1. t2.micro
2. t2.small
3. t2.medium

Those instance types are all “Burstable Performance Instances” which means they are suitable for unsustained loads. This is also supported by the EBS Only store, which effectively means that high-volume I/O is out of the question. The fact that those instances are all using HVM-based virtualization, however, supports quick SCALE-UP to more potent instance types, if needs arise. One notable remark here is that T2 instances are VPC-only, which is a strong indication of the will to move everything into VPCs nowadays. AWS wants you to start using VPCs from the start!

The instance resource matrix now looks like this:

As stated by AWS, the target uses for the new, T2 instance type family, includes:

• Development environments;
• Private experimentation;
• Educational use;
• Build servers / Code repositories;
• Low-traffic web applications;
• Small databases.

To evaluate the meaning of “Burstable Performance Instances“, here are CPU benchmark results on several instance instance types:

All instances use detault settings for storage, Amazon Linux AMI 2014.03.2, John The Ripper 1.8.0, measuring real crypts with many salts! The test is fairly synthetic, but answers the key question: What difference does it make to have a Burstable instance type? And the answer: If CPU load is not sustainable, it’s more than twice as fast!

Price-wise the new instance types are also better. Cost reduction of On Demand prices of more than 35% allows you to run t2.micro for less than 10 USD/m! Watch out, DigitalOcean! Obviously, Amazon wants change the already established “AWS for business, DigitalOcean for home” mantra into “AWS Everywhere”.

In conclusion, the new, T2 instance type family, closes the gap between unacceptably low performance instance type (t1.micro) and too expensive instances types (m1.small, m3.medium) which creates the sweet-spot for entry users, cloud enthusiast and home users. As someone said: “Now you have an instance type to run WordPress on!”

Lets start with simple example …

We have the following EC2 instances in AWS Account:

Search for the term ‘TEST-NODE’ yields the same results as searching for ‘test-node’ in the AWS Web interface.

Searching for ‘TEST-NODE':

Searching for ‘test-node':

… it behaves the same way. It is case-insensitive.

However, commend line tools will produce totally different output.

Searching for ‘TEST-NODE':

:~> aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=*TEST-NODE*" --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value[]' --output text
TEST-NODE-1
:~>

Searching for ‘test-node':

:~> aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=*test-node*" --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value[]' --output text
test-node-5
:~>

Python + Boto shows the same behavior (not surprisingly, AWS CLI uses Boto):

Searching for ‘TEST-NODE':

:~> python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Mar  9 2014, 22:15:05)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 5.0 (clang-500.0.68)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import boto
>>> import boto.ec2
>>> conn = boto.ec2.connect_to_region('us-east-1', aws_access_key_id='', aws_secret_access_key='')
>>> reservations = conn.get_all_instances(filters = {'instance-state-name' : 'running', "tag:Name": "*" + 'TEST-NODE' + "*"})
>>> for r in reservations:
...     for i in r.instances:
...             print i.tags['Name']
...
TEST-NODE-1
>>> ^D
:~>

Searching for ‘test-node':

:~> python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Mar  9 2014, 22:15:05)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 5.0 (clang-500.0.68)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import boto
>>> import boto.ec2
>>> conn = boto.ec2.connect_to_region('us-east-1', aws_access_key_id='', aws_secret_access_key='')
>>> reservations = conn.get_all_instances(filters = {'instance-state-name' : 'running', "tag:Name": "*" + 'test-node' + "*"})
>>> for r in reservations:
...     for i in r.instances:
...             print i.tags['Name']
...
test-node-5
>>> ^D
:~>

Moral of the story: ALWAYS VERIFY/ENFORCE THAT DATA IS PROPERLY FORMATTED!

There are multiple possible solutions to this issue. With the cost of few extra cycles one can make sure proper comparison is implemented:

:~> python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Mar  9 2014, 22:15:05)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 5.0 (clang-500.0.68)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import boto
>>> import boto.ec2
>>> conn = boto.ec2.connect_to_region('us-east-1', aws_access_key_id='', aws_secret_access_key='')
>>> reservations = conn.get_all_instances(filters = {'instance-state-name' : 'running'})
>>> for r in reservations:
...     for i in r.instances:
...             if 'test-node'.upper() in i.tags['Name'].upper():
...                     print i.tags['Name']
...
TEST-NODE-1
TEST-Node-2
TEST-node-3
test-node-5
>>> ^D
:~>

References

• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-instances.html