Advisor
AWS M5 Vs. R5 Instances: A Side-By-Side Comparison
Both M5 and R5 instances can handle workloads that require moderate compute, memory, and networking performance, but there’s more.
AWS offers a variety of instances (its version of virtual machines) for a wide range of workloads. With Amazon EC2 M5 or Amazon EC2 R5 instances, you can run general tasks that require additional power or workloads that are memory-intensive.
This quick guide explains the differences between M5 and R5 instances to help you choose the right instance type for your needs.
What Are Amazon EC2 M5 Instances?
M5 instances are one type of General Purpose Amazon EC2 instances on the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud. Like other general purpose instances, AWS designed M5 instances to deliver a balance of compute, memory, and networking capabilities.
This makes the instance type ideal for a wide variety of workloads, especially the ones that require roughly equal capacities of compute, memory, and networking resources. Amazon EC2 M5 instances are ideal for medium-sized databases, cluster computing, and speedier data processing.
AWS offers four types of M5 instances; M5, M5n, M5zn, and M5a. Each type is designed to work best for certain use cases.
What Are Amazon EC2 R5 Instances?
R5 instances are one type of Memory-Optimized Amazon EC2 instances on AWS. These are intended for workloads that call for rapidly processing large data sets in memory. For perspective, the largest R5 instance offers up to 768 GiB of memory per instance while the smallest delivers 16 GiB iof memory per instance.
Amazon EC2 R5 instances are ideal for memory-intensive applications such as real-time big data analytics and high-performance databases.
There are four types of R5 instances; R5, R5n, R5b, and R5a.
How Do M5 And R5 Instances Compare?
Here is a side-by-side comparison table showing the key differences between M5 vs R5 instances on AWS.
| M5 Instances | R5 Instances | |
| Supported processors | 3.1 GHz (Skylake 8175M or Cascade Lake 8259CL) Intel Xeon Scalable processorsAMD EPYC 7571 for M5a instances | 3.1 GHz (Skylake 8175M or Cascade Lake 8259CL) Intel Xeon Scalable processorsAMD EPYC 7571 for M5a instances |
| Number of Cores | 1 to 48 cores per instance | 1 to 48 cores per instance |
| Maximum Memory | 384 GiB | 768 GiB |
| Maximum Storage | 3.6 TiB NVMe based SSDs terabytes | Up to 64 TiB in a single volume |
| Instance sizes | m5.large (2 vCPU and 8 GiB memory)m5.xlarge (4 vCPU and 16 GiB memory)m5.2xlarge (8 vCPU and 32 GiB memory)m5.4xlarge (16 vCPU and 64 GiB memory)m5.8xlarge (32 vCPU and 128 GiB memory)m5.12xlarge (48 vCPU and 192 GiB memory)m5.16xlarge (64 vCPU and 256 GiB memory)m5.24xlarge (96 vCPU and 394 GiB memory)m5.metal (96 vCPU and 394 GiB memory) | r5.large (2 vCPU and 16 GiB memory)r5.xlarge (4 vCPU and 32 GiB memory)r5.2xlarge (8 vCPU and 64 GiB memory)r5.4xlarge (16 vCPU and 128 GiB memory)r5.8xlarge (32 vCPU and 256 GiB memory)r5.12xlarge (48 vCPU and 384 GiB memory)r5.16xlarge (64 vCPU and 512 GiB memory)r5.24xlarge (96 vCPU and 768 GiB memory)R5.metal (96 vCPU and 768 GiB memory) |
| Networking | Up to 25 Gbps with Enhanced Networking | Up to 25 Gbps with Enhanced Networking |
| Best Use cases | Cluster computing, medium-sized databases, data processing | High-performance databases, real-time big data analytics, mid-size in-memory databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches |
When To Use M5 Instances
You can use Amazon EC2 M5 instances for a wide range of tasks because they offer balanced compute, memory, and networking capabilities. AWS designed M5 instances for enterprise workloads requiring medium-sized computing power, such as cluster computing and real-time big data processing.
- M5n instances are ideal for applications such as web servers and caching fleets.
- M5zn instances are suitable for tasks that require high throughput with low latency networking and extremely high single-thread performance, such as gaming servers and simulation modeling.
When To Use R5 Instances
Use Amazon EC2 R5 instances for memory-intensize applications, such as mid-size databases and real-time big data analytics.
- R5n instances are suited for use cases that would leverage high network throughput and packet rate capabilities, such as distributed web scale in-memory caches.
- R5b instances deliver the fastest block storage performance of all Amazon EC2 instances, making them ideal for high performance databases.
- When you’re looking for a balance between cost and performance, AMD-based R5a instances are ideal, since they’re 10% less expensive than comparable Intel-based ones.
Now, here’s the thing. Testing AWS instance types in practice is often the best way to determine which type to use for specific use cases. Yet, you’ll not want to go in blind and blow a hole in your cloud budget.
Instead, you can use a handy tool to pick just right or closest instance and size you need.
How To Choose The Best AWS Instance Types For Your Application
With CloudZero Advisor, you can choose your AWS instance type based on several factors, including your budget, preferred resource type, AWS Region, and AWS service. Consider this:
The CloudZero Advisor tool is easy to use and interactive. Try it here for yourself.
Once you chosen the best instance types for your workload, CloudZero can help you keep your cost-performance just right. For instance, CloudZero is the only cloud cost optimization platform that delivers immediately actionable cost intelligence, such as cost per product feature, per individual customer, or per project in hourly granularity.
Schedule a demo today to see how companies like Drift and Demandbase have saved over $3 million and 36% in annual AWS costs.
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