z1d.12xlarge

Analysis

The z1d.12xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the z1d series with 48 vCPUs and 384 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Platinum 8151 (up to 4 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of Tokyo saves $718 a month per instance: $4.46/hour against $5.45/hour, a 22% spread. It is not offered in Canada Central and São Paulo, so plan around that if you need a presence there.

On demand it costs $4.46/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $3,259 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 70th percentile per vCPU ($0.0930 per vCPU-hour) and the 86th percentile per GiB ($0.0116 per GiB-hour).

Looking beyond its own line, 29 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.

It has local instance storage (2 x 900 GB NVMe SSD), which is fast but lost when the instance stops. Network: 25 Gigabit.

Reserving it for a year with no upfront payment cuts the Linux rate to $2.81/hour, which beats on demand once it runs more than 63% of the time; three years brings it to $1.84/hour, 59% below on demand. Windows Server roughly adds 49% to the bill at $6.67/hour, because the licence is charged per vCPU.