r8a.8xlarge

Analysis

The r8a.8xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r8a series with 32 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory on AMD EPYC 9R45 (up to Up to 4.5 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r8g.8xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $1.89/hour, 26% less ($490 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r8i-flex.8xlarge at $2.11, the r8i.8xlarge at $2.22 and the r8gd.8xlarge at $2.35.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Frankfurt saves $385 a month per instance: $2.56/hour against $3.08/hour, a 21% spread. It is not offered in São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

Looking beyond its own line, 23 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.

On demand it costs $2.56/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $1,866 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 49th percentile per vCPU ($0.0799 per vCPU-hour) and the 65th percentile per GiB ($0.00999 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r7a.8xlarge on AMD EPYC 9R14 ($88.88 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.