Instances›AWS EC2›mac1›mac1.metal
Compute
vCPUs12
Memory32 GiB
Mem / vCPU2.67 GiB
ProcessorCore i7-8700B CPU
Clock speed3.2 GHz
Architecturex86_64_mac
Storage
TypeEBS only
Bandwidth14,000 Mbps
Throughput1750 MB/s
IOPS80,000
Networking
Performance25 Gigabit
Max ENIs8
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
mac1.metal12 vCPU · 32 GiB
mac1.metal

The mac1.metal pairs 12 vCPU with 32 GiB of RAM, the 2.67 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a general-purpose instance. In the name, "mac" is macOS on Apple hardware, "1" is the generation and "metal" is the size within the mac1 family. It runs on Intel Core i7-8700B CPU at 3.2 GHz, and AWS introduced it in December 2020. AWS has since shipped mac2; mac2.metal is the direct replacement at this size. Rackspace Spot has no equivalent to offer: macOS licensing ties these instances to Apple hardware, which Rackspace Spot does not operate. Spot's largest VM tops out at 16 vCPU and 128 GiB, and even that is not the missing piece here. The table below prices what AWS charges; the honest answer on the Spot side is that this workload stays where it is.

Match qualityNo equivalent

mac1.metal runs macOS on Apple hardware, which is the entire point of it. Apple only licenses macOS to run on Apple machines, so no cloud provider can offer it as a VM on their own servers. Rackspace Spot has no macOS product and will not have one.

Rackspace Spot sells x86_64 Kubernetes nodes up to 16 vCPU, plus one NVIDIA A30 GPU class. If this is running an Xcode or iOS build pipeline, the macOS steps have to stay where they are — but the Linux parts (dependency caching, container builds, test matrices, publishing artifacts) can move, and on most iOS pipelines that is the larger share of the bill.

Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia
US Central, Chicagono AWS region
US Central, Dallasno AWS region
Hong Kong
Sydney, Australia
London, UK
US West, San Jose
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region
US East, N. Virginia 2
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 32 GiB of RAM
  • ●Parallel work that can occupy 12 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at 25 Gigabit
Avoid if
  • ●The working set needs more than 32 GiB of RAM
  • ●You need dedicated hardware. Rackspace Spot sells virtualised compute only.
  • ●Sustained full-core CPU load. A compute-optimized family costs less per unit of work.
  • ●More than 2.67 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
Rackspace Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. You pay what the market decides, not a list price.
  • 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.
Build your Cloudspace
Frequently asked questions