Instances›AWS EC2›r4›r4.xlarge
Compute
vCPUs4
Memory30.5 GiB
Mem / vCPU7.63 GiB
ProcessorXeon E5-2686 v4
Clock speed2.3 GHz
Architecturex86_64
Storage
TypeEBS only
Bandwidth850 Mbps
Throughput106.25 MB/s
IOPS6,000
Networking
PerformanceUp to 10 Gigabit
Max ENIs4
IPv6Yes
GPUNone
Family sizes
r4.large2 vCPU · 15.25 GiB
r4.xlarge4 vCPU · 30.5 GiB
r4.2xlarge8 vCPU · 61 GiB
r4.4xlarge16 vCPU · 122 GiB
r4.8xlarge32 vCPU · 244 GiB
r4.16xlarge64 vCPU · 488 GiB
r4.xlarge

The r4.xlarge is a memory-optimized AWS EC2 instance: 4 vCPU and 30.5 GiB of memory, 7.63 GiB per vCPU. In the name, "r" stands for RAM, "4" is the generation and "xlarge" is the size within the r4 family. It runs on Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) at 2.3 GHz, and AWS introduced it in November 2016. AWS has since shipped r5, r6i, r7i and r8i; r5.xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 58,306 CoreMark/s against this instance's 54,705 — roughly 7% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Rackspace Spot's mh.vs1.large is a like-for-like substitute at 4 vCPU and 32 GiB, about 92% below the US East (N. Virginia) on-demand rate.

Pricing by region
1 hr
RegionAWS on-demandAWS Spot1-yr Reserved3-yr ReservedRackspace SpotYou save
US East, N. Virginia$0.266$0.087$0.168$0.115$0.021
$0.245 savings
US Central, Chicagono AWS region$0.061
US Central, Dallasno AWS region$0.021
Hong Kong$0.006
Sydney, Australia$0.319$0.118$0.202$0.138$0.006
$0.313 savings
London, UK$0.312$0.098$0.197$0.134$0.006
$0.306 savings
US West, San Jose$0.296$0.110$0.187$0.127$0.061
$0.235 savings
US Central, Dallas 2no AWS region$0.061
When to use it
Good for
  • ●Real-time analytics over hot datasets
  • ●Database instances that keep the working set in RAM
  • ●Graph and search workloads with large indexes
  • ●Workloads that fit inside 30.5 GiB of RAM
  • ●Small, steady services that do not need more than 4 vCPU
  • ●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at Up to 10 Gigabit
Avoid if
  • ●Starting a new deployment. r5.xlarge is the newer generation at this size.
  • ●The working set needs more than 30.5 GiB of RAM
  • ●Local NVMe or instance-store disk is a hard requirement
  • ●GPU or FPGA acceleration is needed
  • ●CPU-bound work. You are paying for memory this workload will not use.
  • ●More than 7.63 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
$194/mo on AWS on-demand against $15/mo on Rackspace Spot for the 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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