io1 volumes are expensive and not nearly as performant as local nvme SSD's. io1's top out at 32K PIOPS per volume and a 32K PIOPS 225GB volume would cost aroun

io1 volumes are expensive and not nearly as performant as local nvme SSD's. io1's top out at 32K PIOPS per volume and a 32K PIOPS 225GB volume would cost around 2100/month. But an entire c5d.2xlarge with 225GB of local SSD will only cost around $283/month, and (based on i3 performance) will give you around 180K write IOPS.