You should choose an appropriate number of nodes for the level of fail-proofing
you want. The greater the number of nodes, the less data lost should an
individual node fail. We recommend that you use 3 nodes for small instances, 10
nodes for medium sized instances, and 20 nodes for large instances. 20 nodes is
the maximum number of nodes you can provision for a single instance.
Instance and node size
In order to choose your initial instance size, you should first estimate how
much data your application will require. Estimate the average key size and the
number of keys you expect your application to write. This number can change, but
estimating the size of your data is a good start for choosing instance size.
Then, divide the total instance size by the number of nodes you want to
provision.
Number of vCPUs/cores
Your vCPU allocation depends on your preference for price vs. speed. More vCPUs
provide more processing power, up to a point. 4 vCPUs per node are
sufficient for most use cases.
The number of vCPUs you choose impacts the amount of memory per node you must
provision. See the note in Instance and node size
for more details.
Network options
Memorystore for Memcached uses VPC networking by default and is compatible with
Shared VPC, should you or your organization wish to use Shared VPC. You must
establish a private services access for a network before you can create a
Memcached instance with that network. See Networking
for more details.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-09-04 UTC."],[],[],null,["# Provisioning Memcached instances\n\nThis page describes best practices for initially sizing and configuring your\ninstance.\n\nFor instance creation instructions, see [Creating and managing Memcached instances](/memorystore/docs/memcached/creating-managing-instances).\n\nFor details on Memcached instance settings, see [Instance and node properties](/memorystore/docs/memcached/instance-node-properties).\n\n#### Number of nodes\n\nYou should choose an appropriate number of nodes for the level of fail-proofing\nyou want. The greater the number of nodes, the less data lost should an\nindividual node fail. We recommend that you use 3 nodes for small instances, 10\nnodes for medium sized instances, and 20 nodes for large instances. 20 nodes is\nthe maximum number of nodes you can provision for a single instance.\n\n#### Instance and node size\n\nIn order to choose your initial instance size, you should first estimate how\nmuch data your application will require. Estimate the average key size and the\nnumber of keys you expect your application to write. This number can change, but\nestimating the size of your data is a good start for choosing instance size.\nThen, divide the total instance size by the number of nodes you want to\nprovision.\n| **Important:** Memory per node is constrained by the number of vCPUs that the node has. You can provision up to 8 GB of memory for every vCPU, and must provision at least 0.9GB for every vCPU. See [Instance and node properties](/memorystore/docs/memcached/instance-node-properties#instance_settings) for more details.\n\n#### Number of vCPUs/cores\n\nYour vCPU allocation depends on your preference for price vs. speed. More vCPUs\nprovide more processing power, up to a point. 4 vCPUs per node are\nsufficient for most use cases.\n\nThe number of vCPUs you choose impacts the amount of memory per node you must\nprovision. See the note in [Instance and node size](#instance_and_node_size)\nfor more details.\n\n#### Network options\n\nMemorystore for Memcached uses VPC networking by default and is compatible with\nShared VPC, should you or your organization wish to use Shared VPC. You must\nestablish a private services access for a network before you can create a\nMemcached instance with that network. See [Networking](/memorystore/docs/memcached/networking)\nfor more details."]]
