hpc7a.96xlarge

Analysis

The hpc7a.96xlarge is a compute optimized instance in the hpc7a series with 192 vCPUs and 768 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 9R14 (up to 3.7 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Nothing else with 192 vCPUs and similar memory is cheaper: among 18 current same-shape types it has the lowest on-demand price.

Running it in Ohio instead of Ireland saves $383 a month per instance: $7.20/hour against $7.73/hour, a 7.3% spread. It is not offered in N. Virginia, Oregon, Canada Central, São Paulo, London, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $5.67/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 79% of the time; three years brings it to $3.89/hour, 46% below on demand. Windows Server roughly doubles the bill at $16.03/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.

At $7.20/hour on demand in its cheapest tracked region, about $5,256 a month, the hpc7a.96xlarge is one of the cheaper ways to buy compute optimized capacity: only 6% of the 291 current compute optimized types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0375.