Instances built on the AWS Nitro System - Amazon EC2
Nitro componentsNetwork feature supportVirtualized instancesBare metal instancesNitro instance requirements

Instances built on the AWS Nitro System

The Nitro System is a collection of hardware and software components built by AWS that enable high performance, high availability, and high security.

The Nitro System provides bare metal capabilities that eliminate virtualization overhead and support workloads that require full access to host hardware. Bare metal instances are well suited for the following:

  • Workloads that require access to low-level hardware features (for example, Intel VT) that are not available or fully supported in virtualized environments

  • Applications that require a non-virtualized environment for licensing or support

Nitro components

The following components are part of the Nitro System:

  • Nitro card

    • Local NVMe storage volumes

    • Networking hardware support

    • Management

    • Monitoring

    • Security

  • Nitro security chip, integrated into the motherboard

  • Nitro hypervisor - A lightweight hypervisor that manages memory and CPU allocation and delivers performance that is indistinguishable from bare metal for most workloads.

For more information, see AWS Nitro System.

Network feature support

The following content summarizes key networking capabilities for each version of the Nitro System. Versions are shown in descending version release order. If you know the instance type family that your instance belongs to, you can expand the Specifications section and select your instance family. The Platform summary table for your instance family shows the Nitro version for your instance type in the Hypervisor column.

If you're not sure which instance family applies, see the Naming conventions section.

Note

Features are cumulative, meaning that newer versions of the Nitro system support the features that are listed in all prior versions, except where explicitly stated otherwise.

See the Nitro instance requirements section for the minimum ENA driver and Linux kernel versions for optimal performance of Nitro v4 and later instance types.

Nitro v5

  • Traffic Mirroring is not supported for this version.

  • Up to 200 Gbps* per network card.

Nitro v4

  • Traffic Mirroring is not supported for this version.

  • GPU accelerated and Trainium based instance types support up to 100 Gbps* per network card for consistency. Other instance types support up to 170 Gbps* per network card.

  • Remote direct memory access (RDMA) write is available with EFA for p5.48xlarge and p5e.48xlarge instances.

  • Supports ENA Express. For more information about ENA Express, including what specific instance types support it see Improve network performance with ENA Express on your EC2 instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Nitro v3

  • Up to 100 Gbps* per network card.

  • Supports RDMA read with EFA for p4d(e).24xlarge instances.

  • Encryption in transit.

Nitro v2

  • Enhanced networking with Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).

  • Traffic Mirroring.

* Your instance type might support a lower maximum bandwidth. For more information, refer to the network specifications for your instance type in the instance family pages.

Virtualized instances

The following virtualized instances are built on the Nitro System:

Nitro v5

  • General Purpose: M8g

  • Compute Optimized: C7gn | C8g

  • Memory Optimized: R8g | X8g

  • High Performance Computing: Hpc7g

Nitro v4

  • General Purpose: M6a | M6i | M6id | M6idn | M6in | M7a | M7g | M7gd | M7i | M7i-flex

  • Compute Optimized: C6a | C6gn | C6i | C6id | C6in | C7a | C7g | C7gd | C7i | C7i-flex

  • Memory Optimized: R6a | R6i | R6idn | R6in | R6id | R7a | R7g | R7gd | R7i | R7iz | U7i-12tb | U7in-16tb | U7in-24tb | U7in-32tb | X2idn | X2iedn

  • Storage Optimized: I4g | I4i | Im4gn | Is4gen

  • Accelerated Computing: G6 | G6e | Gr6 | Inf2 | P5 | P5e | Trn1 | Trn1n

  • High Performance Computing: Hpc6a | Hpc6id | Hpc7a

Nitro v3

  • General Purpose: M5dn | M5n | M5zn

  • Compute Optimized: C5n

  • Memory Optimized: R5dn | R5n | U-3tb1 | U-6tb1 | U-9tb1 | U-12tb1 | U-18tb1 | U-24tb1 | X2iezn

  • Storage Optimized: D3 | D3en | I3en

  • Accelerated Computing: DL1 | DL2q | G4ad | G4dn | G5 | Inf1 | P3dn | P4d | P4de | VT1

Nitro v2

  • General Purpose: M5 | M5a | M5ad | M5d | M6g | M6gd | T3 | T3a | T4g | A1

  • Compute Optimized: C5 | C5a | C5ad | C5d | C6g | C6gd

  • Memory Optimized: R5 | R5a | R5ad | R5b | R5d | R6g | R6gd | X2gd | z1d

  • Accelerated Computing: G5g

  • Previous Generation: A1

Bare metal instances

The following bare metal instances are built on the Nitro System:

