Cloudspecs: Cloud Hardware Evolution Through the Looking Glass

> The first NVMe-backed instance family, i3, appeared in 2016. As of 2025, AWS offers 36 NVMe instance families. Yet the i3 still delivers the best I/O performance per dollar by nearly 2x.

Article should probably explicitly call out the difference between directly attached nvme storage (good ol i3) and “nitro nvme” (m6id and friends). The later is provided via an embedded card which emulates/provides a virtual nvme device directly to the host/instance. Without digging in to the specifics Im oretty sure thats accounting for the $/perf numbers being relatively flat. And “i” series being local storage cost/perf optimized compared to other families.

Edit: see https://d1.awsstatic.com/events/reinvent/2021/Powering_nextg... and similar talks. And notice the language around benefits of more consistent performance due to the better mediation of resources.

I think one interesting context to consider in this is cloud repatriation. Economics that didn't really pencil out half a decade ago may be worth revisiting for a lot of organizations who now find that their actual bare metal needs are quite modest and can be well met by a few modern servers. The IOPS/$ graph here contrasting on-prem w/cloud in particular is quite telling.

Does anyone have any explanation or theories about the NVME SSDs pricing anomaly?