance: Up to 40% better price-performance than Intel counterparts
• Enhanced Networking: Up to 200 Gbps network performance on select instances
• Intel Advanced Features: AMX for ML workloads, QAT, IAA, and DSA accelerators

Instance Family Updates

• Deprecated: M3, C3 instances - migrate to M7i, C7i
• New Compute: C7i with Intel AMX for ML inference
• Memory Optimized: R7i supports up to 24TB memory
• Storage Optimized: I4i with up to 30TB NVMe SSD
• ML/AI Focus: P5 instances with H100 GPUs, Trn1 with Trainium chips

Major AWS Announcements

• EC2 Capacity Blocks: Reserve GPU capacity for ML training
• Spot Instance Integration: Better integration with EKS and ECS
• Windows Server 2025: Full support with optimized AMIs

Understanding what AWS/EC2 provides for provisioning on-demand computing is essential for all DevOps. In 2025, choosing the right instance type can reduce costs by 40% or more.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Amazon EC2 is AWS primary web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. With the introduction of 7th generation instances and enhanced Graviton3 options, EC2 offers unprecedented flexibility.

EC2 Compute

Compute is computational power needed for your use case. Amazon EC2 allows add compute resources through its Web Service API. EC2 allows you to launch instances. An instance is a server and you can install whatever software you need for your service or web application: NGINX, Apache httpd, Cassandra, Kafka, etc. When you launch a virtual server, an instance in EC2 speak, you can use it as you like just like you would a server in your datacenter. You pay for the compute power that you use. There are different instance types with various ranges of CPU, RAM, IO, and networking power. You pay for compute resources by the hour or second (minimum 60 seconds). You can use more instances and you can reserve instances for longer periods of time for a price break.

Instance Types in 2025

The instance type defines the size of the virtual instance. AWS now offers over 600 instance types across 6 distinct categories.

Key Specifications to Consider:

• Virtual CPUs (vCPUs) - Now up to 448 vCPUs
• Memory RAM (size and type) - Up to 24TB
• Network performance - Up to 200 Gbps
• Storage options - NVMe SSD, EBS optimized
• Accelerators - GPUs, FPGAs, custom silicon

There are families of instance types. A vCPU represents a hyperthread of a physical processor core.

We hope this information on AWS instance types is helpful. Check out our Cassandra consulting and Kafka consulting. We specialize in AWS DevOps Automation for Cassandra and Kafka.

Current Instance Families (2025)

General Purpose

• M7i - Latest Intel Sapphire Rapids, up to 192 vCPUs, 768 GiB memory
• M7i-flex - Baseline 40% CPU, burst to 100%, 19% cheaper than M7i
• M7g - Graviton3, up to 64 vCPUs, best price-performance
• M7a - AMD EPYC, cost-effective alternative
• M6i - Previous gen Intel, still widely used
• T4g - Burstable Graviton2, ideal for variable workloads

Compute Optimized

• C7i - Intel Sapphire Rapids, ideal for CPU-intensive tasks
• C7g - Graviton3, 25% better price-performance than C6g
• C7a - AMD EPYC, high-frequency processors
• C6i - Previous gen, being phased out

Memory Optimized

• R7i - Up to 192 vCPUs, 1,536 GiB memory
• R7g - Graviton3, best value for memory-intensive workloads
• R7a - AMD option for memory-intensive applications
• X2idn - Up to 2,048 GiB memory, 3.8 TB NVMe SSD
• High Memory - Up to 24 TB memory for SAP HANA

Accelerated Computing

• P5 - NVIDIA H100 GPUs for large-scale ML
• P4 - NVIDIA A100 GPUs
• G5 - NVIDIA A10G for graphics and ML inference
• Trn1 - AWS Trainium for ML training, 50% cost savings
• Inf2 - AWS Inferentia2 for inference

Storage Optimized

• I4i - Up to 30 TB NVMe SSD, 16 GB/s throughput
• I3en - Up to 60 TB NVMe, balanced compute/storage
• D3en - 336 TB HDD storage for distributed file systems

High Performance Computing

• Hpc7g - Graviton3E for HPC workloads
• C7gn - 200 Gbps network for compute-intensive networking

Network Performance Evolution

Network performance has dramatically improved:

Instance Size	2016 Network	2025 Network
Large	Up to 10 Gbps	12.5 Gbps
8xlarge	10 Gbps	25 Gbps
16xlarge	20 Gbps	50 Gbps
32xlarge+	25 Gbps	100-200 Gbps

Placement Groups are now essential for:

• Cluster placement: Low latency, high throughput
• Partition placement: Distributed workloads
• Spread placement: High availability

2025 Best Practices

For Cassandra Deployments

• First Choice: I4i instances (NVMe SSD, high IOPS)
• Budget Option: M7g with GP3 EBS volumes
• Large Datasets: D3en for cost-effective storage

For Kafka Deployments

• Recommended: M7g or M7i with ST1 EBS for logs
• High Throughput: C7g with enhanced networking
• Budget: M7i-flex for development/testing

For MongoDB

• Production: R7g for memory-intensive workloads
• High IOPS: I4i with local NVMe
• Sharded Clusters: Mix of R7g and I4i

Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Use Graviton: 40% better price-performance
2. Savings Plans: Up to 72% discount for 1-3 year commitments
3. Spot Instances: Up to 90% discount for fault-tolerant workloads
4. Right-sizing: Use AWS Compute Optimizer recommendations
5. M7i-flex: For workloads with variable CPU usage

Instance Selection Decision Tree

Need GPU/ML? → P5, G5, Trn1
Need Maximum Memory? → R7i, X2idn, High Memory
Need Maximum CPU? → C7i, C7g
Need Local NVMe? → I4i, I3en
Need Balance? → M7i, M7g
Variable Load? → T4g, M7i-flex

Cloudurable provides Cassandra training, Cassandra consulting, Cassandra support and helps setting up Cassandra clusters in AWS.

Slide deck that covers configuring AWS Cassandra to run with best EC2 instance type

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