The r7g.8xlarge pairs 32 vCPU with 256 GiB of RAM, the 8.00 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a memory-optimized instance. In the name, "r" stands for RAM, "7" is the generation, "g" marks AWS Graviton (ARM) processors and "8xlarge" is the size within the r7g family. It runs on AWS Graviton3 Processor at 2.5 GHz, and AWS introduced it in February 2023. AWS has since shipped r8g and r9g; r8g.8xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 961,033 CoreMark/s against this instance's 833,768 — roughly 15% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Spot's node ladder tops out below this size, so r7g.8xlarge becomes 2 × mh.vs1.2xlarge (32 vCPU, 256 GiB combined), $1.71/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.
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r7g.8xlarge gives you 32 vCPU and 256 GiB in a single machine. The largest comparable Spot node, mh.vs1.2xlarge, is 16 vCPU and 128 GiB, so the equivalent here is 2 nodes rather than one.
Spot runs as managed Kubernetes, so a 2-node pool is the normal way to run things rather than a workaround. If your workload already sits behind a load balancer, a queue or a scheduler, it spreads across them without changes. If it needs all 32 cores and 256 GiB in one process, it does not.
x86_64 onlyr7g.8xlarge is Graviton (arm64) and Rackspace Spot has no arm64 nodes, so you'd be moving to x86. You'll need x86 builds of your images, and per-core speed differs between the chips — worth testing before you decide how many nodes to run.
