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A few months ago, Google Cloud spear C4A as virtual machine (VM) instances powered by Axion, its first Arm-based processor. Today, as the next step in this work, the company is launching C4A with Titanium SSD — its custom-designed local disks aimed at improving storage and performance.
With this move, Google strengthens its C4A portfolio and offers virtual machines capable of further improving cloud performance for workloads requiring real-time data processing. Virtual machines, as the company says, combine ultra-low latency and high-throughput storage with optimal cost-effectiveness, making them an ideal package for running applications such as high-performance databases, analysis and research.
Currently, Google Cloud offers these C4A VMs equipped with Titanium SSD in services such as Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Batch and Dataproc. Standard C4A VMs are also available in preview in Dataflow, with support for Cloud SQL, AlloyDB, and other services under development.
What to expect from Google C4A Virtual Machines with Titanium SSD?
Google Cloud C4A instances typically come with three storage options: persistent disk, hyperdisk, or local SSD. Persistent Disk is the standard block storage service where performance is shared between volumes of the same type. Hyperdisk, on the other hand, offers dedicated performance, supporting up to 350,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 5 GB/s throughput per volume, providing significantly better performance than disk persistent.
However, in certain workloads, particularly those requiring local storage capacity, even Hyperdisk can struggle. This is where local SSDs come in, with Titanium SSDs being the latest innovation in the category.
New C4A instances with Titanium SSDs deliver up to 2.4 million random read I/O operations per second, 10.4 GiB/s read throughput, and 35% lower access latency compared to to previous generation SSDs.
Titanium SSDs, which are directly connected to compute instances inside the host server, offload storage and networking tasks from the processor, freeing up resources to improve application security and throughput performance. This innovation comes from Google’s Titanium system. It performs the work of offloading the host processor to custom silicon, hardware, and software on the host and across the enterprise. data centersconnected to the host processor using a Titanium offload processor.
The proposed configuration
At its core, the new C4A family with Titanium SSD comes with up to 72 vCPUs, 576 GB of memory and 6 TB of local storage. Businesses can choose between standard (4GB/vCPU) and high memory (8GB/vCPU) configurations. Connectivity options, on the other hand, can scale up to 100 Gbps.
All this can easily support high traffic workloads with real-time data processing such as web/application servers, high performance databases, data analysis engines and research. Additionally, it can power applications requiring in-memory caching, media streaming and transcoding as well as CPU-based AI/ML.
“C4A…delivers up to 65% better value and up to 60% more power efficiency than comparable current-generation x86 instances. Together, C4A and Titanium SSDs deliver unmatched value for a wide range of Arm-enabled general-purpose workloads,” wrote Varun Shah and Nate Baum, senior product managers at Google Cloud, in a blog post common.
Early adopters see 40% higher throughput
While C4A virtual machines equipped with Titanium SSDs have only just become widely available, some early adopters are already seeing performance gains. This includes big names like Couchbase and Elastic.
Matt McDonough, SVP of Product and Partners at Couchbase, highlighted how Capella Columnar, running on Google Axion C4A instances with Titanium SSDs, delivers unmatched value for money, ultra-low latency, and powerful performance. scalable computing solution for analytical and operational workloads. Similarly, Elastic’s Uri Cohen said the company saw 40% higher throughput than previous generations of VMs.
C4A VMs with Titanium SSDs are now generally available in key regions, including the United States, Europe, and Asia, with expansion planned. Customers can access it through on-demand Spot VMs and discounted pricing options.
With significant advancements in performance, power efficiency and scalability, C4A VMs with Titanium SSDs meet the demands of modern businesses, setting a new benchmark for cloud workloads.
