In our example, 5 is the instance generation of the R5d.xlarge instance. Usually, the last two or three generations are available.

As Amazon deploys new servers in their data centers to provide the resources for running more instances by customers, these new servers have new hardware that is usually better than that of previous generations. This is true for instance families that have been available for a long time now. You may notice that many instance families have multiple generations (newer and older ones). Instance generationĪn instance generation represents instances of the same family running on servers of different hardware generations in AWS. One instance family can belong to only one EC2 instance type. One instance type can contain one or multiple families. This is a generic family for memory-optimized instances.Įach family provides its own hardware-backed features. R is the instance family or instance class in our example. It also identifies the ratio between hardware components (such as processor, memory and storage) in the instance specification. Let’s break down instance naming using the example of the R5d.xlarge instance.Īn EC2 instance family or instance class represents instances with a similar purpose. They are reflected in instance types and names.Īn EC2 instance type consists of multiple parameters: Servers have different hardware sets, and EC2 instances can use different amounts of hardware capacity. However, there is a logic behind the naming convention for AWS EC2 instances, and the name contains instance specifications.ĪWS EC2 instances are virtual machines running on physical servers in Amazon data centers. AWS EC2 instance types are represented as a mix of letters and digits. DISCOVER SOLUTION Classification of AWS EC2 TypesĪt first glance, AWS EC2 instance names look confusing.

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