AWS EC2 Instance Type- Overview
All the EC2 instance types have to come up with various combinations like CPU, Storage, Memory and other networking capacities. It also gives flexibility in selecting the right mix of resources for respective applications.
- “General purpose instances provide a balance of compute, memory and networking resources, and can be used for a variety of diverse workloads”.
General Purpose
Type
t2 (tiny or turbo)
m5 (medium)
Description
High frequency Intel Xeon processors
CPU Burstable Performance
Lowest-cost general purpose instance type
Optimized for changing workloads
High frequency Intel Xeon processors
Balanced
Optimized for consistent workloads
- “Compute optimized instances are ideal for compute bound applications that benefit from high performance processors”
Compute Optimized
Type
c5 (compute)
Description
High ratio of compute to memory
Optimized for compute-intensive workloads
Deliver cost-effective high performance at a low price per compute ratio
- “Memory optimized instances are designed to deliver fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory”
Memory Optimized
Type
r4 (RAM)
x1e (xtreme)
Description
High Frequency Intel Xeon processor
Optimized for memory-intensive applications
Support for Enhanced Networking
High Frequency Intel Xeon processor
Optimized for high-performance databases, memory-intensive databases, and other memory-intensive applications
- “Accelerated computing instances use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform functions [...], graphics processing, or data pattern matching more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.”
Accelerated Computing
Type
p3 (pictures)
Description
High frequency Intel Xeon and GPU
Optimized for functions, graphics processing, and other GPU uses
Supports NVLink for peer-to-peer GPU communication
- “Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage. They are optimized to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random I/O operations per second to applications”
Storage Optimized
Types
h1 (HDD)
i3 (IOPS)
d2 (dense)
Description
HDD storage
High disk throughput
High frequency Intel Xeon processors v4
Enhanced Networking up to 25Gbps
SSD storage
High Random I/O performance and High Sequential Read throughput
High frequency Intel Xeon processors v4
Enhanced Networking up to 25Gbps
HDD storage
Highest disk throughput
High frequency Intel Xeon processors v3
Enable Available CloudWatch Metrics
By default, some metrics are unavailable through CloudWatch so we need to enable them.
For Ubuntu EC2, execute the following lines:
More information about the installation on Amazon Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux here.
Then download, install and configure the monitoring scripts:
Inside the package, we’ll be interested in mon-put-instance-data.pl script. It will collect memory, swap and disk space utilization data on the current system and then send it to CloudWatch. We’ll principally use MemoryUtilization and DiskSpaceUtilization.
Let’s set up a cronjob sending our metrics periodically. Add the following line in your crontab –e
Then access your metrics in CloudWatch with the prefix System/Linux.
Monitor your EC2 with CloudWatch
EC2 instances allow users to increase or decrease resource capacity on demand. It can also be integrated into AWS components and features such as Auto Scaling Group which automatically increase and decrease your EC2 instances number inside your ASG (Auto Scaling Group). It can also be grouped inside clusters and managed by either ECS (Amazon EC2 Container Service) or Kubernetes (EKS).
EC2 key metrics are generally into three types :
- CPU
- Network
- Disk I/O
Let’s dig into it...
CPU CloudWatch Metrics
For your EC2 instance :
Name
Description
Unit
CloudWatch Metric Access
CPUUtilization
Percentage of allocated EC2 compute units that are currently in use on the instance
Percent
AWS/EC2
For your EC2 burstable performance instances :
Name
Description
Units
CloudWatch Metric Access
CPUCreditUsage
( T2 Instances)
Number of CPU credits spent by the instance for CPU utilization
Credits (vCPU-minutes)
AWS/EC2
CPUCreditBalance
( T2 Instances)
Number of earned CPU credits that an instance has accrued since it was launched or started
Credits (vCPU-minutes)
AWS/EC2
CPUSurplusCreditBalance (T2 Unlimited only)
Number of surplus credits that have been spent
Credits (vCPU-minutes)
AWS/EC2
CPUSurplusCreditsCharged (T2 Unlimited only)
Number of spent surplus credits that are not paid down by earned CPU credits.
Credits (vCPU-minutes)
AWS/EC2
Network CloudWatch Metrics
Name
Description
Units
CloudWatch Namespace
NetworkIn
Number of bytes received on all network interfaces by the instance
Bytes
AWS/EC2
NetworkOut
Number of bytes sent out on all network interfaces by the instance.
Bytes
AWS/EC2
NetworkPacketsIn
Number of packets received on all network interfaces by the instance.
Count
AWS/EC2
NetworkPacketsOut
Number of packets sent out on all network interfaces by the instance.
Count
AWS/EC2
Disk I/O CloudWatch Metrics
Name
Description
Units
CloudWatch Namespace
DiskReadOps/DiskWriteOps
Completed read/write operations from all instance store volumes available to the instance in a specified period of time
Count
AWS/EC2
DiskReadBytes/DiskWriteBytes
Bytes read from/written to all instance store volumes available to the instance
Bytes
AWS/EC2
You also can go deeper by checking what is the best CloudWatch metrics to watch for your EBS, the Amazon Elastic Block Store alongside your EC2.
Now that you understand better EC2 types, and which metrics are important to monitor, you may check what is best for your workflow.
