The i8g.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, "8" is the generation, "g" marks AWS Graviton (ARM) processors and "8xlarge" is the size within the i8g family. It runs on AWS Graviton4 Processor at 2.7 GHz, and AWS introduced it in December 2024. i8g is the current generation of the i family, so there is no newer AWS size to migrate to. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so i8g.8xlarge becomes 2 × mh.vs1.2xlarge (32 vCPU, 256 GiB combined), $2.75/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 | $2.746 | $0.912 | $0.042 | $2.704 savings | ||
| US Central, Chicago | no AWS region | $0.042 | ||||
| US Central, Dallas | no AWS region | $0.262 | ||||
| Hong Kong | $0.042 | |||||
| Sydney, Australia | $3.291 | $0.528 | $0.042 | $3.249 savings | ||
| London, UK | $3.186 | $0.489 | $0.262 | $2.924 savings | ||
| US West, San Jose | $0.004 | |||||
| US Central, Dallas 2 | no AWS region | $0.484 |