New storage-optimized Z3 VMs deliver industry-leading IOPS

Storage-dense workloads need consistent performance, high SSD density, and predictable maintenance that preserves SSD data. Last week at Google Cloud Next ‘24, we announced the general availability of the Z3 machine series, our first storage-optimized VM family. With an industry-leading 6M 100% random-read and 6M write IOPs, an incredibly dense storage configuration of up to 409 SSD (GB) per vCPU and a highmem configuration (1 vCPU : 8 GB RAM), Z3 VMs provide a consistent performance and maintenance experience with minimal disruptions for storage-dense workloads such as horizontal, scale-out databases and log analytics workloads, allowing you to reduce total cost of ownership by offering more storage capacity for fewer cores.

The Z3 machine series brings together the enterprise-grade performance and reliability of the 4th Gen Intel Xeon scalable processor (code-named Sapphire Rapids), Google’s custom Intel Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU), and the latest generation of Local SSD to Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine customers. Z3 is also the debut of next generation Local SSD, with up to 3x disk throughput over prior-generation instances and up to 35% lower disk latency. Z3 is ideal for horizontal, scale-out databases, flash-optimized databases, data warehouses, and other applications with dense storage requirements.

Initially, Z3 comes in two shapes: 176 vCPU with 1.4T of DDR5 memory, and 88 vCPU with 704 GB of DDR5 memory, both with 36TB of next generation Local SSD.

What our customers are saying

“Google’s Z3 instances help fulfill Aerospike's commitment to deliver superior cost performance for real-time database users. Our testing shows that they not only meet the high expectations of our mutual customers, but can also reduce their cluster sizes by more than 70%, simplifying their environments and reducing overall costs.” - Srini Srinivasan, Chief Technology Officer, Aerospike

“bi(OS) is the real-time database that ‘scales up and scales out.’ GCP’s Z3 instance is the first cloud VM that can unleash its true potential. Over 72 hours, using only three Z3-88 instances, bi(OS) delivered ~164,000 rows/sec of throughput at a mean latency < 32 ms. All inserts (49%), upserts (12%), and selects (39%) were performed with five 9s reliability across three zones.” - Darshan Rawal, Founder and CEO, Isima

"When we tested ScyllaDB on the new Z3 instances, ScyllaDB exhibited a significant throughput improvement across workloads versus the previous generation of N2 instances. We observed a 23% increase in write throughput, 24% for mixed workloads, and 14% for reads – and that’s with 8 fewer cores (z3-highmem-88 vs n2-highmem-96). On these new instances, a cluster of just three ScyllaDB nodes can achieve around 2.2M OPS for writes and mixed workloads and around 3.6M OPS for reads. We are excited for the incredible performance and value that these new instances will offer our customers." - Avi Kivity, Co-founder and CTO, ScyllaDB

Enhanced maintenance experience

Z3 VMs come with a variety of new infrastructure lifecycle technologies that provide tighter control and specificity around maintenance. Z3 VMs receive notice from the system several days in advance of a maintenance event. You can then schedule the maintenance event at a time of your choosing, or default to the scheduled time. This allows you to more predictively plan ahead of a disruptive event, while allowing us to deliver more performant and secure infrastructure. You’ll also receive in-place upgrades that preserve your data through planned maintenance events. 

Powered by Titanium

Z3 VMs are built on Titanium, Google’s system of purpose-built custom silicon, security microcontrollers, and tiered scale-out offloads. The end result is better performance, lifecycle management, reliability, and security for your workloads. Titanium enables Z3 to deliver up to 200 Gbps of fully encrypted networking, 3x faster packet-processing capabilities than prior generation VMs, near-bare-metal performance, integrated maintenance updates for the majority of workloads, and advanced controls for the more sensitive workloads.

“Building on our successful partnership with Google Cloud since 2016, we're proud to collaborate on Google Cloud’s first storage-optimized VM family. This collaboration delivers Intel’s 4th Gen Intel Xeon processor and Google’s custom Intel IPU that unlocks new levels of efficiency and performance.” - Suzi Jewett, General Manager - Intel Xeon Products, Intel Corporation

Hyperdisk storage

Hyperdisk is Google Cloud’s latest-generation block storage. Built on Titanium, Hyperdisk delivers significantly higher levels of performance, flexibility, and efficiency by decoupling storage processing from the virtual machine host. With Hyperdisk, you can dynamically scale storage performance and capacity independently to efficiently meet the storage I/O needs of data-intensive workloads such as data analytics and databases. Now, you don’t have to choose expensive, large compute instances just to get higher storage performance.

Get started with Z3 today

Z3 VMs are available today in the following regions: us-central1 (Iowa), europe-west4 (Netherlands), and asia-southeast1 (Singapore). To start using Z3 instances, select Z3 under the new Storage-Optimized machine family when creating a new VM or GKE node pool in the Google Cloud console. Learn more at the Z3 machine series page. Contact your Google Cloud sales representative for more information on regional availability.