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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
User Guide for Linux Instances

D2 Instances

D2 instances are designed for workloads that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage. D2 instances are well suited for the following applications:

  • Massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse

  • MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing

  • Log or data processing applications

Contents

Hardware Specifications

For more information about the hardware specifications for each Amazon EC2 instance type, see Amazon EC2 Instances.

D2 Instance Features

The following is a summary of the features for D2 instances:

  • The primary data storage for D2 instances is HDD-based instance storage. Like all instance storage, these volumes persist only for the life of the instance. For more information about instance store volumes, see Amazon EC2 Instance Store.

  • D2 instances are EBS-optimized by default, and deliver dedicated block storage throughput to Amazon EBS ranging from 750 Mbps to 4,000 Mbps at no additional cost. EBS-optimized instances enable you to get consistently high performance for your EBS volumes by eliminating contention between Amazon EBS I/O and other network traffic from your D2 instance. For more information, see Amazon EBS–Optimized Instances.

  • You can enable enhanced networking capabilities. Enhanced networking provides significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance, lower network jitter, and lower latencies. For more information, see Enabling Enhanced Networking on Linux Instances in a VPC.

  • You can cluster D2 instances in a placement group. Placement groups provide low latency and high-bandwidth connectivity between the instances within a single Availability Zone. For more information, see Placement Groups.

  • The d2.8xlarge instance type provides the ability to control processor C-states and P-states on Linux. C-states control the sleep levels that a core can enter when it is inactive, while P-states control the desired performance (in CPU frequency) from a core. For more information, see Processor State Control for Your EC2 Instance.

D2 Instance Requirements

The following are the requirements for D2 instances:

  • D2 instances require 64-bit HVM AMIs. They have high-memory (up to 244 GiB of RAM), and require a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of that capacity. HVM AMIs provide superior performance in comparison to paravirtual (PV) AMIs on high-memory instance types. In addition, you must use an HVM AMI to take advantage of enhanced networking.

  • There is a limit on the total number of instances that you can launch in a region, and there are additional limits on some D2 instance types. For more information, see How many instances can I run in Amazon EC2?

    If you need more D2 instances, you can request them using the Amazon EC2 Instance Request Form.

  • Your d2.8xlarge instances are capable of providing up to 3.5 GB/s read performance and 3.1 GB/s write performance with a 2 MiB block size. To ensure the best disk throughput performance from your D2 instances on Linux, we recommend that you use the most recent version of the Amazon Linux AMI, or another Linux AMI with a kernel version of 3.8 or later. D2 instances provide the best disk performance when you use a Linux kernel that supports persistent grants, an extension to the Xen block ring protocol that significantly improves disk throughput and scalability. For more information about persistent grants, see this article in the Xen Project Blog.

  • The d2.8xlarge instance type has 36 vCPUs, which might cause launch issues in some Linux operating systems that have a vCPU limit of 32. For more information, see Support for 36 vCPUs.

Support for 36 vCPUs

The d2.8xlarge instance type provides 36 vCPUs, which might cause launch issues in some Linux operating systems that have a vCPU limit of 32. We strongly recommend that you use the latest AMIs when you launch d2.8xlarge instances.

The following Linux AMIs support launching d2.8xlarge instances with 36 vCPUs:

  • Amazon Linux AMI 2016.03 (HVM)

  • Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (HVM)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 (HVM)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (HVM)

If you must use a different AMI for your application, and your d2.8xlarge instance launch does not complete successfully (for example, if your instance status changes to stopped during launch with a Client.InstanceInitiatedShutdown state transition reason), modify your instance as described in the following procedure to support more than 32 vCPUs so that you can use the d2.8xlarge instance type.

To update an instance to support more than 32 vCPUs

  1. Launch a D2 instance using your AMI, choosing any D2 instance type other than d2.8xlarge.

  2. Update the kernel to the latest version by following your operating system-specific instructions. For example, for RHEL 6, use the sudo yum update -y kernel command.

  3. Stop the instance.

  4. (Optional) Create an AMI from the instance that you can use to launch any additional d2.8xlarge instances that you need in the future.

  5. Change the instance type of your stopped instance to d2.8xlarge (choose Actions, select Instance Settings, choose Change Instance Type, and then follow the directions).

  6. Start the instance. If the instance launches properly, you are done. If the instance still does not boot properly, proceed to the next step.

  7. (Optional) If the instance still does not boot properly, the kernel on your instance may not support more than 32 vCPUs. However, you may be able to boot the instance if you limit the vCPUs.

    1. Change the instance type of your stopped instance to any D2 instance type other than d2.8xlarge (choose Actions, select Instance Settings, choose Change Instance Type, and then follow the directions).

    2. Add the maxcpus=32 option to your boot kernel parameters by following your operating system-specific instructions. For example, for RHEL 6, edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add the following option to the most recent and active kernel entry:

      default=0
timeout=1
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64 maxcpus=32 console=ttyS0 ro root=UUID=9996863e-b964-47d3-a33b-3920974fdbd9 rd_NO_LUKS  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us LANG=en_US.UTF-8 xen_blkfront.sda_is_xvda=1 console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_DM
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-504.3.3.el6.x86_64.img

    3. Stop the instance.

    4. (Optional) Create an AMI from the instance that you can use to launch any additional d2.8xlarge instances that you need in the future.

    5. Change the instance type of your stopped instance to d2.8xlarge (choose Actions, select Instance Settings, choose Change Instance Type, and then follow the directions).

    6. Start the instance.