Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
User Guide for Linux (API Version 2014-10-01)
C4 instances are ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit from high performance processors. C4 instances are well suited for the following applications:
Batch processing workloads
Media transcoding
High-traffic web servers, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming servers, and ad serving engines
High performance computing (HPC) and other compute-intensive applications
You can cluster C4 instances in a placement group. Placement groups provide low latency and high-bandwidth connectivity between the instances within a single Availability Zone. For more information, see Placement Groups.
You can enable enhanced networking capabilities for C4 instances. Enhanced networking enables you to get significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance, lower network jitter, and lower latencies. For more information, see Enabling Enhanced Networking on Linux Instances in a VPC.
We are always interested in customer feedback. If you have feedback about the C4 instance types that you would like to share with us, contact us at ec2-c4-feedback@amazon.com.
Contents
C4 instances are based on custom 2.9 GHz Intel® Xeon® E5-2666 v3 (Haswell) processors,
optimized specifically for Amazon EC2. With Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, the processor clock
speed in C4 instances can reach as high as 3.5Ghz with 1 or 2 core Turbo Boost on
c4.8xlarge instances.
The following table highlights the feature set of the Intel® Xeon® E5-2666 v3 processor.
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Processor Number | E5-2666 v3 |
|
Intel® Smart Cache |
25 MiB |
|
Instruction Set |
64-bit |
|
Instruction Set Extensions |
AVX 2.0 |
|
Lithography |
22 nm |
|
Processor Base Frequency |
2.9 GHz |
|
Max All Core Turbo Frequency |
3.2 GHz |
|
Max Turbo Frequency |
3.5 GHz (available on |
|
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology |
2.0 |
|
Intel® vPro Technology |
Yes |
|
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology |
Yes |
|
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) |
Yes |
|
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) |
Yes |
|
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) |
Yes |
|
Intel® 64 |
Yes |
|
Idle States |
Yes |
|
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology |
Yes |
|
Thermal Monitoring Technologies |
Yes |
|
AES New Instructions |
Yes |
|
Secure Key |
Yes |
|
Execute Disable Bit |
Yes |
For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Instance Type Details.
The c4.8xlarge instance type provides the ability to control
processor C-states and P-states. C-states control the sleep levels that a core may enter
when it is inactive, while P-states control the desired performance (in CPU frequency) from
a core.
Note
This feature requires operating system support which is currently only available in Linux AMIs
The default C-state and P-state settings provide a system configuration that delivers
the highest processor performance with the maximum Turbo Boost frequency, which is optimal
for most workloads. However, if your application would benefit from lower latencies
at the cost of higher single- or dual-core frequencies, or from more consistent processor
performance at lower frequencies, as opposed to bursty Turbo Boost frequencies, then consider
experimenting with the C-state or P-state settings that are available to
c4.8xlarge instances.
For more information, see Processor State Control.
Each C4 instance type is EBS-optimized by default, and delivers dedicated block storage throughput ranging from 500 Mbps to 4,000 Mbps at no additional cost. EBS-optimized instances enable you to get consistently high performance for your Amazon EBS volumes by eliminating contention between Amazon EBS I/O and other network traffic from your C4 instance. For more information, see Amazon EBS–Optimized Instances.
The following table shows the dedicated throughput to Amazon EBS for each C4 instance type, the maximum amount of IOPS the instance can support if you are using a 16 KB I/O size, and the approximate maximum bandwidth available on that connection in MB/s.
| C4 Instance Type | Dedicated EBS Throughput (Mbps) | Max 16K IOPS* | Max Bandwidth (MB/s)* |
|---|---|---|---|
c4.large | 500 | 4,000 | 62.5 |
c4.xlarge | 750 | 6,000 | 93.75 |
c4.2xlarge | 1,000 | 8,000 | 125 |
c4.4xlarge | 2,000 | 16,000 | 250 |
c4.8xlarge | 4,000 | 32,000 | 500 |
* This value is a rounded approximation based on a 100% read-only workload and it is provided as a baseline configuration aid. EBS-optimized connections are full-duplex, and can drive more throughput and IOPS in a 50/50 read/write workload where both communication lanes are used. In some cases, network and file system overhead can reduce the maximum throughput and IOPS available.
We support Windows operating systems and the following Linux operating systems on C4 instances: Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and SUSE Enterprise Linux.
Note
For Windows-specific information on C4 instances, see C4 Instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Microsoft Windows Instances.
If you'd like to use a 64-bit HVM AMI for a different operating system, let us know by posting to the Amazon EC2 forum.
