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    Elastic Compute Service:Shared instance types

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    Elastic Compute Service:Shared instance types

    Last Updated:Apr 17, 2025

    Shared instances use a CPU-unbound scheduling scheme. Each vCPU is randomly allocated to an idle CPU hyperthread. vCPUs of different instances compete for CPU resources, which causes computing performance to fluctuate when traffic loads are heavy. Shared instances have an availability service level agreement (SLA) but do not have a performance SLA. Different from enterprise-level instances that have exclusive resources, shared instances share resources. As a result, shared instances do not provide consistent computing performance and cost less.

    Shared instances mainly include shared instances, economy instances, and burstable instances. Currently the following shared instances are available for purchase:

    Background information

    Before you read further in this topic, you must be familiar with the following information:

    After you determine an instance type for your use case, you may need to learn about the following information:

    • Regions in which the instance type is available for purchase. Instance types that are available for purchase vary based on the region. You can go to the Instance Types Available for Each Region page to view the instance types available for purchase in each region. Alternatively, you can call the DescribeRegions and DescribeZones operations to query the supported regions and the zones in a specific region.

    • Estimated instance costs. You can calculate the price of instances that uses different billing methods in the Price Calculator. You can also call the DescribePrice operation to query information about the most recent prices of ECS resources.

    • Instructions for purchasing an instance. You can go to the ECS instance buy page to place a purchase order for instances.

    You may be concerned about the following information:

    • Retired instance families. If you cannot find an instance type in this topic, the instance type may be in a retired instance family. For information about retired instance families, see Retired instance types.

    • Supported instance type changes. Before you change the instance type of an instance, check whether the instance type can be changed and identify compatible instance types. For more information, see Instance types and families that support instance type changes.

    e, economy instance family

    • Supported scenarios: small and medium-sized websites, development and testing, and lightweight applications.

    • Compute:

      • Offers multiple CPU-to-memory ratios such as 1:1, 1:2, and 1:4.

      • Uses Intel® Xeon® Platinum Scalable processors.

        Note

        Instances of the e instance family use a CPU-unbound scheduling scheme, in which each vCPU is randomly allocated to an idle CPU hyperthread. Compared with enterprise-level instances, e instances share resources and cost less.

    • Storage:

      • Is an instance family in which all instances are I/O optimized.

      • Supports Enterprise SSDs (ESSDs), ESSD Entry disks (recommended), and ESSD AutoPL disks.

        Note

        Due to the limits of economy instance types, ESSDs at performance levels 1, 2, and 3 (PL1, PL2, and PL3 ESSDs) cannot deliver their maximum performance on e instances. We recommend that you select ESSD Entry disks or PL0 ESSDs for the instances.

    • Network:

      • Supports IPv4 and IPv6. For information about IPv6 communication, see IPv6 communication.

      • Supports only virtual private clouds (VPCs).

      • Provides high network performance based on large computing capacity.

    e instance types

    Instance type

    vCPUs

    Memory size (GiB)

    Baseline/burst bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    NIC queues

    ENIs

    Private IPv4 addresses per ENI

    IPv6 addresses per ENI

    Disk baseline/burst IOPS

    Disk baseline/burst bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    ecs.e-c4m1.large

    2

    0.5

    0.2/burstable up to 2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    8,000/none

    0.4/none

    ecs.e-c2m1.large

    2

    1

    0.2/burstable up to 2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    8,000/none

    0.4/none

    ecs.e-c1m1.large

    2

    2.0

    0.2/burstable up to 2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    8,000/none

    0.4/none

    ecs.e-c1m2.large

    2

    4.0

    0.2/burstable up to 2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    8,000/none

    0.4/none

    ecs.e-c1m4.large

    2

    8.0

    0.4/burstable up to 2

    1

    2

    2

    1

    16,000/none

    0.8/none

    ecs.e-c1m2.xlarge

    4

    8.0

    0.4/burstable up to 3

    1

    2

    6

    1

    16,000/none

    0.8/none

    ecs.e-c1m4.xlarge

    4

    16.0

    0.8/burstable up to 4

    1

    2

    6

    1

    16,000/none

    0.8/none

    ecs.e-c1m2.2xlarge

    8

    16.0

    0.8/burstable up to 6

    2

    2

    6

    1

    16,000/none

    0.8/none

    ecs.e-c1m4.2xlarge

    8

    32.0

    1.2/burstable up to 6

    2

    2

    6

    1

    16,000/none

    0.8/none

    Note

    • The following limits apply to the ecs.e-c4m1.large, ecs.e-c2m1.large, ecs.e-c1m1.large, ecs.e-c1m2.large, and ecs.e-c1m4.large instance types:

      • Secondary elastic network interfaces (ENIs) cannot be bound to ecs.e-c1m1.large, ecs.e-c1m2.large, or ecs.e-c1m4.large instances during instance creation and can be bound after the instances are created.

      • You can bind secondary ENIs to or unbind secondary ENIs from ecs.e-c1m1.large, ecs.e-c1m2.large, and ecs.e-c1m4.large instances only when the instances are in the Stopped state.

