r5ad.8xlarge

Analysis

The r5ad.8xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r5ad series with 32 vCPUs and 256 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 $1,459 a month per instance: $1.33/hour against $3.33/hour, a 150% spread.

Within the same generation and size, the r5a.8xlarge on AMD EPYC 7571 costs $1.81/hour, 14% less ($210 a month). The other variants are the r5.8xlarge at $2.02, the r5d.8xlarge at $2.30 and the r5b.8xlarge at $2.38.

At $2.10/hour on demand in US East (N. Virginia), about $1,530 a month, the r5ad.8xlarge 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 600 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: Up to 10 Gigabit.

Looking beyond its own line, 9 of 41 current types with 32 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $1.61/hour.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $1.32/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $0.9050/hour, 57% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 70% to the bill at $3.57/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.