AWS Re:Invent: AWS takes wraps off two new EC2 instances

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to roll out two further Electric Cloud Compute (EC2) instance types, as well as a new service that will allow end users to analyse disparate application data.

The new offerings were announced by Werner Vogels, chief technology officer of AWS, during his keynote presentation at the cloud services firm's Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.Many of you asked us for these instance types and I really hope you put them to good use. The first of the two new instances is designed for AWS customers that use databases or analytics tools that require a lot of memory, whereas the second is aimed at people who use storage-heavy analytics systems.

The high memory EC2 instance boasts 240 GB of RAM and 2 x 120GB solid-state storage (SSD) drives.

Meanwhile, the high storage instance type features 160 GB of RAM that sits on 24 2TB HD and provides users with 48TB of data.

During the presentation, Vogels told delegates the new instance types would allow them to build "amazing new applications".

"Many of you asked us for these instance types [and] I really hope you will put them to good use," he added.

Shortly afterwards, Vogels lifted the lid on another new service the firm is rolling out, called AWS Data Pipeline.

"[This is] a data driven workflow service that helps you move data through several processing steps to the destination [where you want it]," he explained.

The service allows users to set rules that feed data from various sources into analytics engines before moving it on to another repository, such as Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3).

"This service allows you to create schedules...and it is easy to integrate with existing AWS data sources and [it] also connects easily with third party analytics tools," Vogels added.

Data analytics has been a popular theme at the conference so far, with the cloud giant using the first day of Re:Invent to announce the imminent release of its cloud-based data warehousing service RedShift.