Instances›AWS EC2›i3›i3.metal
Compute
vCPUs64
Memory488 GiB
Mem / vCPU7.63 GiB
ProcessorXeon E5-2686 v4
Clock speed2.3 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
BandwidthN/A
ThroughputN/A
IOPS0
Networking
Performance20 Gigabit
Max ENIsN/A
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
i3.large2 vCPU · 15.25 GiB
i3.xlarge4 vCPU · 30.5 GiB
i3.2xlarge8 vCPU · 61 GiB
i3.4xlarge16 vCPU · 122 GiB
i3.8xlarge32 vCPU · 244 GiB
i3.16xlarge64 vCPU · 488 GiB
i3.metal64 vCPU · 488 GiB
i3.metal

The i3.metal pairs 64 vCPU with 488 GiB of RAM, the 7.63 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a storage-optimized instance. In the name, "i" is I/O, meaning local storage, "3" is the generation and "metal" is the size within the i3 family. It runs on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) at 2.3 GHz, and AWS introduced it in November 2017. AWS has since shipped i4i, i7i and i8g; i4i.metal is the direct replacement at this size. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so i3.metal becomes 4 × mh.vs1.2xlarge (64 vCPU, 512 GiB combined), $4.99/hr on AWS in US East (N. Virginia), from $0.084/hr on Rackspace Spot. Spot delivers compute as managed Kubernetes, so a node pool of that size is the native shape of the answer rather than a workaround — provided the workload scales horizontally.

Match qualityVirtualised, not bare metal

i3.metal is a full physical server — no virtualisation layer in the way, direct access to the hardware, and a socket count that licensing can verify.

Rackspace Spot no longer sells bare metal; everything in the catalog is a virtual machine. You get the same cores and memory (4 × mh.vs1.2xlarge, 64 vCPU, 512 GiB), but not the dedicated hardware. If you picked i3.metal because you needed the real machine — nested virtualisation, per-socket licensing, low-level profiling — this is not a replacement at any price. If you picked it because it is the biggest i3, it is the same compute for a lot less.

Runs as a fleetNo single Spot node has 64 vCPU; the largest comparable one has 16. So this runs as 4 nodes. That works if your workload already spreads across machines, and doesn't if one process needs all the cores together.
Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia$4.992$0.084
$4.908 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.084
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.524
Hong Kong$6.592$0.084
$6.508 savings
Sydney, Australia$5.984$0.084
$5.900 savings
London, UK$5.792$0.524
$5.268 savings
US West, San Jose$5.504$0.008
$5.496 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.968
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Streaming ingest that spools to local disk
  • ●Elasticsearch and OpenSearch data nodes
  • ●NoSQL stores such as Cassandra, ScyllaDB and MongoDB
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 488 GiB of RAM
  • ●Parallel work that can occupy 64 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at 20 Gigabit
  • ●Anything that shards cleanly across 4 nodes, which is how it maps onto Rackspace Spot
Avoid if
  • ●Starting a new deployment. i4i.metal is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 488 GiB of RAM
  • ●You need dedicated hardware. Rackspace Spot sells virtualised compute only.
  • ●More than 7.63 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
  • ●The work is single-threaded. Most of these 64 vCPU would sit idle.
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
i3.metal runs $3,644/mo on AWS on-demand. The 4-node equivalent on Rackspace Spot: $61/mo.
  • Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. It is the cheapest compute on the internet.
  • Prices are set by supply and demand. You pay what the market decides.
  • Compute is delivered as fully managed Kubernetes. All infrastructure is taken care of.
  • Egress costs $0.01/GB after the free allowance. AWS charges $0.09/GB.
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