The m8a.24xlarge pairs 96 vCPU with 384 GiB of RAM, the 4.00 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a general-purpose instance. In the name, "m" is the general-purpose line, "8" is the generation, "a" marks AMD processors and "24xlarge" is the size within the m8a family. It runs on AMD EPYC 9R45 Processor at Up to 4.5 GHz, and AWS introduced it in October 2025. AWS has since shipped m9g; m9g.24xlarge is the direct replacement at this size. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so m8a.24xlarge becomes 6 × gp.vs2.2xlarge (96 vCPU, 384 GiB combined), $5.84/hr on AWS in US East (N. Virginia), from $0.246/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 | $5.843 | $1.951 | $0.246 | $5.597 savings | ||
| US Central, Chicago | no AWS region | $0.246 | ||||
| US Central, Dallas | no AWS region | $0.306 | ||||
| Hong Kong | $0.066 | |||||
| Sydney, Australia | $0.966 | |||||
| London, UK | $1.326 | |||||
| US West, San Jose | $0.906 | |||||
| US Central, Dallas 2 | no AWS region | $0.006 | ||||
| US East, N. Virginia 2 | $5.843 | $1.951 | $0.906 | $4.937 savings |