r5a.24xlarge

Analysis

The r5a.24xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r5a series with 96 vCPUs and 768 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 7571 (up to 2.5 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Running it in Mumbai instead of São Paulo saves $3,837 a month per instance: $3.43/hour against $8.69/hour, a 153% spread.

Nothing else with 96 vCPUs and similar memory is cheaper: among 35 current same-shape types it has the lowest on-demand price.

At $5.42/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $3,960 a month, the r5a.24xlarge is one of the cheaper ways to buy memory optimized capacity: only 5% of the 385 current memory optimized types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0565.

It is the cheapest of the 5 processor variants AWS sells at this size and generation. The r5n.24xlarge on Intel Xeon Platinum 8259 (Cascade Lake) costs 32% more, and the r5.24xlarge, the r5ad.24xlarge and the r5d.24xlarge also sit above it.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $3.42/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $2.34/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 81% to the bill at $9.84/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.