The storage-optimized machine family is suitable for workloads that are low in core usage and high in storage density. This machine family is 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.
- The Z4D machine series offers compute instances with up to 3 TB of memory and 84,000 GiB of Titanium SSD capacity. The Z4D machine series includes machine types that provision 2 physical NICs per instance.
- The Z3 machine series offers compute instances with up to 1.5 TB of memory and up to 72,000 GiB of Titanium SSD capacity. The Z3 machine series includes a bare metal machine type.
Z4D and Z3 offer machine types with different ratios of vCPU to Titanium SSD
capacity: standardlssd and highlssd.
| Machine series | Workloads |
|---|---|
| Z4D |
|
| Z3 |
|
Z4D machine series
Z4D instances are powered by AMD EPYC Turin processors, DDR5 memory, and Titanium offload processors. Z4D machine types are optimized for the underlying NUMA architecture to deliver optimal, reliable, and consistent performance. Z4D also offers larger Titanium SSD disk sizes than Z3.
The Z4D machine series offers up to 84,000 GiB local storage using Titanium SSD.
Z4D 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 with Google Cloud Hyperdisk
- Offers a large amount of Titanium SSD storage capacity
- Supports Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX512), which is a built-in accelerator that offers built-in acceleration for vector-based processing, supporting 32 double-precision and 64 single-precision floating-point numbers, along with 8 64-bit and 16 32-bit integers.
Z4D instances use Titanium to enable higher levels of networking performance, isolation, and security.
- Z4D instances with 1 physical NIC support network bandwidths of up to 200 Gbps, depending on the number of vCPUs.
- Z4D instances with 2 physical NICs support network bandwidths of up to 400 Gbps.
For details on pricing, see the VM pricing page. Disk usage and network usage is charged separately from machine type pricing. For more information, see Disk and image pricing and Network pricing. For Titanium SSD pricing, see Storage-optimized machine type family pricing.
Z4D Limitations
The following restrictions apply:
- You can't use regional Persistent Disk with Z4D instances.
- Z4D instances are available in select zones and regions.
- You can't use GPUs with Z4D instances.
- Z4D doesn't support sole tenancy.
- You can't suspend a Z4D instance.
- You can't create custom machine types for Z4D instances.
- Live migration is only supported for Z4D instances with 42,000 GiB or less of attached Titanium SSD. During host maintenance events, Z4D instances with more than 42,000 GiB of attached Titanium SSD terminate with data persistence.
- Z4D isn't supported on Windows images.
Z4D machine types
The Z4D machine series supports the following predefined lssd 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 1:219 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 of 1:438 and offers a larger Titanium SSD disk partition size thanstandardlssd.
Z4D standardlssd
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) |
Titanium SSD | Number of NICs | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 |
Egress bandwidth (Gbps) outside a VPC network2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z4d-highmem-16-standardlssd |
16 | 126 | (1 x 3,500 GiB) 3,500 GiB |
1 | Up to 20 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-32-standardlssd |
32 | 252 | (2 x 3,500 GiB) 7,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 32 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-48-standardlssd |
48 | 378 | (3 x 3,500 GiB) 10,500 GiB |
1 | Up to 50 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-64-standardlssd |
64 | 504 | (4 x 3,500 GiB) 14,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 65 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-96-standardlssd |
96 | 756 | (6 x 3,500 GiB) 21,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 100 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-192-standardlssd |
192 | 1,512 | (12 x 3,500 GiB) 42,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 200 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-384-standardlssd |
384 | 3,024 | (24 x 3,500 GiB) 84,000 GiB |
2 | Up to 400 | Up to 50 |
Z4D highlssd
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) |
Titanium SSD | Number of NICs | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 |
Egress bandwidth (Gbps) outside a VPC network2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z4d-highmem-8-highlssd |
8 | 63 | (1 x 3,500 GiB) 3,500 GiB |
1 | Up to 20 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-16-highlssd |
16 | 126 | (2 x 3,500 GiB) 7,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 20 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-32-highlssd |
32 | 252 | (4 x 3,500 GiB) 14,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 32 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-48-highlssd |
48 | 378 | (6 x 3,500 GiB) 21,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 50 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-64-highlssd |
64 | 504 | (8 x 3,500 GiB) 28,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 65 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-96-highlssd |
96 | 756 | (12 x 3,500 GiB) 42,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 100 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-192-highlssd |
192 | 1,512 | (24 x 3,500 GiB) 84,000 GiB |
1 | Up to 200 | Up to 25 |
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.
