Choosing your node size - Amazon ElastiCache
Node size (Valkey and Redis OSS)Node size (Memcached)

Choosing your node size

The node size you select for your ElastiCache cluster impacts costs, performance, and fault tolerance.

Node size (Valkey and Redis OSS)

For information about the benefits of Graviton processors, see AWS Graviton Processor.

Answering the following questions can help you determine the minimum node type you need for your Valkey or Redis OSS implementation:

  • Do you expect throughput-bound workloads with multiple client connections?

    If this is the case and you're running Redis OSS version 5.0.6 or higher, you can get better throughput and latency with our enhanced I/O feature, where available CPUs are used for offloading the client connections, on behalf of the Redis OSS engine. If you're running Redis OSS version 7.0.4 or higher, on top of enhanced I/O, you will get additional acceleration with enhanced I/O multiplexing, where each dedicated network IO thread pipelines commands from multiple clients into the Redis OSS engine, taking advantage of Redis OSS' ability to efficiently process commands in batches. In ElastiCache for Redis OSS v7.1 and above, we extended the enhanced I/O threads functionality to also handle the presentation layer logic. By presentation layer, what we mean is that Enhanced I/O threads are now not only reading client input, but also parsing the input into Redis OSS binary command format, which is then forwarded to the main thread for execution, providing performance gain. Refer to the blog post and the supported versions page for additional details.

  • Do you have workloads that access a small percentage of their data regularly?

    If this is the case and you are running on Redis OSS engine version 6.2 or later, you can leverage data tiering by choosing the r6gd node type. With data tiering, least-recently used data is stored in SSD. When it is retrieved there is a small latency cost, which is balanced by cost savings. For more information, see Data tiering in ElastiCache.

    For more information, see Supported node types.

  • How much total memory do you need for your data?

    To get a general estimate, take the size of the items that you want to cache. Multiply this size by the number of items that you want to keep in the cache at the same time. To get a reasonable estimation of the item size, first serialize your cache items, then count the characters. Then divide this over the number of shards in your cluster.

    For more information, see Supported node types.

  • What version of Redis OSS are you running?

    Redis OSS versions before 2.8.22 require you to reserve more memory for failover, snapshot, synchronizing, and promoting a replica to primary operations. This requirement occurs because you must have sufficient memory available for all writes that occur during the process.

    Redis OSS version 2.8.22 and later use a forkless save process that requires less available memory than the earlier process.

    For more information, see the following:

  • How write-heavy is your application?

    Write heavy applications can require significantly more available memory, memory not used by data, when taking snapshots or failing over. Whenever the BGSAVE process is performed, you must have sufficient memory that is unused by data to accommodate all the writes that transpire during the BGSAVE process. Examples are when taking a snapshot, when syncing a primary cluster with a replica in a cluster, and when enabling the append-only file (AOF) feature. Another is when promoting a replica to primary (if you have Multi-AZ enabled). The worst case is when all of your data is rewritten during the process. In this case, you need a node instance size with twice as much memory as needed for data alone.

    For more detailed information, see Ensuring you have enough memory to make a Valkey or Redis OSS snapshot.

  • Will your implementation be a standalone Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) cluster, or a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) cluster with multiple shards?

    Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) cluster

    If you're implementing a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode disabled) cluster, your node type must be able to accommodate all your data plus the necessary overhead as described in the previous bullet.

    For example, suppose that you estimate that the total size of all your items is 12 GB. In this case, you can use a cache.m3.xlarge node with 13.3 GB of memory or a cache.r3.large node with 13.5 GB of memory. However, you might need more memory for BGSAVE operations. If your application is write-heavy, double the memory requirements to at least 24 GB. Thus, use either a cache.m3.2xlarge with 27.9 GB of memory or a cache.r3.xlarge with 30.5 GB of memory.

    Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) with multiple shards

    If you're implementing a Valkey or Redis OSS (cluster mode enabled) cluster with multiple shards, then the node type must be able to accommodate bytes-for-data-and-overhead / number-of-shards bytes of data.

    For example, suppose that you estimate that the total size of all your items to be 12 GB and you have two shards. In this case, you can use a cache.m3.large node with 6.05 GB of memory (12 GB / 2). However, you might need more memory for BGSAVE operations. If your application is write-heavy, double the memory requirements to at least 12 GB per shard. Thus, use either a cache.m3.xlarge with 13.3 GB of memory or a cache.r3.large with 13.5 GB of memory.

  • Are you using Local Zones?

