The i7i.8xlarge pairs 32 vCPU with 256 GiB of RAM, the 8.00 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a storage-optimized instance. In the name, "i" is I/O, meaning local storage, "7" is the generation, "i" marks Intel processors and "8xlarge" is the size within the i7i family. It runs on Intel Xeon Scalable (Emerald Rapids) at 3.2 GHz, and AWS introduced it in April 2025. AWS has since shipped i8g; i8g.8xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 972,349 CoreMark/s against this instance's 804,256 — roughly 21% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so i7i.8xlarge becomes 2 × mh.vs1.2xlarge (32 vCPU, 256 GiB combined), $3.02/hr on AWS in US East (N. Virginia), from $0.042/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.
| Region | AWS on-demand | AWS Spot | 1-yr Reserved | 3-yr Reserved | Rackspace Spot | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US East, N. Virginia | $3.020 | $1.268 | $0.042 | $2.978 savings | ||
| US Central, Chicago | no AWS region | $0.042 | ||||
| US Central, Dallas | no AWS region | $0.262 | ||||
| Hong Kong | $3.988 | $0.042 | $3.946 savings | |||
| Sydney, Australia | $3.620 | $1.123 | $0.042 | $3.578 savings | ||
| London, UK | $3.504 | $1.362 | $0.262 | $3.242 savings | ||
| US West, San Jose | $3.330 | $0.434 | $0.004 | $3.326 savings | ||
| US Central, Dallas 2 | no AWS region | $0.484 |