Storage-optimized machine family for Compute Engine (original) (raw)
The storage-optimized machine family is suitable for workloads that are low in core usage and high in storage density. For example, the Z3 machine series is useful for scale-out analytics workloads, flash-optimized databases, and other database workloads.
Z3 also offers two machine types with different amounts of Titanium SSD storage: standardlssd and highlssd. These machine types are ideal for high performance workloads that need fast access to data stored in local storage, such as data streaming, SQL and NoSQL databases, data search, data analytics, and data warehousing. For more information, see Z3 machine types.
| Machine series | Workloads |
|---|---|
| Z3 | SQL, NoSQL, and vector databases Data analytics and data warehouses Search Media streaming Large distributed parallel file systems |
Z3 machine series
Z3 instances are powered by the fourth generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (code-named Sapphire Rapids), DDR5 memory, andTitanium offload processors. Z3 machine types are optimized for the underlying NUMA architecture to deliver optimal, reliable, and consistent performance. Z3 offers three machine types for maximum isolation and performance consistency:
- The 88 vCPU machine type for virtual machine (VM) instances that encompass a single socket
- The 176 vCPU machine type for VMs that encompass an entire host server
- The 192 vCPU bare metal machine type (Preview), which gives you access to all the raw compute resources of the host server
The Z3 machine series offers the following Local SSD storage capacities usingTitanium SSD:
- Up to 36,000 GiB with VM instances
- 72,000 GiB with bare metal instances (Preview)
Titanium SSD is custom-designed Local SSD based on Titanium I/O offload processing. It offers enhanced security, performance, and management compared to Local SSD.
Z3 offers the following features:
- Uses Titanium to offload networking and storage processing from the host CPU onto silicon devices deployed throughout the data center
- Delivers high performance block-storage withGoogle Cloud Hyperdisk
- Offers the largest amount of Local SSD storage capacity of any Compute Engine machine series with Titanium SSD
- Supports Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), which is a built-in accelerator that significantly improves the performance of deep-learning training and inference on the CPU.
- Offers bare metal instances (Preview) that provide access to several onboard, function-specificaccelerators and offloads like Intel QAT, Intel DLB, Intel DSA, Intel TDX, and Intel IAA.
- Supports the following discount and consumption options:
- Resource-based committed use discounts (CUDs)
- Flexible CUDs
- Spot VMs (excluding bare metal machine types)
- Reservations
Z3 instances use Titanium to enable higher levels of networking performance, isolation, and security. The Z3 machine series supports a default network bandwidth of up to 100 Gbps and up to 200 Gbps withper VM Tier_1 networking performance.
For details on pricing, see theVM pricing page. Disk usage and network usage is charged separately from machine type pricing. For more information, see Disk and image pricingand Network pricing.
Z3 Limitations
The following restrictions apply:
- You can't use regional Persistent Diskwith Z3 instances.
- Z3 instances are only available inselect zones and regions. For regional availability of bare metal instances, seeBare metal instances.
- You can't use GPUs with Z3 instances.
- Z3 doesn't support sole tenancy.
- You can't suspend a Z3 instance.
- You can't create custom machine types for Z3 instances.
- Z3 isn't supported on Windows images.
Z3 machine types
The Z3 machine series supports the following predefined Local SSD machine subtypes:
standardlssd: offers high performance search and data analysis for medium-sized data sets. This machine type has a vCPU to Titanium SSD capacity ratio of less than 1:350 and offers the highest Titanium SSD performance per vCPU.highlssd: offers high performance and storage intensive streaming and data analysis for large-sized data sets. This machine type has a vCPU to Titanium SSD capacity ratio between 1:350 and 1:600 and offers a higher total Titanium SSD capacity thanstandardlssd.
To create a bare metal instance with Z3 (Preview), use the z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal machine type.
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Titanium SSD | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 | Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| z3-highmem-88-highlssd | 88 | 704 | (12 x 3000 GiB) 36,000 GiB | Up to 62 | Up to 100 |
| z3-highmem-176-standardlssd | 176 | 1,408 | (12 x 3000 GiB) 36,000 GiB | Up to 100 | Up to 200 |
| z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal (Preview) | 1923 | 1,536 | (12 x 6000 GiB) 72,000 GiB | Up to 100 | Up to 200 |
1A vCPU is implemented as a single hardware thread on the available CPU platform.
