About Hyperdisk Throughput

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This document describes the features of Hyperdisk Throughput. Hyperdisk Throughput is best for cost-sensitive and analytics workloads that require up to 2,400 MiB/s of throughput per volume. It's also a good fit for workloads that use sequential I/O and large block sizes.

For more information about Hyperdisk and the other Hyperdisk types, see About Hyperdisk.

You can specify up to 2,400 MiB/s of throughput for a single Hyperdisk Throughput volume. You can't provision an IOPS level, but each MiB/s of provisioned throughput comes with 4 IOPS, up to 9,600 IOPS.
Hyperdisk Throughput has a latency profile similar to hard-disk based storage, with average read latency of 10-30 milliseconds.

To create a new Hyperdisk Throughput volume, see Create a Hyperdisk volume.

Use cases

Hyperdisk Throughput is a good fit for the following use cases:

• Analytic workloads like Kafka and Hadoop
• Cold storage
• Data drives for cost-sensitive workloads

Machine series support

You can use Hyperdisk Throughput with the following machine series, however, C3-metal machine types aren't supported.

• C3
• C3D
• N2
• N2D
• T2D
• Z3
• H3
• M3
• A3 (H100)
• G2

About provisioned performance

You don't have to provision performance when you create Hyperdisk volumes. If you don't provision performance, Compute Engine creates the volume with default values that you can modify later. For details about default values, see Default IOPS and throughput values.

If you know your performance needs, you can specify IOPS and throughput limits for a Hyperdisk Throughput volume when you create the volume, and you can change the provisioned values after you create the volume. You can't specify an IOPS or throughput level if you don't specify a size.

Important: Hyperdisk volumes can't reach the provisioned performance unless the compute instance supports that level of performance. For detailed performance limits for all supported instances by machine type, see Performance limits when attached to an instance.

Size and performance limits

The following limits apply to the size and throughput values you can specify for a Hyperdisk Throughput volume.

• Size: 2 TiB-32 TiB. The default size is 2 TiB.
• Throughput: 20-2,400 MiB/s, with the following restrictions:
  • Minimum throughput: provisioned throughput must be at least 10 times the volume's size in TiB.
  • Maximum throughput: provisioned throughput can be at most 90 times the volume's size in TiB, up to a maximum 2,400 MiB/s. For examples, see Limits for provisioned throughput.
• IOPS: you can't specify an IOPS limit for Hyperdisk Throughput volumes. Instead, the provisioned IOPS depends on the provisioned throughput. Each Hyperdisk Throughput volume is provisioned with 4 IOPS for each MiB/s of throughput, up to a maximum of 9,600 IOPS.

Limits for provisioned throughput

The following table lists the limits for configurable throughput for common volume sizes. If a size isn't listed, use the following formula to calculate the allowable values, where x is the volume's size in TiB:

• Minimum configurable throughput: 10x
• Maximum configurable throughput: MIN (90x, 2400)

Size (TiB)	Minimum throughput (MiB/s)	Maximum throughput (MiB/s)
2	20	180
5	50	450
10	100	900
27	270	2,400
32	320	2,400

Default size, IOPS, and throughput values

If you don't specify a size or throughput value when you create a Hyperdisk Throughput volume, Compute Engine assigns default values.

The default size for Hyperdisk Throughput volumes is 2 TiB.

The default throughput and IOPS are based on the following formulas, where x is the volume's size in TiB.

• Default throughput: MIN (90x, 2400) MiB/s
• Default IOPS: 4t, where t is the default throughput. You can't directly configure the IOPS level.

Change the provisioned performance or size

You can change the provisioned size every 6 hours and its throughput every 4 hours. To learn how to modify size or performance, see Modify a Hyperdisk volume.

Performance limits when attached to an instance

This section lists the performance limits for Hyperdisk Throughput. You can specify up to 2,400 MiB/s of throughput for a single Hyperdisk Throughput volume. You can't provision an IOPS level, but each MiB/s of provisioned throughput comes with 4 IOPS, up to 9,600 IOPS.

This section lists the maximum performance that Hyperdisk Throughput volumes can achieve for each supported instance. A Hyperdisk Throughput volume's performance when it's attached to an instance can't exceed the limits for the instance's machine type. The performance limits are also shared across all Hyperdisk Throughput volumes attached to the same instance, regardless of each volume's provisioned performance.

Achieve higher performance with multiple Hyperdisk Throughput volumes

Certain instances can exceed the maximum performance for a single Hyperdisk Throughput volume—2,400  MiB/s. An instance can achieve these higher limits if you attach multiple Hyperdisk Throughput volumes to the instance.

If an instance's performance limit in the following table exceeds 2,400 MiB/s, then the instance can achieve that limit only if you attach multiple Hyperdisk Throughput volumes. For example, the performance limit for a a3-*-8g instance using Hyperdisk Throughput volumes is 3,000 MiB/s. Therefore, to achieve 3,000 MiB/s of throughput, you must attach at least two Hyperdisk Throughput volumes to the instance.

