Question

Your team runs a memory-intensive in-memory caching application on Compute Engine. Benchmarking shows the workload needs 6 vCPUs but requires 60 GB of RAM to hold the working set. Standard predefined machine types either give too little memory (n2-standard-6 has 24 GB) or waste vCPUs and money (n2-highmem-8 has 8 vCPUs and 64 GB). You want to minimize cost while meeting both requirements. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom machine type with 6 vCPUs and 60 GB of memory (using extended memory if needed).

Answer

Use the n2-highmem-8 predefined type and disable two vCPUs in the guest OS to save cost.

Answer

Use the n2-standard-6 predefined type and attach a Local SSD to compensate for the missing memory.

Answer

Deploy the application on a sole-tenant node so you can allocate exactly 6 vCPUs and 60 GB.