Enhanced networking and EBS optimized

Question 1

What means to NOT use enhanced networking?

Answer 1

Without Enhanced network, the instances are using a virtual network interface, those network interfaces talk back to the EC2 Host and they both use the host single network interface. The physical network interface card is not aware of virtualization, the host has to sit in the middle, controlling which instance has access to the physical card at what time (software process, slower and consumes a lot of CPU -> loss of performance, spikes on latency…) -> not an efficient system.

Question 2

What means to use enhanced networking?

Answer 2

Enhanced networking uses SR-IOV.
The physical network interface is aware of the virtualization.
Each instance is given exclusive access to one part of a physical network interface card, you can think of it as logical cards - for the instance is like a proper physical and dedicated card.

Question 3

Is there any extra charge for using enhanced networking?

Answer 3

No extra charges and it is available for most EC2 types

Question 4

Technically speaking, what can you achieve by using enhanced networking?

Answer 4

• Higher IO and lower host CPU usage.
• More bandwidth and higher packet per seconds (PPS)
• Consistent lower latencty.

Question 5

What means to NOT use EBS optimized instances?

Answer 5

Historically network on EC2 was shared with the same network stack used for both data networking and EBS storage networking.

Question 6

What means to use EBS optimized instances?

Answer 6

EBS optimized instance means that some stack optimizations have taken place and dedicated capacity has been provided for that instance for EBS usage.

Question 7

Is there any extra charge for using EBS optimized?

Answer 7

Most new instances support this and have this enabled by default for no charge.
Some supports it but enabling costs extra.