Google’s New VMs Use Dynamic Resource Management to Slash Costs

Google launched new E2 general-purpose virtual machines (VMs) for Google Compute Engine that it says provide 31% savings compared to its earlier N1 configurations. This, according to the cloud provider, offers the lowest total cost of ownership of any VM in Google Cloud. Google launched new E2 general-purpose virtual machines (VMs) for Google Compute Engine that it says provide 31% savings compared to its earlier N1 configurations. This, according to the cloud provider, offers the lowest total cost of ownership of any VM in Google Cloud. The E2 VMs are based on x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Google says they offer similar performance to comparable N1 configurations and can sustain high CPU load without artificial throttling. Additionally, customers can tailor E2 instances with up 16 vCPUs and 128 GB of memory. The VMs come with 15 new predefined configurations, or customers can use custom machine types. “E2 VMs are a great fit for a broad range of workloads including web servers, business-critical applications, small-to-medium sized databases and development environments,” wrote June Yang, director of product management at Google Cloud, in a blog post. “If you have workloads that run well on N1, but don’t require large instance sizes, GPUs or local SSD, consider moving them to E2. For all but the most demanding workloads, we expect E2 to deliver similar performance to N1, at a significantly lower cost.” The new VMs can provide similar performance at a lower cost because they use dynamic resource management. This technology includes a custom-built CPU scheduler and performance-aware live migration to make better use of hardware resources so that they cost less to run. The E2 VMs are available in beta in eight regions: Iowa, South Carolina, Oregon, Northern Virginia, Belgium, Netherlands, Taiwan, and Singapore. Google says more regions will follow.