# AWS HA - instance sizing

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/aws-ha-instance-sizing/6654>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [June 12, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/aws-ha-instance-sizing/6654 "2015-06-12T15:02:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gabriel\_Rosendorf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/gabriel_rosendorf/32/62_2.png) [@Gabriel\_Rosendorf](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Gabriel_Rosendorf)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/aws-ha-instance-sizing/6654/1 "2015-06-12T15:02:17Z")

</div>

Ohai!

I’d like to hear people’s experiences with the Enterprise Chef AWS HA  
implementation [https://docs.chef.io/install\_server\_ha\_aws.html](https://docs.chef.io/install_server_ha_aws.html). In  
particular, I’d like to know how folks are sizing the instances, and how  
many nodes they’re handling. I’m looking to support around 2500 nodes for  
the get go, but will need to support up to ~10,000.

Thanks in advance!

---

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**Author:** ![irvingpop](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/irvingpop/32/979_2.png) [@irvingpop](https://discourse.chef.io/u/irvingpop)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2015, 11:16pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/aws-ha-instance-sizing/6654/2 "2015-06-12T23:16:43Z")

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Hi Gabriel,

In my Chef server load-testing experiments I settled on an optimum size of  
c3.xlarge for the frontends and c3.2xlarge for the backends. It's  
important not to skimp on backend storage - I used EBS-Optimized instances  
and SSD-backed EBS volumes.

At 2500 nodes you could probably start with smaller instances, but it's  
highly dependent on your converge interval/splay and also the amount of  
work each run puts on the depsolver and search endpoint.

--

\*Irving Popovetsky \*— Team Lead, Customer Engineering | _CHEF_

_mobile:_ 503-490-5523 – [irving@chef.io](mailto:irving@chef.io) – \*my: \*Blog  
[http://irvingpop.github.io/](http://irvingpop.github.io/) Github [http://github.com/irvingpop](http://github.com/irvingpop) Twitter  
[http://www.twitter.com/irvingpop](http://www.twitter.com/irvingpop) Calendar Free/Busy  
[https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=irving%40chef.io&ctz=America/Los\_Angeles&mode=WEEK](https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=irving%40chef.io&ctz=America/Los_Angeles&mode=WEEK)

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:02 AM, Gabriel Rosendorf [grosendorf@gmail.com](mailto:grosendorf@gmail.com)  
wrote:

> Ohai!
> 
> I'd like to hear people's experiences with the Enterprise Chef AWS HA  
> implementation [https://docs.chef.io/install\_server\_ha\_aws.html](https://docs.chef.io/install_server_ha_aws.html). In  
> particular, I'd like to know how folks are sizing the instances, and how  
> many nodes they're handling. I'm looking to support around 2500 nodes for  
> the get go, but will need to support up to ~10,000.
> 
> Thanks in advance!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Gabriel\_Rosendorf](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/gabriel_rosendorf/32/62_2.png) [@Gabriel\_Rosendorf](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Gabriel_Rosendorf)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/aws-ha-instance-sizing/6654/3 "2015-06-14T15:11:05Z")

</div>

Thanks, Irving. That’s extremely helpful.

> On Jun 12, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Irving Popovetsky [irving@chef.io](mailto:irving@chef.io) wrote:
> 
> Hi Gabriel,
> 
> In my Chef server load-testing experiments I settled on an optimum size of c3.xlarge for the frontends and c3.2xlarge for the backends. It's important not to skimp on backend storage - I used EBS-Optimized instances and SSD-backed EBS volumes.
> 
> At 2500 nodes you could probably start with smaller instances, but it's highly dependent on your converge interval/splay and also the amount of work each run puts on the depsolver and search endpoint.
> 
> --  
> Irving Popovetsky — Team Lead, Customer Engineering | CHEF  
> mobile: 503-490-5523 \<\> – [irving@chef.io](mailto:irving@chef.io) [mailto:irving@chef.io](mailto:irving@chef.io) – my: Blog [http://irvingpop.github.io/](http://irvingpop.github.io/) Github [http://github.com/irvingpop](http://github.com/irvingpop) Twitter [http://www.twitter.com/irvingpop](http://www.twitter.com/irvingpop) Calendar Free/Busy [https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=irving%40chef.io&ctz=America/Los\_Angeles&mode=WEEK](https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=irving%40chef.io&ctz=America/Los_Angeles&mode=WEEK)  
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:02 AM, Gabriel Rosendorf \<[grosendorf@gmail.com](mailto:grosendorf@gmail.com) [mailto:grosendorf@gmail.com](mailto:grosendorf@gmail.com)\> wrote:  
> Ohai!
> 
> I'd like to hear people's experiences with the Enterprise Chef AWS HA implementation [https://docs.chef.io/install\_server\_ha\_aws.html](https://docs.chef.io/install_server_ha_aws.html). In particular, I'd like to know how folks are sizing the instances, and how many nodes they're handling. I'm looking to support around 2500 nodes for the get go, but will need to support up to ~10,000.
> 
> Thanks in advance!