Memory-optimized machine family for Compute Engine

The memory-optimized machine family provides the most compute and memory resources of any Compute Engine machine family offering. They are ideal for workloads that require higher memory-to-vCPU ratios than the high-memory machine types in the general-purpose machine series.

  • The X4 machine series offers bare metal instances with 6 to 32 TB of memory.
  • The M4N machine series offers VM instances with up to 6 TB of memory.
  • The M4 machine series offers VM instances with up to 6 TB of memory.
  • The M3 machine series offers VM instances with 1 to 4 TB of memory.
  • The M2 machine series offers VM instances with up to 12 TB of memory.
  • The M1 machine series offers VM instances with up to 4 TB of memory.

These machine series are well-suited for large in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, as well as online analytical processing (OLAP) and in-memory data analytics workloads.

The X4, M4N, M4, M3, M2, and M1 machine series offer the lowest cost per GB of memory on Compute Engine, making them a great choice for workloads that utilize higher memory configurations with low compute resources requirements. Additionally, M2 and M1 offer savings of up to 30% with sustained use discounts. X4, M4N, M4, M3, M2, and M1 are eligible for resource-based committed use discounts (CUDs), that bring savings of greater than 60% in exchange for 3-year commitments.

Machine series Workloads
X4 machine series
  • Extra large SAP HANA systems
  • On-demand, enterprise grade, ultra memory-equipped IaaS
  • High performance computing
M4N machine series
  • High-performance vector databases
  • Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) data layers
  • Massive in-memory context caching
  • Real-time semantic search
M4 machine series
  • OLAP and OLTP SAP workloads
  • Memory intensive applications, such as genomic modeling and electronic design automation
  • Small to medium in-memory databases such as SAP HANA
  • High performance computing
M3 machine series
  • OLAP and OLTP SAP workloads
  • Memory intensive applications, such as genomic modeling and electronic design automation
  • High performance computing
M2 machine series
  • Large in-memory databases such as SAP HANA
  • In-memory databases and in-memory analytics, business warehousing (BW) workloads, genomics analysis, SQL analysis services
M1 machine series
  • Medium in-memory databases such as SAP HANA
  • Tasks that require intensive use of memory with higher memory-to-vCPU ratios than the general-purpose high-memory machine types.
  • In-memory databases and in-memory analytics, business warehousing (BW) workloads, genomics analysis, SQL analysis services.
  • Microsoft SQL Server and similar databases.

X4 machine series

The X4 machine series offers more storage and networking options to support your most demanding workloads. The X4 machine series offers six predefined machine types. These machine types provide you with the capability to provision bare metal instances with up to 1,920 vCPUs and up to 32 TB of RAM.

X4 instances are powered by the 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids) and Titanium. X4 instances use only the NVMe disk interface for storage, and only use Google Cloud Hyperdisk storage. X4 instances use a version of the Intel