Amazon Lets Customers Modify Reserved Instances

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) made EC2 available at reduced rates back in 2009 for those who sign long-term commitments, it helped kick start the lowering of cloud pricing. The idea behind its Reserved Instances was customers could lock in usage of capacity in one- and three-year terms.

Now Amazon is letting customers modify their Reserved Instances -- at least somewhat.

AWS this week said it's letting customers move their Reserved Instances between Availability Zones as long as the instances remain in the same region. Customers with accounts enabled for EC2-Classic can also move their Reserved Instances between EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC, explained AWS evangelist Jeff Barr on the AWS Blog.

"You can now make adjustments to your Reserved Instances as your needs and your architecture change," Barr noted. Customers can use the AWS Management Console or modify their Reserved Instances using the EC2 APIs or the AWS command line interface (CLI), noted Barr. The post explains how to make the change via the AWS console.

In addition to the pricing advantage Reserved Instances offer versus using capacity on demand is the assurance that capacity will be available when needed, Barr noted. But it's important to note that while you'll get the pricing advantage regardless of the network platform used, customers only get the capacity assurance within the network platform of the reserved instance.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 09/12/2013 at 2:57 PM