Amazon EC2 now supports Optimize CPUs for license-included instances

Amazon EC2 now allows customers to modify an instance’s CPU options to optimize the licensing costs of Microsoft Windows license-included workloads. You can now customize the number of vCPUs and/or disable hyperthreading on Windows Server and SQL Server license-included instances to save on vCPU-based licensing costs.

This enhancement is particularly valuable for database workloads like Microsoft SQL Server that require high memory and IOPS but lower vCPU counts. By modifying CPU options, you can reduce vCPU-based licensing costs while maintaining memory and IOPS performance, achieve higher memory-to-vCPU ratios, and customize CPU settings to match your specific workload requirements. For example, on an r7i.8xlarge instance running Windows and SQL Server license included, you can turn off hyperthreading to reduce the default 32 vCPU count to 16, saving 50% on the licensing costs, while still getting the 256 GiB memory and 40,000 IOPS that come with the instance.

This feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

To learn more, see CPU options in the Amazon EC2 User Guide and read this blog post.