The document introduces Amazon EC2 A1 instances, which are powered by AWS Graviton processors featuring Arm architecture. These instances offer lower costs than other EC2 instances due to improved hardware efficiency. Customer SmugMug discussed migrating their workload to A1 instances, finding a 40% reduction in cost per core. The software ecosystem to support A1 instances is also expanding to include options like Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu, and Red Hat.

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Introducing Amazon EC2 A1 instances
Sudhir Raman
Sr Product Manager
Amazon EC2
S e s s i o n I D :
Ali Saidi
Principal Engineer
AWS
Shane Meyers
Principal Production Engineer
SmugMug

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Agenda
Introducing new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) A1 instances
Workloads and usages
Customer use case: SmugMug
Software ecosystem and demos
Summary

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Amazon EC2 overview
Resources
Instances
Storage
Networking
Availability
Regions and AZs
Placement Groups
Load Balancing
Auto Scaling
Management
Deployment
Monitoring
Administration
Purchase Options
On Demand
Reserved
Spot

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Broadest and deepest platform choice

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Broadest choice of processors and architectures

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So, how did we get here?

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Workload optimization journey
I/O Accelerator Card Nitro Card

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64-bit Arm Neoverse
AWS Graviton Processor

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Nitro Hypervisor Nitro Card Nitro Security Chip
Lightweight hypervisor
Memory and CPU allocation
Bare Metal-like performance
Elastic Block Storage
Elastic Networking Adapter
Monitoring, and security
Integrated into motherboard
Protects hardware resources
Nitro System

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First instance powered by AWS Graviton Processor
Up to 45% cost savings AWS Graviton Processor
with 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and
custom AWS silicon
Amazon EC2 A1
Lower cost
Run scale-out and Arm-based workloads in the cloud
Maximize resource
efficiency with AWS Nitro
System
Flexibility and choice for
your workloads

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Amazon EC2 General Purpose instances
M5/M5a
instances
Balance of compute, memory, and network resources
T3/T3a
instances
A1 instances
Optimized for most workloads with occasional
high CPU use

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Targeted applications for Amazon EC2 A1

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Amazon EC2 A1: sizes and specifications
Instance
CPU
Arch
vCPUs
Memory
(GB)
Network
Bandwidth
(Gbps)
EBS
Optimized
EBS Bandwidth
(Mbps)
EBS Optimized
Burst Bandwidth
(Mbps)
a1.medium Arm64 1 2 Up to 10 Yes 300 3500
a1.large arm64 2 4 Up to 10 Yes 525 3500
a1.xlarge arm64 4 8 Up to 10 Yes 800 3500
a1.2xlarge arm64 8 16 Up to 10 Yes 1750 3500
a1.4xlarge arm64 16 32 Up to 10 Yes 3500 3500

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Customer use case: SmugMug
Shane Meyers
Principal Production Engineer
SmugMug

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The safe, beautiful home
for all of your photos

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• Premium service since 2002
• One of the first S3 customers
• 100% AWS since June 2012
• Hundreds of EC2 Instances
• Petabytes of S3 storage
• Heavy usage of GPUs for image
operations
• Spring 2018 acquired Flickr

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Web Servers
PhotoServe tier
GPU tier

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Web Servers
PhotoServe tier
GPU tier

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• PHP, Nginx, HAProxy, Ubuntu, Puppet
• Moved from Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty to 18.04 Bionic
• Puppet 3.4 to 5.4
• Recompile all custom packages on Arm
• Needed newer version of some packages with Arm support
Migrating to A1

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• Cost savings - 40% less per core
• Looks, feels, runs like any other EC2 instance
• Once on Ubuntu 18.04, very little work for Arm support
• Work with 3rd party providers for Arm software
• Definite candidate for our PhotoServe tier
Key takeaways

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• Test each workload for possible migration to A1
• Migrate all appropriate tasks to A1
• Explore A1 spot market for additional savings
Plans for future

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Software ecosystem
ToolsOSVs and ISVs
Amazon Linux 2
Ubuntu 16.04 and newer
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7.6 and newer
More coming soon
Containers
Most Docker official images
support arm64
ECS
Available
today
EKS
Coming
soon

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Summary
• Amazon EC2 A1 instances are powered by new AWS Graviton
Processors
• AWS Graviton Processors feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse

42. Thank you!
© 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Sudhir Raman Ali Saidi
ramansu@amazon.com alisaidi@amazon.com

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Backup

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FAQs (1)
• How do I launch an A1 Instance?
• Instances can be run in the same way as other Amazon EC2 instances (CLI or Console)
• aws ec2 run-instances –instance-type a1.xlarge –key my_key –image-id <ami-id>
• What AMIs are available?
• Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu 16.04, and RedHat 7.6 are available today
• Others coming soon
• Can customers create their own Arm images?
• Yes, they can be registered with the arm64 architecture
• Will my application work?
• The changes required are dependent on the application. While some applications may require re-compilation,
applications that are based on truly interpreted languages not reliant on x86 instruction set should run on A1
instances with minimal to no changes

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FAQs (2)
• Are there specific AMI requirements to run on A1 instances?
You will want to ensure that you use the “arm64” AMIs with the A1 instances. x86 AMIs are not compatible with
A1 instances.
• What are the various storage options available on A1 instances?
A1 instances are EBS-optimized by default and offer up to 3,500 Mbps of dedicated EBS bandwidth to both
encrypted and unencrypted EBS volumes.
• Does A1 support instance storage?
No, instance storage is not supported on A1 instances.
• Which network interface is supported on A1 instances?
A1 instances support ENA based Enhanced Networking.