Supported disk types for Z4D
Z4D instances 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) - Hyperdisk ML (
hyperdisk-ml) - Titanium SSD
Every machine type in the Z4D 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 Z4D are listed in the following table:
Z4D standardlssd
| IOPS | Throughput (MiBps) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | # of attached Titanium disks |
Disk size (GiB) | Total size (GiB) | Read | Write | Read | Write |
z4d-highmem-16-standardlssd |
1 | 3,500 | 3,500 | 650,000 | 512,000 | 3,150 | 2,400 |
z4d-highmem-32-standardlssd |
2 | 3,500 | 7,000 | 1,300,000 | 1,024,000 | 6,300 | 4,800 |
z4d-highmem-48-standardlssd |
3 | 3,500 | 10,500 | 1,950,000 | 1,536,000 | 9,450 | 7,200 |
z4d-highmem-64-standardlssd |
4 | 3,500 | 14,000 | 2,600,000 | 2,048,000 | 12,600 | 9,600 |
z4d-highmem-96-standardlssd |
6 | 3,500 | 21,000 | 3,900,000 | 3,072,000 | 18,900 | 14,400 |
z4d-highmem-192-standardlssd |
12 | 3,500 | 42,000 | 7,800,000 | 6,144,000 | 37,800 | 28,800 |
z4d-highmem-384-standardlssd |
24 | 3,500 | 84,000 | 15,600,000 | 12,288,000 | 75,600 | 57,600 |
Z4D highlssd
| IOPS | Throughput (MiBps) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | # of attached Titanium disks |
Disk size (GiB) | Total size (GiB) | Read | Write | Read | Write |
z4d-highmem-8-highlssd |
1 | 3,500 | 3,500 | 650,000 | 512,000 | 3,150 | 2,400 |
z4d-highmem-16-highlssd |
2 | 3,500 | 7,000 | 1,300,000 | 1,024,000 | 6,300 | 4,800 |
z4d-highmem-32-highlssd |
4 | 3,500 | 14,000 | 2,600,000 | 2,048,000 | 12,600 | 9,600 |
z4d-highmem-48-highlssd |
6 | 3,500 | 21,000 | 3,900,000 | 3,072,000 | 18,900 | 14,400 |
z4d-highmem-64-highlssd |
8 | 3,500 | 28,000 | 5,200,000 | 4,096,000 | 25,200 | 19,200 |
z4d-highmem-96-highlssd |
12 | 3,500 | 42,000 | 7,800,000 | 6,144,000 | 37,800 | 28,800 |
z4d-highmem-192-highlssd |
24 | 3,500 | 84,000 | 15,600,000 | 12,288,000 | 75,600 | 57,600 |
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 and Persistent Disk maximum capacity.
The maximum number of disks that you can attach to Z4D instances are listed in the following tables:
Z4D standardlssd
| Machine type | Hyperdisk per VM | Hyperdisk Balanced | Hyperdisk Throughput | Hyperdisk Extreme | Hyperdisk ML |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z4d-highmem-16-standardlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-32-standardlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-48-standardlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-64-standardlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
z4d-highmem-96-standardlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
z4d-highmem-192-standardlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
z4d-highmem-384-standardlssd |
128 | 128 | 128 | 8 | 128 |
Z4D highlssd
| Machine type | Hyperdisk per VM | Hyperdisk Balanced | Hyperdisk Throughput | Hyperdisk Extreme | Hyperdisk ML |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z4d-highmem-8-highlssd |
16 | 16 | 16 | 0 | 16 |
z4d-highmem-16-highlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-32-highlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-48-highlssd |
32 | 32 | 32 | 0 | 32 |
z4d-highmem-64-highlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
z4d-highmem-96-highlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
z4d-highmem-192-highlssd |
64 | 64 | 64 | 8 | 64 |
Network support for Z4D VMs
Z4D VM instances require gVNIC network interfaces.
