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Evaluate C4 machine types

Summary

Evaluate and build confidence in GCP's C4 machine type in order to be able to rapidly deploy into our Postgres clusters, if / when needed

  • Current MAIN instance size: mix of N2 - 128vCPU / 864GB RAM & C3 - 176vCPU / 1408GB RAM (3 nodes)
  • Potential MAIN instance size: C4 - 192vCPU / 704GB RAM (?)

C3 and C3D evaluations is here.

Proposal

Evaluate C4 machine types which differ than C3 generation in the follwing ways:

  1. Processor Generation:
    • C3 is powered by 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
    • C4 uses 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Emerald Rapids).
  2. Performance:
    • C4 offers a 25% better price-performance ratio compared to C3 VMs.
    • C4 provides 80% better CPU responsiveness for real-time workloads.
  3. CPU Frequency:
    • C3 offers a sustained, all-core turbo frequency of 3.0 GHz.
    • C4 has a sustained, all-core turbo frequency of 3.1 GHz.
  4. Memory:
    • C3 supports up to 704 GB of DDR5 memory (for c3-standard-176).
    • C4 supports up to 1.5 TB of DDR5 memory.
  5. Networking Performance:
    • Both C3 and C4 support up to 200 Gbps of Tier_1 networking performance per VM.
  6. Maintenance Experience:
    • C4 introduces improved maintenance capabilities, with the majority of updates to the host operating system and instance conducted using hitless upgrades and live migration, resulting in near-zero customer impact.
  7. Availability:
    • C3 is generally available.
    • C4 is currently in preview.
  8. Scalability:
    • C4 instances offer 24 VM sizes scaling up to 192 vCPUs.
    • C3 scales up to 176 vCPUs (for c3-standard-176).
  9. Storage Performance:
    • C4 supports Hyperdisk with up to 500K IOPs.
  10. Configurations:
    • C4 is available in high-cpu (2GB/vCPU), standard (4GB/vCPU), and high-mem (8GB/vCPU) configurations.

Both C3 and C4 are part of the compute-optimized machine family, designed for high-performance workloads, but C4 represents the latest generation with improved performance, scalability, and maintenance features.

Reference

https://www.infoq.com/news/2024/08/google-cloud-c4-machines-ai/

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-resource