Table 3:
Machine specifications of the AWS EC2 instance types used for metrics collection
| Instance type | Category | Virtual CPU | ECU | Memory (GB) | Linux/UNIX Usage ($/hour) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| m5.2xlarge | General purpose | 8 | 31 | 32 | 0.384 |
| m5.4xlarge | General purpose | 16 | 60 | 64 | 0.768 |
| c5.2xlarge | Compute optimized | 8 | 34 | 16 | 0.340 |
| c5.4xlarge | Compute optimized | 16 | 68 | 32 | 0.680 |
| r5.2xlarge | Memory optimized | 8 | 31 | 64 | 0.504 |
| r5.4xlarge | Memory optimized | 16 | 60 | 128 | 1.008 |
To compare the performance of workflow runs on different computing platforms, we selected 3 AWS EC2 categories: general purpose, compute optimized, and memory optimized. We further selected 2 different instance types from those 3 categories, according to the number of virtual CPUs, 2xlarge and 4xlarge, with 8 and 16 CPU cores, respectively. EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) indicates the number of cores and the number of units per core. Instance usage prices are as of 14 August 2018 for on-demand use in the northern Virginia region of the USA. Prices do not include charges for storage, network usage, or other AWS features.