Nitro v5

  • General Purpose: M8g

  • Compute Optimized: C7gn | C8g

  • Memory Optimized: R8g | X8g

Nitro v4

  • General Purpose: M6a | M6i | M6id | M6idn | M6in | M7a | M7g | M7gd | M7i

  • Compute Optimized: C6a | C6i | C6id | C6in | C7a | C7g | C7gd | C7i

  • Memory Optimized: R6a | R6i | R6idn | R6in | R6id | R7a | R7g | R7gd | R7i | R7iz | X2idn | X2iedn

  • Storage Optimized: I4i

Nitro v3

  • General Purpose: M5dn | M5n | M5zn

  • Compute Optimized: C5n

  • Memory Optimized: R5dn | R5n | U-6tb1 | U-9tb1 | U-12tb1 | U-18tb1 | U-24tb1 | X2iezn

  • Storage Optimized: I3en

  • Accelerated Computing: G4dn

Nitro v2

  • General Purpose: M5 | M5d | M6g | M6gd | Mac1 | Mac2 | Mac2-m1ultra | Mac2-m2 | Mac2-m2pro | A1

  • Compute Optimized: C5 | C5d | C6g | C6gd

  • Memory Optimized: R5 | R5b | R5d | R6g | R6gd | X2gd | z1d

  • Storage Optimized: I3

  • Accelerated Computing: G5g

  • Previous Generation: A1

In most cases, when you launch a bare metal instance, the underlying server goes through its boot process, during which it verifies all hardware and firmware components. This means that it can take up to 20 minutes or more from the time the instance enters the running state until it becomes available over the network.

Nitro instance requirements

Instances built on the AWS Nitro System use ENA for enhanced networking, and storage volumes exposed as NVMe block devices. For more information about NVMe drivers, see Install or upgrade the NVMe driver in the Amazon EBS User Guide for Linux instances, or AWS NVMe drivers for Windows instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide. For more information about ENA drivers, see Requirements for enhanced networking with ENA in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

The following tabs show details about which driver or kernel versions are recommended for your operating system.

Linux

The ENA Linux kernel driver version 2.2.9g or later, from the Amazon Drivers GitHub repository is recommended for Nitro v4 instance types and required for Nitro v5 instance types for Linux distributions that expose the version information. ENA drivers for Linux are available on GitHub. For more information, see Linux kernel driver for Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) family. For release notes, see ENA Linux Kernel Driver Release notes.

Linux distributions can also incorporate ENA driver features within the kernel. However, the timing may vary for implementation within the different distributions. The Amazon Linux 2023 and Bottlerocket Linux distributions support ENA features for Nitro v4 and newer instance types by default.

Some Linux distributions might require a minimum kernel version to prevent suboptimal performance of ENA driver features on Nitro v4 and newer instance types. If your Linux distribution appears in the following table, you can verify the kernel version for your instance with the uname command as follows:

uname -r
Linux distribution Minimum kernel version
Linux upstream Kernel version 5.9
Amazon Linux 2 Kernel 4.14.186
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) RHEL 8.3 kernel 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.ARCH
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)

  • SLE 12 SP4 kernel 4.12.14-95.99.3

  • SLE 12 SP5 kernel 4.12.14-122.116.1

  • SLE 15 kernel 4.12.14-150000.150.92.2

  • SLE 15 SP1 kernel 4.12.14-150100.197.114.2

  • SLE 15 SP2 kernel 5.3.18-24.15.1
Linux Ubuntu 20.04 kernel 5.4.0-1025-aws
DPDK v20.11
Note

The following ENA Linux driver versions are not supported, and will result in elastic network interface attachment failures:

  • ENA Linux

    • Nitro v5 – Earlier than 2.2.9

    • All Nitro versions prior to v5 – Earlier than v1.2.0

  • ENA DPDK

    • Nitro v5 – Earlier than 20.11

    • All Nitro versions prior to v5 – Earlier than v1.1.1

Windows

ENA Windows driver version: 2.2.3 or later for Windows instances.

Note

The following ENA Windows drivers are not supported:

  • ENA Windows: v2.2.0 or earlier

All of the current AWS Windows AMIs meet these requirements. For more information about AMI versions and release notes, see the AWS Windows AMI reference.

FreeBSD

ENA FreeBSD driver version: 2.3.1 or later for FreeBSD instances.

Note

ENA FreeBSD driver versions earlier than v2.3.1 are not supported, and will result in elastic network interface attachment failures.

Linux instances with AWS Graviton processors

Linux instances with AWS Graviton processors have the following additional requirements:

  • An AMI with 64-bit ARM architecture.

  • Support for UEFI boot with ACPI tables and ACPI hot-plug of PCI devices.

Note

AWS Graviton processors only support Linux operating systems.