---
title: "Cloud Instance Recommendations"
description: "Cloud Instance Recommendations: Simplyblock has been tested on and recommends the following instance types."
source: "https://docs.simplyblock.io/latest/deployment-preparation/cloud-instance-recommendations/"
---

# Cloud Instance Recommendations

Simplyblock has been tested on and recommends the following instance types. In general, there is no restriction on
other instance types as long as they fulfill the system requirements.

## AWS Amazon EC2 Recommendations

Simplyblock can work with local instance storage (local NVMe devices) and Amazon EBS volumes. For performance reasons,
Amazon EBS is not recommended for high-performance clusters.

!!! important
    If local NVMe devices are chosen, make sure that the nodes in the cluster are provisioned into a placement group of type
    _Spread_! Otherwise, there is no guarantee that multiple storage nodes won't be located in the same failure domain.

Generally, with AWS, there are three considerations when selecting virtual machine types:

- Minimum requirements of vCPU and RAM
- Locally attached NVMe devices
- Network performance (dedicated and "up to")

Based on those criteria, simplyblock commonly recommends the following virtual machine types for storage nodes
***in disaggregated clusters***:

| VM Type         | vCPU(s) | RAM    | Locally Attached Storage | Network Performance |
|-----------------|---------|--------|--------------------------|---------------------|
| _i4g.8xlarge_   | 32      | 256 GB | 2x 3750 GB               | 18.5 GBit/s         |
| _i4g.16xlarge_  | 64      | 512 GB | 4x 3750 GB               | 37.5 GBit/s         |
| _i3en.6xlarge_  | 24      | 192 GB | 2x 7500 GB               | 25 GBit/s           |
| _i3en.12xlarge_ | 48      | 384 GB | 4x 7500 GB               | 50 GBit/s           |
| _i3en.24xlarge_ | 96      | 768 GB | 8x 7500 GB               | 100 GBit/s          |
| _m5d.4xlarge_   | 16      | 64 GB  | 2x 300 GB                | 10 GBit/s           |
| _i4i.8xlarge_   | 32      | 256 GB | 2x 3750 GB               | 18.75 GBit/s        |
| _i4i.12xlarge_  | 48      | 384 GB | 3x 3750 GB               | 28.12 GBit/s        |

For hyper-converged AWS EC2-based Kubernetes workers (EKS, K3s, or other), any instance with a local SSD can be chosen.

Keep the [minimum system requirements](hardware-requirements.md)in mind. At least 8 vCPUs are required for simplyblock.

## Google Compute Engine Recommendations

!!! critical
    GCP deployments can currently not be used in production as GCP does not guarantee 4K write atomicity on their SSDs!
    Therefore, a "sudden power off" is not safe, and data corruption may occur!

In GCP, physical hosts are highly shared and sliced into virtual machines. This is true not only for CPU, RAM, and
network bandwidth, but also for virtualized NVMe devices. Google Compute Engine NVMe devices provide a specific number
of queue pairs (logical connections between the virtual machine and physical NVMe device) depending on the size of the
disk. Hence, separately attached NVMe devices are highly recommended to achieve the required number of queue pairs of
simplyblock.

Generally, with GCP, there are three considerations when selecting virtual machine types:

- Minimum requirements of vCPU and RAM
- The size of the locally attached NVMe devices (SSD Storage)
- Network performance

Based on those criteria, simplyblock commonly recommends the following virtual machine types for storage nodes:

| VM Type          | vCPU(s) | RAM    | Additional Local SSD Storage | Network Performance |
|------------------|---------|--------|------------------------------|---------------------|
| _n2-standard-8_  | 8       | 32 GB  | 2x 2500 GB                   | 16 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-16_ | 16      | 64 GB  | 2x 2500 GB                   | 32 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-32_ | 32      | 128 GB | 4x 2500 GB                   | 32 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-48_ | 48      | 192 GB | 4x 2500 GB                   | 50 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-48_ | 48      | 192 GB | 4x 2500 GB                   | 50 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-64_ | 64      | 256 GB | 6x 2500 GB                   | 75 GBit/s           |
| _n2-standard-80_ | 64      | 320 GB | 8x 2500 GB                   | 100 GBit/s          |

### Attaching an additional Local SSD on Google Compute Engine

The recommended instance types above do not provide NVMe storage by default. It has to be added explicitly to the
virtual machine at creation time. It cannot be changed after the virtual machine is created.

To add additional Local SSD Storage to a virtual machine, select the operating system section in the wizard, then
click "Add local SSD." An additional disk can then be added.

!!! warning
    It is important that NVMe is selected as the interface type. SCSI will not work!

![Google Compute Engine wizard screenshot for adding additional local SSDs to a virtual machine](../assets/images/gcp-wizard-local-ssd.png)