r5ad.24xlarge

Analysis

The r5ad.24xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r5ad 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 $4,379 a month per instance: $3.99/hour against $9.98/hour, a 150% spread.

Within the same generation and size, the r5a.24xlarge on AMD EPYC 7571 costs $5.42/hour, 14% less ($631 a month). The other variants are the r5.24xlarge at $6.05, the r5d.24xlarge at $6.91 and the r5n.24xlarge at $7.15.

At $6.29/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $4,590 a month, the r5ad.24xlarge is one of the cheaper ways to buy memory optimized capacity: only 22% of the 385 current memory optimized types cost less per vCPU-hour than its $0.0655.

It has local instance storage (4 x 900 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: 20 Gigabit.

Looking beyond its own line, 6 of 35 current types with 96 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6a.24xlarge on AMD EPYC 7R13 at $5.44/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $3.96/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $2.72/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 70% to the bill at $10.70/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.