Important: To reach the IOPS limits, you must use an I/O size of 4 KB. Maximum throughput limits require an I/O size of at least 256 KB. Hyperdisk performance is half-duplex, so the IOPS and throughput limits are shared between read and write operations. This means that if a machine type has a 50,000 IOPS limit, then the sum of the reads and writes every second can't exceed 50,000.

The performance limits also apply to custom N2 and N2D machine types.

Instance machine type	Maximum throughput (MiB/s)	Maximum IOPS
a3-*-1g	1,200	4,800
a3-*-2g	2,400	9,600
a3-*-4g	2,400	9,600
a3-*-8g	3,000	12,000
c3-*-4	240	960
c3-*-8	800	3,200
c3-*-22	1,200	4,800
c3-*-44	1,800	7,200
c3-*-88	2,400	9,600
c3-*-176	4,800	19,200
c3-*-192	4,800	19,200
c3d-*-4	240	960
c3d-*-8	800	3,200
c3d-*-16	1,200	4,800
c3d-*-30	1,800	7,200
c3d-*-60	2,400	9,600
c3d-*-90	2,400	9,600
c3d-*-180	2,400	9,600
c3d-*-360	2,400	9,600
g2-standard-4	240	960
g2-standard-8	800	3,200
g2-standard-12	800	3,200
g2-standard-16	1,200	4,800
g2-standard-24	1,200	4,800
g2-standard-32	1,800	7,200
g2-standard-48	2,400	9,600
g2-standard-96	2,400	9,600
h3-standard-88	240	960
m3-*-32	1,800	7,200
m3-*-64	2,400	9,600
m3-*-128	2,400	9,600
n2-*-2	200	800
n2-*-4	240	960
n2-*-6	240	960
n2-*-8	800	3,200
Custom N2 machine types with 10-14 vCPUs, such as n2-*-10 and n2-*-12	800	3,200
n2-*-16	1,200	4,800
Custom N2 machine types with 18-30 vCPUs, such as n2-*-18, n2-*-24, and n2-*-30	1,200	4,800
n2-*-32	1,800	7,200
Custom N2 machine types with 36-44 vCPUs, such as n2-*-36, n2-*-40, and n2-*-44	1,800	7,200
n2-*-48	2,400	9,600
Custom N2 machine types with 36-44 vCPUs, such as n2-*-36, n2-*-40, and n2-*-44	2,400	9,600
n2-*-64	3,000	12,000
Custom N2 machine types with 68-76 vCPUs, such as n2-*-68, n2-*-72, and n2-*-76	3,000	12,000
n2-*-80	3,000	12,000
n2-*-96	3,000	12,000
n2-*-128	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-2	200	800
n2d-*-4	240	960
n2d-*-8	800	3,200
n2d-*-16	1,200	4,800
n2d-*-32	1,800	7,200
n2d-*-48	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-64	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-80	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-96	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-128	2,400	9,600
n2d-*-224	2,400	9,600
t2d-*-1	200	800
t2d-*-2	200	800
t2d-*-4	240	960
t2d-*-8	800	3,200
t2d-*-16	1,200	4,800
t2d-*-32	1,800	7,200
t2d-*-48	2,400	9,600
t2d-*-60	2,400	9,600
z3-*-8	800	3,200
z3-*-14	800	3,200
z3-*-16	800	3,200
z3-*-22	1,200	4,800
z3-*-32	1,200	4,800
z3-*-44	1,800	7,200
z3-*-88	2,400	9,600
z3-*-176	2,400	9,600

Disaster protection for Hyperdisk Throughput volumes

You can back up a Hyperdisk Throughput volume with standard snapshots. Snapshots back up the data on a Hyperdisk Throughput volume at a specific point in time.

Cross-zonal replication

You can't replicate Hyperdisk Throughput volumes to another zone. To replicate data to another zone within the same region, you must use Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability volumes.

Regional availability for Hyperdisk Throughput

Hyperdisk Throughput is available in all zones and regions.

Hyperdisk Throughput Storage Pools

You can use Hyperdisk Throughput Storage Pools to simplify planning, avoid overprovisioning storage, and reduce costs. Hyperdisk Throughput Storage Pools let you to purchase Hyperdisk Throughput storage in bulk. To learn more, see About Hyperdisk Storage Pools.

Pricing

You're billed for the total provisioned size and throughput of your Hyperdisk Throughput volumes until you delete them. You incur charges even if the volume isn't attached to any instances or if the instance is suspended or stopped. For more information, see Disk pricing.

Limitations

• Hyperdisk Throughput volumes are zonal and can only be accessed from the zone where the volume was created.
• You can't create a machine image from a Hyperdisk Throughput volume.
• You can't create an instant snapshot from a Hyperdisk Throughput volume.
• You can't use Hyperdisk Throughput volumes as boot disks.
• You can change a Hyperdisk Throughput volume's size every 6 hours. You can change its throughput every 4 hours.

What's next

• Add a Hyperdisk Throughput volume to your VM
• Learn about Hyperdisk Storage Pools