Z4D supports up to 200 Gbps network bandwidth for standard networking. Z4D instances with two NICs support up to 400 Gbps network bandwidth for standard networking. Z4D instances don't use the per VM Tier_1 networking performance feature.
Before migrating to Z4D or creating Z4D VM instances, make sure that the operating system image that you use supports the gVNIC driver for VM instances. If your Z4D 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.
Google recommends using the latest gVNIC driver version to benefit from additional features and bug fixes.
The following table lists the network bandwidth limits for each Z4D machine type:
| Machine type | Maximum internal bandwidth (Gbps) | Maximum external bandwidth (Gbps) |
|---|---|---|
z4d-highmem-8-* |
Up to 20 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-16-* |
Up to 20 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-32-* |
Up to 32 | Up to 7 |
z4d-highmem-48-* |
Up to 50 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-64-* |
Up to 65 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-96-* |
Up to 100 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-192-* |
Up to 200 | Up to 25 |
z4d-highmem-384-* |
Up to 400 | Up to 25 |
Maintenance experience for Z4D 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 Z4D machine series supports on-demand maintenance and offers the following features related to host maintenance:
| Attached Titanium SSD (GiB) | Typical scheduled maintenance event frequency | Maintenance behavior | Advanced notification | On-demand maintenance | Simulate maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42,000 or less | Minimum of 30 days | Live migrate | 7 days | Yes | Yes |
| More than 42,000 | Minimum of 30 days | Terminates with Local SSD data persistence | 7 days | Yes | 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 Z4D 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 Z4D 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, see Disk persistence following instance termination.
Z3 machine series
Z3 instances are powered by the fourth generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (code-named Sapphire Rapids), DDR5 memory, and Titanium offload processors. Z3 machine types are optimized for the underlying NUMA architecture to deliver optimal, reliable, and consistent performance.
The Z3 machine series offers the following Local SSD storage capacities using Titanium SSD:
- Up to 36,000 GiB with VM instances
- 72,000 GiB with bare metal instances
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 with Google Cloud Hyperdisk
- Offers a larger amount of Titanium SSD storage capacity than other Compute Engine machine series in different machine families
- 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 that provide access to several onboard, function-specific accelerators 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 with per VM Tier_1 networking performance.
For details on pricing, see the VM pricing page. Disk usage and network usage is charged separately from machine type pricing. For more information, see Disk and image pricing and Network pricing. For Titanium SSD pricing, see Storage-optimized machine type family pricing.
Z3 Limitations
The following restrictions apply:
- You can't use regional Persistent Disk with Z3 instances.
- Z3 instances are only available in select zones and regions. For regional availability of bare metal instances, see Bare 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.
- Live migration is only supported for Z3 instances with 18,000 GiB or less of attached Titanium SSD.
- Z3 isn't supported on Windows images.
Z3 machine types
The Z3 machine series supports the following predefined lssd 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,
use the z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal machine type.
Z3 standardlssd
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Titanium SSD | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 | Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z3-highmem-14-standardlssd |
14 | 112 | (1 x 3000 GiB) 3,000 GiB | Up to 23 | N/A |
z3-highmem-22-standardlssd |
22 | 176 | (2 x 3000 GiB) 6,000 GiB | Up to 23 | N/A |
z3-highmem-44-standardlssd |
44 | 352 | (3 x 3000 GiB) 9,000 GiB | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
z3-highmem-88-standardlssd |
88 | 704 | (6 x 3000 GiB) 18,000 GiB | Up to 62 | Up to 100 |
z3-highmem-176-standardlssd |
176 | 1,406 | (12 x 3000 GiB) 36,000 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.
