Amazon EC2 instance type naming conventions - Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 instance type naming conventions

Amazon EC2 provides a variety of instance types so you can choose the type that best meets your requirements. Instance types are named based on their instance family and instance size. The first position of the instance family indicates the series, for example c. The second position indicates the generation, for example 7. The third position indicates the options, for example gn. After the period (.) is the instance size, such as small or 4xlarge, or metal for bare metal instances.

The image shows the instance type c7gn.xlarge, with a label for each part of the instance name.
Series Options

  • C – Compute optimized

  • D – Dense storage

  • F – FPGA

  • G – Graphics intensive

  • Hpc – High performance computing

  • I – Storage optimized

  • Im – Storage optimized (1 to 4 ratio of vCPU to memory)

  • Is – Storage optimized (1 to 6 ratio of vCPU to memory)

  • Inf – AWS Inferentia

  • M – General purpose

  • Mac – macOS

  • P – GPU accelerated

  • R – Memory optimized

  • T – Burstable performance

  • Trn – AWS Trainium

  • U – High memory

  • VT – Video transcoding

  • X – Memory intensive

  • a – AMD processors

  • g – AWS Graviton processors

  • i – Intel processors

  • b – Block storage optimization

  • d – Instance store volumes

  • e – Extra storage or memory

  • flex – Flex instance

  • n – Network and EBS optimized

  • q – Qualcomm inference accelerators

  • z – High performance