The c4.8xlarge instance type has 36 vCPUs, which might cause
launch issues in some Linux operating systems that have a vCPU limit of 32. Amazon Web Services is
working with these providers to help update their operating systems and support this new
hardware, but at this time, RHEL and CentOS versions 6 and earlier are unsupported on the
c4.8xlarge type.
We strongly recommend that you use the latest AMIs when you launch
c4.8xlarge instances. Below is a list of different Linux AMIs that
support launching c4.8xlarge instances with 36 vCPUs.
Amazon Linux: Amazon Linux AMI 2014.09.1 (HVM)
Ubuntu: Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (HVM)
Red Hat: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 (HVM)
SUSE Linux: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (HVM)
If you must use a different AMI for your application, and your
c4.8xlarge instance launch does not complete successfully (for example, if
your instance status changes to stopped during launch with a
Client.InstanceInitiatedShutdown state transition reason), try modifying
your AMI to support the c4.8xlarge instance type using the following
procedure.
To modify an AMI to support the c4.8xlarge instance type
If your AMI does not support 36 vCPUs, launch the AMI on a smaller C4 instance type and change the configuration as follows. Note that after you follow this procedure, the instance is limited to 32 vCPUs. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you use one of the latest AMIs so that you can take advantage of all 36 vCPUs.
Launch a C4 instance with your AMI (choose any C4 instance type other than
c4.8xlarge).
Update the kernel to the latest version by following your operating system-specific instructions. For RHEL 6, use the sudo yum update -y kernel command.
Add the maxcpus=32 option to your boot kernel parameters by following
your operating system-specific instructions. For RHEL 6, edit the
/boot/grub/menu.lst file and add this option to the most
recent and active kernel entry.
default=0
timeout=1
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64 maxcpus=32 console=ttyS0 ro root=UUID=9996863e-b964-47d3-a33b-3920974fdbd9 rd_NO_LUKS KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us LANG=en_US.UTF-8 xen_blkfront.sda_is_xvda=1 console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_DM
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64.imgStop the instance.
(Optional) Create an AMI from the instance that you can use to launch any
additional c4.8xlarge instances that you need.
Change the instance type of your stopped instance to c4.8xlarge
(click Actions, select Instance Settings,
click Change Instance Type, and then follow the
directions).
Start the instance.
C4 instances have high-memory (up to 60 GiB of RAM), and require a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of that capacity. HVM AMIs provide superior performance on high-memory instance types in comparison to paravirtual (PV) AMIs. In addition, you must use an HVM AMI to take advantage of enhanced networking. For these reasons, C4 instances require a 64-bit HVM AMI.
C4 instances must be launched into a virtual private cloud (VPC); they are not supported on the EC2-Classic platform. Amazon VPC enables you to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you've defined. You cannot change the instance type of an existing EC2-Classic instance to a C4 instance type. For more information on EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC, see Supported Platforms.
If your account supports EC2-Classic and you have not created any VPCs, you can do one of the following to launch a C4 instance:
Create a VPC, and launch your instance into it. For more information, see Getting Started with Amazon VPC in the Amazon VPC Getting Started Guide.
Launch a C4 instance using the launch wizard in the Amazon EC2 console. The wizard creates a nondefault VPC in your account with the following attributes:
A subnet in each Availability Zone. By default, the wizard selects the
subnet in the first Availability Zone in which to launch your instance. The
public IP addressing attribute of each subnet is set to true so
that instances launched into each subnet receive a public IP address. For
more information, see Modifying
Your Subnet's Public IP Addressing Behavior in the
Amazon VPC User Guide.
An Internet gateway, and a main route table that routes the VPC's traffic to the Internet gateway. This enables your VPC (and instances in your subnet) to communicate over the Internet. For more information about Internet gateways, see Adding an Internet Gateway to Your VPC.
A default network ACL associated with all subnets, and a default security group. For more information about network ACLs, see Network ACLs. For more information about security groups, see Security Groups for Your VPC.
If you are using the Amazon EC2 API, the Amazon EC2 CLI, or the AWS CLI, you must have a default VPC in which to launch your C4 instance, or you must specify a subnet ID or network interface ID in the request.
By launching an instance into a VPC, you can leverage a number of features that are available only on the EC2-VPC platform; such as enabling enhanced networking, assigning multiple private IP addresses to your instances, or changing your instances' security groups. For more information about the benefits of using a VPC, see Amazon EC2 and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. You can take steps to migrate your resources from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC. For more information, see Migrating from EC2-Classic to a VPC.
We limit the number of C4 instances that you can run simultaneously. If you need more C4 instances than the default limits described in the following table, you can request an increase in the limits for your AWS account using the Amazon EC2 Instance Request Form.
| Instance Type | Default Instance Limit |
|---|---|
| 20 |
| 20 |
| 20 |
| 10 |
| 5 |