r5ad.4xlarge

Analysis

The r5ad.4xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r5ad series with 16 vCPUs and 128 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 $730 a month per instance: $0.6640/hour against $1.66/hour, a 151% spread.

Within the same generation and size, the r5a.4xlarge on AMD EPYC 7571 costs $0.9040/hour, 14% less ($105 a month). The other variants are the r5.4xlarge at $1.01, the r5d.4xlarge at $1.15 and the r5n.4xlarge at $1.19.

At $1.05/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $765 a month, the r5ad.4xlarge 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 (2 x 300 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: Up to 10 Gigabit.

Looking beyond its own line, 9 of 42 current types with 16 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.4xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.8064/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $0.6600/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.4530/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 70% to the bill at $1.78/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.