    Local Zones enable you to place resources such as an ElastiCache cluster in multiple locations close to your users. But when you choose your node size, be aware that the available node sizes are limited to the following at this time, regardless of capacity requirements:

    • Current generation:

      M5 node types: cache.m5.large, cache.m5.xlarge, cache.m5.2xlarge, cache.m5.4xlarge, cache.m5.12xlarge, cache.m5.24xlarge

      R5 node types: cache.r5.large, cache.r5.xlarge, cache.r5.2xlarge, cache.r5.4xlarge, cache.r5.12xlarge, cache.r5.24xlarge

      T3 node types: cache.t3.micro, cache.t3.small, cache.t3.medium

While your cluster is running, you can monitor the memory usage, processor utilization, cache hits, and cache misses metrics that are published to CloudWatch. You might notice that your cluster doesn't have the hit rate that you want or that keys are being evicted too often. In these cases, you can choose a different node size with larger CPU and memory specifications.

When monitoring CPU usage, remember Valkey and Redis OSS are single-threaded. Thus, multiply the reported CPU usage by the number of CPU cores to get that actual usage. For example, a four-core CPU reporting a 20-percent usage rate is actually the one core Redis OSS is running at 80 percent utilization.

Node size (Memcached)

Memcached clusters contain one or more nodes with the cluster's data partitioned across the nodes. Because of this, the memory needs of the cluster and the memory of a node are related, but not the same. You can attain your needed cluster memory capacity by having a few large nodes or several smaller nodes. Further, as your needs change, you can add nodes to or remove nodes from the cluster and thus pay only for what you need.

The total memory capacity of your cluster is calculated by multiplying the number of nodes in the cluster by the RAM capacity of each node after deducting system overhead. The capacity of each node is based on the node type.

cluster_capacity = number_of_nodes * (node_capacity - system_overhead)

The number of nodes in the cluster is a key factor in the availability of your cluster running Memcached. The failure of a single node can have an impact on the availability of your application and the load on your backend database. In such a case, ElastiCache provisions a replacement for a failed node and it gets repopulated. To reduce this availability impact, spread your memory and compute capacity over more nodes with smaller capacity, rather than using fewer high-capacity nodes.

In a scenario where you want to have 35 GB of cache memory, you can set up any of the following configurations:

  • 11 cache.t2.medium nodes with 3.22 GB of memory and 2 threads each = 35.42 GB and 22 threads.

  • 6 cache.m4.large nodes with 6.42 GB of memory and 2 threads each = 38.52 GB and 12 threads.

  • 3 cache.r4.large nodes with 12.3 GB of memory and 2 threads each = 36.90 GB and 6 threads.

  • 3 cache.m4.xlarge nodes with 14.28 GB of memory and 4 threads each = 42.84 GB and 12 threads.

Comparing node options
Node type Memory (in GiB) Cores Hourly cost * Nodes needed Total memory (in GiB) Total cores Monthly cost †
cache.t2.medium 3.22 2 $ 0.068 11 35.42 22 $ 538.56
cache.m4.large 6.42 2 $ 0.156 6 38.52 12 $ 673.92
cache.m4.xlarge 14.28 4 $ 0.311 3 42.84 12 $ 671.76
cache.m5.xlarge 12.93 4 $ 0.311 3 38.81 12 $ 671.76
cache.m6g.large 6.85 2 $ 0.147 6 41.1 12 $ 635
cache.r4.large 12.3 2 $ 0.228 3 36.9 6 $ 492.48
cache.r5.large 13.07 2 $ 0.216 3 39.22 6 $ 466.56
cache.r6g.large 13.07 2 $ 0.205 3 42.12 6 $ 442
* Hourly cost per node as of October 8, 2020.
† Monthly cost at 100% usage for 30 days (720 hours).

These options each provide similar memory capacity but different computational capacity and cost. To compare the costs of your specific options, see Amazon ElastiCache Pricing.

For clusters running Memcached, some of the available memory on each node is used for connection overhead. For more information, see Memcached connection overhead

Using multiple nodes requires spreading the keys across them. Each node has its own endpoint. For easy endpoint management, you can use the ElastiCache the Auto Discovery feature, which enables client programs to automatically identify all of the nodes in a cluster. For more information, see Automatically identify nodes in your cluster (Memcached).

In some cases, you might be unsure how much capacity you need. If so, for testing we recommend starting with one cache.m5.large node. Then monitor the memory usage, CPU utilization, and cache hit rate with the ElastiCache metrics that are published to Amazon CloudWatch. For more information on CloudWatch metrics for ElastiCache, see Monitoring use with CloudWatch Metrics. For production and larger workloads, the R5 nodes provide the best performance and RAM cost value.

If your cluster doesn't have the hit rate that you want, you can easily add more nodes to increase the total available memory in your cluster.

If your cluster is bound by CPU but has sufficient hit rate, set up a new cluster with a node type that provides more compute power.