m6id.8xlarge

Analysis

The m6id.8xlarge is a general purpose instance in the m6id series with 32 vCPUs and 128 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) (up to 3.5 GHz), which makes it balanced at 4 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the m6g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton2 costs $1.23/hour, 35% less ($486 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the m6a.8xlarge at $1.38, the m6gd.8xlarge at $1.45 and the m6i.8xlarge at $1.54.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $822 a month per instance: $1.90/hour against $3.02/hour, a 59% spread.

On demand it costs $1.90/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,386 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for general purpose types at the 57th percentile per vCPU ($0.0593 per vCPU-hour) and the 57th percentile per GiB ($0.0148 per GiB-hour).

It has local instance storage (1 x 1900 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: 12500 Megabit.

Looking beyond its own line, 20 of 37 current types with 32 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the m7g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton3 at $1.31/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $1.20/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.8201/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 78% to the bill at $3.37/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.