r7i.12xlarge

Analysis

The r7i.12xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r7i series with 48 vCPUs and 384 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) (up to 3.2 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r7g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton3 costs $2.57/hour, 19% less ($442 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7gd.12xlarge at $3.27, the r7a.12xlarge at $3.65 and the r7iz.12xlarge at $4.46.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $1,380 a month per instance: $3.18/hour against $5.07/hour, a 60% spread.

On demand it costs $3.18/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $2,318 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 26th percentile per vCPU ($0.0662 per vCPU-hour) and the 40th percentile per GiB ($0.00827 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r6i.12xlarge on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) ($110 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8i.12xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) is 5.0% dearer at $3.33/hour.

Looking beyond its own line, 11 of 40 current types with 48 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.12xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $2.42/hour.