I've been looking for an EC2 instance type that has good network performance (at least as good as the c3.2x), but I don't need almost any other resources, since I'm using this server solely as an HAProxy load balancing server.
But the tiers only seem to be focused on all the other factors of the server (RAM, CPU cores, graphics cards, etc.) and then network just goes up with it (roughly) equally on all types. Basically, I need the hardware performance of a t2.med, but the network speed of, say, a c4. Any thoughts?
I also thought this may be important to note, I have used ELB, but it just doesn't have any where near the control that HAProxy has.
Notice the TCP_CRR bars, compare "2.6.18-239.9.1.el5" vs "2.6.39 (with Xen 4.1.0)".
Best Answer
In AWS network performance tends to scale with CPU count. If you need higher network bandwidth you usually need to use a larger instance size.
This website has a good chart of network performance vs cost. If you sort by network performance you can run your eye down the price column and find the instance that has the performance you need for the best price.
For example, r4.large at $0.13/h is pretty good value, but is still three times more expensive than a t2.medium. The m3.medium at 0.067c/hr is worth considering.
You should probably reconsider using managed services like ELB. I also wonder if you could use a number of t2 instances in parallel, but that depends on what you're doing.