AWS introduces flash-based EC2 instances

SEATTLE, USA: Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced high I/O instances, a new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance targeted towards applications requiring low latency access to high-speed storage.

These new instances are backed by solid-state disks (SSDs) and are capable of delivering in excess of 1,20,000 read input and output operations (IOPS) and over 80,000 write IOPS.

"With the launch of high I/O instances, customers can take advantage of SSD-based instances to run their most demanding applications on AWS, whether it's running databases that support high-transaction enterprise applications or powering massively popular social, mobile or gaming apps for consumers," said Peter De Santis, vice president, Amazon EC2. "These new instances are a more efficient and cost effective way to run high I/O applications and another example of our roadmap being shaped by our customers -- as this has been a top request from customers over the last few months."

Customers can launch high I/O instances using the AWS console, Amazon EC2 command line interface, AWS SDKs, and third party libraries. Initially, a Quadruple Extra Large High I/O instance is available in the US-East (N. Virginia) and EU-West (Ireland) regions (and will be made available in other AWS regions in the coming months).

High I/O instances can be purchased as On-demand and Reserved instances. To get started with Amazon EC2, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2