Why it matters

Wrong instance type wastes money or underperforms. Understanding shapes right-sizing.

Advertisement

The architecture

Family + generation + size: e.g., m6i.xlarge = general + Gen 6 + Intel + xlarge.

EC2 instance familiest (burstable)cheap, creditsm/c/r (balanced/CPU/mem)workhorsesp/g (GPU)AI/MLGraviton (a-suffix): ARM-based, 20-40% cheaper than Intel/AMD
Instance type structure.
Advertisement

How it works end to end

Burstable (T): cheap, uses CPU credits for bursts.

General (M): balanced CPU + memory.

Compute (C): higher CPU per RAM.

Memory (R, X): higher RAM per CPU.

Graviton (a): ARM cheaper.

Spot: 60-90% cheaper, interruptible.