2 Maximum egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors. See Network bandwidth.
3 For bare metal instances, the number of vCPUs is equivalent to the number of hardware threads on the host server.
Supported disk types for Z3
Z3 VMs support only the NVMe disk interface and can use the following block storage types:
- Hyperdisk Balanced (
hyperdisk-balanced) - Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability (
hyperdisk-balanced-high-availability) - Hyperdisk Extreme (
hyperdisk-extreme) - Hyperdisk Throughput (
hyperdisk-throughput) - Balanced Persistent Disk (
pd-balanced) - SSD (performance) Persistent Disk (
pd-ssd) - Titanium SSD
Z3 bare metal instances (Preview) can use the following block storage types:
- Hyperdisk Balanced (
hyperdisk-balanced) - Hyperdisk Extreme (
hyperdisk-extreme) - Titanium SSD
Every machine type in the Z3 machine series comes with locally attached Titanium SSD disks. The disks are added automatically when you create an instance. The capacity and performance for Titanium SSD disks for Z3 are listed in the following table:
| IOPS | Throughput (MiBps) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | # of attachedTitanium disks | Disk size (GiB) | Total size (GiB) | Read | Write | Read | Write |
| z3-highmem-88-highlssd | 12 | 3,000 | 36,000 | 6,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 36,000 | 30,000 |
| z3-highmem-176-standardlssd | 12 | 3,000 | 36,000 | 6,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 36,000 | 30,000 |
| z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal (Preview) | 12 | 6,000 | 72,000 | 9,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 36,000 | 30,000 |
For the performance limits of Hyperdisk and Persistent Disk, see the following:
Disk and capacity limits
For details about the capacity limits, see Hyperdisk size and attachment limits andPersistent Disk maximum capacity.
Z3 storage limits are described in the following table:
| Maximum number of disks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | Per VM1 | Hyperdisk volumesper VM | Hyperdisk Balanced | Hyperdisk Throughput | Hyperdisk Extreme |
| z3-highmem-88-highlssd | 128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 8 |
| z3-highmem-176-standardlssd | 128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 8 |
| z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal (Preview) | 32 | 32 | 16 | 0 | 16 |
1 The maximum size per Hyperdisk volume is 64 TiB.
Network support for Z3 VMs
The following network interface drivers are required:
- Z3 VM instances requiregVNIC network interfaces.
- Z3 bare metal instances require theIntel IDPF LAN PF device driver.
Z3 supports up to 100 Gbps network bandwidth for standard networking and up to 200 Gbps with per VM Tier_1 networking performance for VM and bare metal instances.
Before migrating to Z3 or creating Z3 VMs or bare metal instances, make sure that theoperating system imagethat you use supports the IDPF network driver for bare metal instances or the gVNIC driver for VM instances. To get the best possible performance on Z3 VMs, choose an OS image that supports both "Tier_1 Networking" and "200 Gbps network bandwidth". These images include an updated gVNIC driver, even if the guest OS shows the gve driver version as 1.0.0. If your Z3 VM is using an operating system with an older version of gVNIC driver, this is still supported but the VM might experience suboptimal performance such as less network bandwidth or higher latency.
If you use a custom OS image to create a Z3 VM, you canmanually install the most recent gVNIC driver. The gVNIC driver version v1.3.0 or later is recommended for use with Z3 VMs. Google recommends using the latest gVNIC driver version to benefit from additional features and bug fixes.
Maintenance experience for Z3 instances
During the lifecycle of a Compute Engine instance, the host machine that your instance runs on undergoes multiple host events. A host event can include the regular maintenance of Compute Engine infrastructure, or in rare cases, a host error. Compute Engine also applies some non-disruptive lightweight upgrades for the hypervisor and network in the background.
The Z3 machine series offers the following features related to host maintenance:
| Machine type | Typical scheduled maintenance event frequency | Maintenance behavior | Advanced notification | On-demand maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| z3-highmem-88-highlssd | Minimum of 30 days | Terminate and restart | 7 days | Yes |
| z3-highmem-176-standardlssd | Minimum of 30 days | Terminate and restart | 7 days | Yes |
| z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal (Preview) | Minimum of 30 days | Terminate and restart | 7 days | Yes |
The maintenance frequencies shown in the previous table are approximations, not guarantees. Compute Engine might occasionally perform maintenance more frequently.
Compute Engine preserves data on the local Titanium SSD disks for Z3 instances during maintenance events.
If a host event occurs, Compute Engine tries to recover any Titanium SSD disks attached to the instance. By default, Compute Engine spends up to 1 hour recovering the data. For Z3 instances, Compute Engine spends up to 6 hours trying to recover the Titanium SSD data before reaching the timeout limit. This timeout limit is customizable. For more information about Local SSD and Titanium SSD recovery options, seeDisk persistence following instance termination.
What's next
- Creating and starting a virtual machine instance
- Learn about the different Storage options for your VM
- Move your workload to a new compute instance VM instance pricing