Z3 highlssd
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Titanium SSD | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 | Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
z3-highmem-8-highlssd |
8 | 64 | (1 x 3000 GiB) 3,000 GiB | Up to 23 | N/A |
z3-highmem-16-highlssd |
16 | 128 | (2 x 3000 GiB) 6,000 GiB | Up to 23 | N/A |
z3-highmem-22-highlssd |
22 | 176 | (3 x 3000 GiB) 9,000 GiB | Up to 23 | N/A |
z3-highmem-32-highlssd |
32 | 256 | (4 x 3000 GiB) 12,000 GiB | Up to 32 | N/A |
z3-highmem-44-highlssd |
44 | 352 | (6 x 3000 GiB) 18,000 GiB | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
z3-highmem-88-highlssd |
88 | 704 | (12 x 3000 GiB) 36,000 GiB | Up to 62 | Up to 100 |
z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal |
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 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:
Z3 standardlssd
| IOPS | Throughput (MiBps) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | # of attached Titanium disks |
Disk size (GiB) | Total size (GiB) | Read | Write | Read | Write |
z3-highmem-14-standardlssd |
1 | 3,000 | 3,000 | 750,000 | 500,000 | 3,000 | 2,500 |
z3-highmem-22-standardlssd |
2 | 3,000 | 6,000 | 1,500,000 | 1,000,000 | 6,000 | 5,000 |
z3-highmem-44-standardlssd |
3 | 3,000 | 9,000 | 2,250,000 | 1,500,000 | 9,000 | 7,500 |
z3-highmem-88-standardlssd |
6 | 3,000 | 18,000 | 4,500,000 | 3,000,000 | 18,000 | 15,000 |
z3-highmem-176-standardlssd |
12 | 3,000 | 36,000 | 9,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 36,000 | 30,000 |
Z3 highlssd
| IOPS | Throughput (MiBps) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | # of attached Titanium disks |
Disk size (GiB) | Total size (GiB) | Read | Write | Read | Write |
z3-highmem-8-highlssd |
1 | 3,000 | 3,000 | 750,000 | 500,000 | 3,000 | 2,500 |
z3-highmem-16-highlssd |
2 | 3,000 | 6,000 | 1,500,000 | 1,000,000 | 6,000 | 5,000 |
z3-highmem-22-highlssd |
3 | 3,000 | 9,000 | 2,250,000 | 1,500,000 | 9,000 | 7,500 |
z3-highmem-32-highlssd |
4 | 3,000 | 12,000 | 3,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 12,000 | 10,000 |
z3-highmem-44-highlssd |
6 | 3,000 | 18,000 | 4,500,000 | 3,000,000 | 18,000 | 15,000 |
z3-highmem-88-highlssd |
12 | 3,000 | 36,000 | 9,000,000 | 6,000,000 | 36,000 | 30,000 |
z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal |
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 and Persistent Disk maximum capacity.
Z3 storage limits are described in the following table:
Z3 standardlssd
| Maximum number of disks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | Per VM1 | Hyperdisk volumes per VM |
Hyperdisk Balanced | Hyperdisk Throughput | Hyperdisk Extreme |
z3-highmem-14-standardlssd |
128 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 0 |
z3-highmem-22-standardlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 0 |
z3-highmem-44-standardlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 0 |
z3-highmem-88-standardlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 8 |
z3-highmem-176-standardlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 8 |
1 The maximum size per Hyperdisk volume is 64 TiB.
Z3 highlssd
| Maximum number of disks | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine type | Per VM1 | Hyperdisk volumes per VM |
Hyperdisk Balanced | Hyperdisk Throughput | Hyperdisk Extreme |
z3-highmem-8-highlssd |
128 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 0 |
z3-highmem-16-highlssd |
128 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 0 |
z3-highmem-22-highlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 0 |
z3-highmem-32-highlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 0 |
z3-highmem-44-highlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 0 |
z3-highmem-88-highlssd |
128 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 8 |
z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal |
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 require gVNIC.
- Z3 bare metal instances require the Intel 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 the
operating system image
that 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 can manually install the most recent gVNIC driver. The gVNIC driver version v1.4.2 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 supports on-demand maintenance and offers the following features related to host maintenance:
| Attached Titanium SSD (GiB) | Typical scheduled maintenance event frequency | Maintenance behavior | Advanced notification | On-demand maintenance | Simulate maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18,000 or less | Minimum of 30 days | Live migrate | 7 days | Yes | Yes |
| 36,000 | Minimum of 30 days | Terminates with Local SSD data persistence | 7 days | Yes | Yes |
| 72,000 (bare metal) | Minimum of 180 days | Terminates with Local SSD data persistence | 90 days | Yes | 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, see Disk 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