Instances›AWS EC2›m5›m5.metal
Compute
vCPUs96
Memory384 GiB
Mem / vCPU4.00 GiB
ProcessorXeon Platinum 8175
Clock speed3.1 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
Bandwidth19,000 Mbps
Throughput2375 MB/s
IOPS80,000
Networking
Performance25 Gigabit
Max ENIs15
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
m5.large2 vCPU · 8 GiB
m5.xlarge4 vCPU · 16 GiB
m5.2xlarge8 vCPU · 32 GiB
m5.4xlarge16 vCPU · 64 GiB
m5.8xlarge32 vCPU · 128 GiB
m5.12xlarge48 vCPU · 192 GiB
m5.16xlarge64 vCPU · 256 GiB
m5.24xlarge96 vCPU · 384 GiB
m5.metal96 vCPU · 384 GiB
m5.metal

The m5.metal is a general-purpose AWS EC2 instance: 96 vCPU and 384 GiB of memory, 4.00 GiB per vCPU. In the name, "m" is the general-purpose line, "5" is the generation and "metal" is the size within the m5 family. It runs on Intel Xeon Platinum 8175 at 3.1 GHz, and AWS introduced it in February 2019. AWS has since shipped m6i, m7i, m8i and m9g; m6i.metal is the direct replacement at this size. No single Spot node covers 96 vCPU and 384 GiB, so the equivalent is a fleet: 6 × gp.vs1.2xlarge, 96 vCPU and 384 GiB in total, about 95% below the US East (N. Virginia) on-demand rate. 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

m5.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 (6 × gp.vs1.2xlarge, 96 vCPU, 384 GiB), but not the dedicated hardware. If you picked m5.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 m5, it is the same compute for a lot less.

Runs as a fleetNo single Spot node has 96 vCPU; the largest comparable one has 16. So this runs as 6 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$4.608$1.117$2.903$1.991$0.246
$4.362 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.246
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.306
Hong Kong$6.336$3.992$2.737$0.066
$6.270 savings
Sydney, Australia$5.760$2.057$3.629$2.488$0.966
$4.794 savings
London, UK$5.328$0.773$3.357$2.302$1.326
$4.002 savings
US West, San Jose$5.376$0.683$3.387$2.322$0.906
$4.470 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.006
US East, N. Virginia 2$4.608$1.117$2.903$1.991$0.906
$3.702 savings
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Development, staging and CI environments
  • ●Small to mid-size relational databases
  • ●Backend services with no single dominant resource
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 384 GiB of RAM
  • ●Parallel work that can occupy 96 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at 25 Gigabit
  • ●Anything that shards cleanly across 6 nodes, which is how it maps onto Rackspace Spot
Avoid if
  • ●Starting a new deployment. m6i.metal is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 384 GiB of RAM
  • ●You need dedicated hardware. Rackspace Spot sells virtualised compute only.
  • ●More than 4.00 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
  • ●The work is single-threaded. Most of these 96 vCPU would sit idle.
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
$3,364/mo on AWS on-demand against $180/mo on Rackspace Spot for the 6-node equivalent — market-priced, not list-priced.
  • 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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