Amazon EC2 announces network bandwidth support in attribute-based instance type selection for Auto Scaling groups, EC2 Fleet, and Spot Fleet

Starting today, you can request EC2 instances based on your workload’s network bandwidth requirements through attribute-based instance type selection.

Attribute-based instance type selection is a feature for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, EC2 Fleet, and Spot Fleet that makes it easy to create and manage instance type flexible fleets without researching and selecting EC2 instance types. With attribute-based instance type selection, you can simply define your instance requirements, such as number of vCPUs and memory, and let EC2 Auto Scaling or Fleet pick the instances that fit the requirements you provided. As an added benefit, when EC2 releases new instances, they are automatically considered too. Until now, attribute-based instance type selection did not support selecting instances based on network bandwidth. Now, you can specify your desired network bandwidth as one of the instance selection criteria. This is useful for workloads that depend on network bandwidth such as video streaming, network appliances (e.g., firewalls), or any workloads that require timely transfer of large amounts of data to or from an instance.

To get started, create or modify an Auto Scaling group or Fleet with attribute-based instance type selection and specify your workload’s network bandwidth requirements and other attributes such as the number of vCPUs and memory that you need. You can specify a range for network bandwidth in Gbps or a specific value by setting both minimum and maximum to the same number. Once you are done, EC2 Auto Scaling or Fleet will select and launch instances based on the attributes, purchase option, and allocation strategy you selected.

This feature is now available in all public AWS Regions and AWS GovCloud (US). For more information, see the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling attribute-based instance type selection documentation and blog post, EC2 Fleet attribute-based instance type selection documentation, and Spot Fleet attribute-based instance type selection documentation.