HITS

To meet the rapidly expanding data needs of its customers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) made available new High Memory instances for its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), offering up to 12 TB of memory now, with plans to scale to 18 TB and 24 TB in 2019, it said Sept. 28. AWS High Memory instances “will deliver the most memory of any SAP-certified cloud instance,” according to the company.

“As enterprises continue to process more and more real-time data to make faster business decisions, production deployments of in-memory databases continue to expand,” AWS said in its announcement, adding: “In-memory databases process multiple terabytes of data on a single server in real time, requiring predictable memory scaling and low latency connections to the business logic hosted in the cloud for responsive application performance.”

AWS customers that are shifting their data to the cloud want to be able to run their large in-memory databases in the cloud and “ultra-close to the rest of the services interacting with their in-memory databases,” AWS said.

Some rival providers have tried to solve that challenge by offering customers a hosted in-memory database on-premises or in a co-located data center, it noted. But AWS explained: “The problem with this approach is that the extra networking required to connect the environment to the cloud compounds the cost, makes operating more complex, and adds application latency and variability.”

In stark contrast, with Amazon EC2’s 6-TB, 9-TB and 12 TB-High Memory instances, customers can run their in-memory databases in the cloud in the same Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) as the rest of their enterprise applications, allowing “lower latency, operational simplicity, and more predictable performance,” it said.

Combining the largest memory sizes available in the cloud with the agility and reliability of AWS, Amazon EC2 High Memory allow customers to scale their in-memory database deployments and “seamlessly integrate” them with the rest of AWS, including storage, networking, Internet of Things (IoT), analytics and machine learning services, the company said.

“Amazon EC2 provides the most comprehensive selection of instances by far, giving customers the flexibility to select the right instance for the right workload today and into the future,” Matt Garman, VP of AWS compute services, said in the news release.

He added: “We have memory-optimized instances today, and they’ve proven quite popular with customers who want to run memory intensive applications, including in-memory databases. With 12 TB instances available in AWS, and 24 TB instances coming next year, Amazon EC2 High Memory instances give our customers the ability to scale their in-memory database with predictable performance in the same VPC as their other AWS services. Customers can grow their in-memory database and easily connect it to their storage, networking, analytics, IoT, and machine learning services – helping them make faster and better business decisions.”

To get started with Amazon EC2 High Memory instances, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/high-memory/.