The Altair 8800 computer that I built in 1977 had just 4 kilobytes of memory. Today I was able to use an EC2 instance with 12 terabytes (12 tebibytes to be exact) of memory, almost 4 billion times as much!

The new Amazon EC2 High Memory Instances let you take advantage of other AWS services including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS Config. They are designed to allow AWS customers to run large-scale SAP HANA installations, and can be used to build production systems that provide enterprise-grade data protection and business continuity.

Here are the specs:

Each Logical Processor is a hyperthread on one of the 224 physical CPU cores. All three sizes are powered by the latest generation Intel^® Xeon^® Platinum 8176M (Skylake) processors running at 2.1 GHz (with Turbo Boost to 3.80 GHz), and are available as EC2 Dedicated Hosts for launch within a new or existing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You can launch them using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or the EC2 API, and manage them there or in the EC2 Console.

The instances are EBS-Optimized by default, and give you low-latency access to encrypted and unencrypted EBS volumes. You can choose between Provisioned IOPS, General Purpose (SSD), and Streaming Magnetic volumes, and can attach multiple volumes, each with a distinct type and size, to each instance.

SAP HANA in Minutes The EC2 High Memory instances are certified by SAP for OLTP and OLAP workloads such as S4/HANA, Suite on HANA, BW4/HANA, BW on HANA, and Datamart (see the SAP HANA Hardware Directory for more information).

We ran the SAP Standard Application Benchmark and measured the instances at 480,600 SAPS, making them suitable for very large workloads. Here’s an excerpt from the benchmark:

In anticipation of today’s launch, the EC2 team provisioned a u-12tb1.metal instance for my AWS account and I located it in the Dedicated Hosts section of the EC2 Console:

Following the directions in the SAP HANA on AWS Quick Start, I copy the Host Reservation ID, hop over to the CloudFormation Console and click Create Stack to get started. I choose my template, give my stack a name, and enter all of the necessary parameters, including the ID that I copied, and click Next to proceed:

On the next page I indicate that I want to tag my resources, leave everything else as-is, and click Next:

I review my settings, acknowledge that the stack might create IAM resources, and click Next to create the stack:

The AWS resources are created and SAP HANA is installed, all in less than 40 minutes:

Using an EC2 instance on the public subnet of my VPC, I can access the new instance. Here’s the memory:

And here’s the CPU info:

I can also run an hdbsql query:

SELECT 
  DISTINCT HOST, CAST(VALUE/1024/1024/1024 AS INTEGER) AS TOTAL_MEMORY_GB 
  FROM SYS.M_MEMORY
  WHERE NAME='SYSTEM_MEMORY_SIZE';

Here’s the output, showing that SAP HANA has access to 12 TiB of memory:

Another option is to have the template create a second EC2 instance, this one running Windows on a public subnet, and accessible via RDP:

I could install HANA Studio on this instance and use its visual interface to run my SAP HANA queries.

The Quick Start implementation uses high performance SSD-based EBS storage volumes for all of your data. This gives you the power to switch to a larger instance in minutes without having to migrate any data.

Available Now Just like the existing SAP-certified X1 and X1e instances, the EC2 High Memory instances are very cost-effective. For example, the effective hourly rate for the All Upfront 3-Year Reservation for a u-12tb1.metal Dedicated Host in the US East (N. Virginia) Region is $30.539 per hour.

These instances are now available in the US East (N. Virginia) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Regions as Dedicated Hosts with a 3-year term, and will be available soon in the US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. If you are ready to get started, contact your AWS account team or use the Contact Us page to make a request.

In the Works We’re not stopping at 12 TiB, and are planning to launch instances with 18 TiB and 24 TiB of memory in 2019.

— Jeff;

PS – If you have applications that might need multiple terabytes in the future but can run comfortably in less memory today, be sure to consider the R5, X1, and X1e instances.