    • The ecs.e-c4m1.large and ecs.e-c2m1.large1.large instance types are available for purchase only in the following regions: China (Hong Kong), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), Japan (Tokyo), South Korea (Seoul), UK (London), Germany (Frankfurt), US (Virginia), and US (Silicon Valley).

    xn4, n4, mn4, and e4, previous-generation shared instance families

    Features:

    • Offer multiple CPU-to-memory ratios.

    • Use 2.5 GHz Intel® Xeon® processors.

    • Use DDR4 memory.

    • Are instance families in which all instances are I/O optimized.

    • Support only IPv4.

    Instance family

    Description

    vCPU-to-memory ratio

    Scenario

    xn4

    Shared compact instance family

    1:1

    • Web frontend applications

    • Lightweight applications and microservices

    • Development and testing environments

    n4

    Shared compute instance family

    1:2

    • Websites and web applications

    • Development environments, servers, code repositories, microservices, and testing and staging environments

    • Lightweight enterprise-level applications

    mn4

    Shared general-purpose instance family

    1:4

    • Websites and web applications

    • Lightweight databases and caches

    • Integrated applications and lightweight enterprise-level services

    e4

    Shared memory instance family

    1:8

    • Applications that require a large amount of memory

    • Lightweight databases and caches

    xn4 instance types

    Instance type

    vCPUs

    Memory size (GiB)

    Network baseline bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    Packet forwarding rate (pps)

    Network interface controller (NIC) queues

    ENIs

    Private IPv4 addresses per ENI

    ecs.xn4.small

    1

    1.0

    0.5

    5

    1

    2

    2

    Note

    • Secondary ENIs cannot be bound to instances of this instance family during instance creation and can be bound after the instances are created. You can bind secondary ENIs to or unbind secondary ENIs from an ecs.xn4.small instance only when the instance is in the Stopped state.

    • For more information about these specifications, see the "Instance type specifications" section in Overview of instance families. Packet forwarding rates vary significantly based on business scenarios. We recommend that you perform business stress tests on instances to choose appropriate instance types.

    n4 instance types

    Instance type

    vCPUs

    Memory size (GiB)

    Network baseline bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    Packet forwarding rate (pps)

    NIC queues

    ENIs

    Private IPv4 addresses per ENI

    ecs.n4.small

    1

    2.0

    0.5

    5

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.n4.large

    2

    4.0

    0.5

    10

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.n4.xlarge

    4

    8.0

    0.8

    15

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.n4.2xlarge

    8

    16.0

    1.2

    30

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.n4.4xlarge

    16

    32.0

    2.5

    40

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.n4.8xlarge

    32

    64.0

    5.0

    50

    2

    2

    6

    Note

    • Secondary ENIs cannot be bound to instances of this instance family during instance creation and can be bound after the instances are created. You can bind secondary ENIs to or unbind secondary ENIs from instances of specific instance types, including ecs.n4.small and ecs.n4.large, only when the instances are in the Stopped state.

    • For more information about these specifications, see the "Instance type specifications" section in Overview of instance families. Packet forwarding rates vary significantly based on business scenarios. We recommend that you perform business stress tests on instances to choose appropriate instance types.

    mn4 instance types

    Instance type

    vCPUs

    Memory size (GiB)

    Network baseline bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    Packet forwarding rate (pps)

    NIC queues

    ENIs

    Private IPv4 addresses per ENI

    ecs.mn4.small

    1

    4.0

    0.5

    5

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.mn4.large

    2

    8.0

    0.5

    10

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.mn4.xlarge

    4

    16.0

    0.8

    15

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.mn4.2xlarge

    8

    32.0

    1.2

    30

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.mn4.4xlarge

    16

    64.0

    2.5

    40

    1

    8

    6

    ecs.mn4.8xlarge

    32

    128.0

    5

    50

    2

    8

    6

    Note

    • Secondary ENIs cannot be bound to instances of this instance family during instance creation and can be bound after the instances are created. You can bind secondary ENIs to or unbind secondary ENIs from instances of specific instance types, including ecs.mn4.small and ecs.mn4.large, only when the instances are in the Stopped state.

    • For more information about these specifications, see the "Instance type specifications" section in Overview of instance families. Packet forwarding rates vary significantly based on business scenarios. We recommend that you perform business stress tests on instances to choose appropriate instance types.

    e4 instance types

    Instance type

    vCPUs

    Memory size (GiB)

    Network baseline bandwidth (Gbit/s)

    Packet forwarding rate (pps)

    NIC queues

    ENIs

    Private IPv4 addresses per ENI

    ecs.e4.small

    1

    8.0

    0.5

    5

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.e4.large

    2

    16.0

    0.5

    10

    1

    2

    2

    ecs.e4.xlarge

    4

    32.0

    0.8

    15

    1

    2

    6

    ecs.e4.2xlarge

    8

    64.0

    1.2

    30

    1

    3

    6

    ecs.e4.4xlarge

    16

    128.0

    2.5

    40

    1

    8

    6

    Note

    • Secondary ENIs cannot be bound to instances of this instance family during instance creation and can be bound after the instances are created. You can bind secondary ENIs to or unbind secondary ENIs from instances of specific instance types, including ecs.e4.small and ecs.e4.large, only when the instances are in the Stopped state.

    • For more information about these specifications, see the "Instance type specifications" section in Overview of instance families. Packet forwarding rates vary significantly based on business scenarios. We recommend that you perform business stress tests on instances to choose appropriate instance types.