Amazon Web Services Announces Availability Of New High I/O Amazon EC2 Instance Type

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the availability of I2 instances, the next generation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) storage-optimized high I/O instances based on solid state disk (SSD) technology that provides customers with very high random I/O performance. I2 instances deliver more processing power with the advances of the Intel® Xeon® E5-2670 v2 (formerly code-named Ivy Bridge-EP) processor, provide enhanced networking with lower latency, low jitter, and very high packet-per-second performance, and are capable of delivering more than 365,000 random read Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and more than 315,000 random write IOPS across eight 800GB SSD instance storage volumes. With these capabilities, I2 instances are well-suited for transactional systems, high-performance NoSQL databases like Cassandra and MongoDB, and other applications that benefit from very high disk I/O performance. To get started with I2 instances on Amazon EC2, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2.

“I2 instances address these customer requests by enabling even better I/O performance, higher IOPS, more processing power, enhanced networking, and twice the memory of HI1 instances. Additionally, I2 instances come in more varied instance sizes than HI1 instances, ranging from 4 to 32 virtual CPUs.”

“Many of our customers are running storage-optimized Amazon EC2 HI1 instances today for applications that benefit from very high random I/O performance. Customers have told us that they not only wanted even more high I/O performance, but also wanted smaller instance size options for their smaller database fleets,” said Matt Garman, Vice President, Amazon EC2. “I2 instances address these customer requests by enabling even better I/O performance, higher IOPS, more processing power, enhanced networking, and twice the memory of HI1 instances. Additionally, I2 instances come in more varied instance sizes than HI1 instances, ranging from 4 to 32 virtual CPUs.”

“As an organization that delivers scalable and powerful backends for our customers’ mobile and web applications, we are excited for the availability of I2 instances and their powerful performance capabilities. We host 180,000 applications on Parse using MongoDB and Cassandra and these applications need high memory and high IOPS. We have been eagerly awaiting I2 instances since we first learned of their IOPS benchmarks at AWS re:Invent and believe that these instances will seriously boost our ability to run large-scale, complex database deployments in Amazon EC2,” said Charity Majors, Operations Tech Lead, Parse.

“As a real-time analytics platform for the digital advertising space, Metamarkets enables buyers, sellers, and ad marketplaces to understand and visualize large quantities of data. For our distributed, memory-mapped database that serves tens of terabytes of data, we currently use several HI1 instances for their fast I/O, high storage density, and high memory benefits. With more IOPS, twice the memory, and high-frequency Intel® Xeon® E5 processors, I2 instances have shown significant benefits in our internal benchmarks and are attractive for us to migrate to,” said Patrick McBride, Head of Technical Operations, Metamarkets.

Customers can launch I2 instances using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), AWS SDKs, and third-party libraries. I2 instances are available in four instance sizes, with 4, 8, 16, and 32 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) respectively, and are initially available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions. I2 instances can be purchased as On-Demand or Reserved Instances. For more information on Amazon EC2 and I2 Instances, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2.

About Amazon Web Services

Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services, Inc. began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. Amazon Web Services offers over 30 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS Cloud services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Australia and China.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the world’s best-selling and most advanced e-reader. It features new display technology with higher contrast, the next generation built-in light, a faster processor, the latest touch technology, and exclusive new features designed from the ground up for readers. Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, features improved fonts and faster page turns. The new Kindle Fire HDX features a stunning exclusive 7” or 8.9” HDX display, a quad-core 2.2 GHz processor, 2x more memory, and 11 hours of battery life, as well as exclusive new features of Fire OS 3.0 including X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, Prime Instant Video downloads, and the revolutionary new Mayday button. The all-new Kindle Fire HD includes an HD display, high-performance processor and dual speakers at a breakthrough price.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.com.mx, and www.amazon.com.au. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment and data center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.