r7i.2xlarge

Analysis

The r7i.2xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r7i series with 8 vCPUs and 64 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.2xlarge on AWS Graviton3 costs $0.4284/hour, 19% less ($73.58 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r7gd.2xlarge at $0.5443, the r7a.2xlarge at $0.6086 and the r7iz.2xlarge at $0.7440.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $230 a month per instance: $0.5292/hour against $0.8442/hour, a 60% spread.

On demand it costs $0.5292/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $386 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.2xlarge on Intel Xeon 8375C (Ice Lake) ($18.40 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor. The newer r8i.2xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) is 5.0% dearer at $0.5557/hour.

Looking beyond its own line, 11 of 45 current types with 8 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.2xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.4032/hour.