What is the Difference between a Light, Medium or Heavy utilization Reserved instances on EC2?

Question

They talk about the different utilization instances, but I can\'t find a single place that actually states what the difference is between a light utilization Large instance or a

Answer 1

Here's a link to Amazon's documentation:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances/#2

It doesn't explain/quantify what amount of usage constitutes Light, Medium, or Large but it gives a ballpark amount.

To summarize (excerpted from the above documentation):

• Light Utilization RIs are ideal for periodic workloads that only run a couple of hours a day, a few days per week, or very sporadically
• Medium Utilization RIs are best suited for workloads that run most of the time, but have some variability in usage (like web server traffic where demand may increase or decrease throughout the year)
• Heavy Utilization RIs offer the most absolute savings of any Reserved Instance type. They’re most appropriate for steady-state workloads where you’re willing to commit to always running these instances in exchange for our lowest hourly usage fee

If you're like me and wanted to see what we're getting for the prices we're paying for Light, Medium, and Heavy, here it is.