ScyllaDB on AWS EC2 I4i Instances: Twice the Throughput & Lower Latency

AWS's new EC2 I4i instances, powered by 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, offer significant improvements in performance for data-intensive workloads, particularly for ScyllaDB, a high-performance NoSQL database. The I4i instances feature up to 30 TB of local Nitro SSD storage, providing enhanced I/O performance and reduced latency compared to previous generations. Benchmark tests show that ScyllaDB achieved up to 2.7 times higher throughput per vCPU on I4i instances compared to I3 instances for read operations, and 2.2 times higher throughput with a 40% reduction in latency for mixed read and write operations. These instances also boast higher CPU frequencies and more memory, making them ideal for applications capable of leveraging a large number of cores, such as ScyllaDB with its shard-per-core architecture. The I4i's performance improvements are attributed to AWS's custom-designed Nitro SSDs, which have improved storage performance, resulting in impressive throughput and lower latency, even with increased workloads.