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General purpose instance profiles - Intel Gen 4

General purpose instance profiles - Intel Gen 4

The general-purpose 4th generation virtual server profiles (balanced, compute, and memory) are built atop the 6th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. This generation offers an increased networking speed, larger cache sizes, and improved workload performance.

The 4th generation general-purpose profiles are available in the Dallas (us-south) region for customers with special access.

The general-purpose profiles can also be paired with a corresponding dedicated host. This solution allows for single-tenant hypervisors that run workloads from a single IBM Cloud® account.

Operating Systems

  • Linux
  • Windows

Processor Generation

  • Intel 6952P - 6th Generation Xeon® Scalable processor

Availability

  • Status: Select location availability
  • Regions: us-south

Capabilities

  • Core type: Dedicated
  • Dedicated host: Yes
  • Hyperthreading: Yes (SMT-2)
  • Secure boot: Yes (optional)
  • Confidential computing: No
  • Live migration: Yes
  • Instance storage: Yes
  • NUMA Pinning: Yes
  • NIC Capabilities:
    • Max single NIC throughput: up to 100 Gbps VPC traffic and 32 Gbps external traffic
    • Bandwidth Pooling: Yes
  • Volume bandwidth:
    • Default: pooled
    • Options: pooled or weighted

For more information about networking bandwidth allocation for profiles, see Optimizing network bandwidth allocation for profiles. For more information about volume bandwidth, see Volume bandwidth allocation method.

VM Configuration

  • Hardware type: i440fx
    • Utilizes Q35 hardware type when it's running in secure boot mode
  • Cloud networking: virtio
  • Block boot volume: virtio
    • Exception: vscsi for Windows-based virtual server instances
  • Block data volumes: virtio
  • Instance storage: virtio

Instance profiles

Balanced

Balanced bx4 profile options for Intel x86-64 instances
Profile vCPU / Cores / NUMA domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
bx4-2x8 2 / 1 / 1 8 4
bx4d-2x8 2 / 1 / 1 8 4 1x65
bx4-4x16 4 / 2 / 1 16 8
bx4d-4x16 4 / 2 / 1 16 8 1x130
bx4-8x32 8 / 4 / 1 32 16
bx4d-8x32 8 / 4 / 1 32 16 1x260
bx4-16x64 16 / 8 / 1 64 32
bx4d-16x64 16 / 8 / 1 64 32 1x520
bx4-24x96 24 / 12 / 1 96 48
bx4d-24x96 24 / 12 / 1 96 48 1x780
bx4-32x128 32 / 16 / 2 128 64
bx4d-32x128 32 / 16 / 2 128 64 2x520
bx4-48x192 48 / 24 / 2 192 96
bx4d-48x192 48 / 24 / 2 192 96 2x780
bx4-64x256 64 / 32 / 2 256 128
bx4d-64x256 64 / 32 / 2 256 128 2x780
bx4-96x384 96 / 48 / 2 384 192
bx4d-96x384 96 / 48 / 2 384 192 2x780
bx4-128x512 128 / 64 / 2 512 200
bx4d-128x512 128 / 64 / 2 512 200 2x780
bx4-176x704 176 / 88 / 2 704 200
bx4d-176x704 176 / 88 / 2 704 200 2x780

Compute

Compute cx4 profile options for x86-64 instances
Profile vCPU / Cores / NUMA domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
cx4-2x4 2 / 1 / 1 4 4
cx4d-2x4 2 / 1 / 1 4 4 1x65
cx4-4x8 4 / 2 / 1 8 8
cx4d-4x8 4 / 2 / 1 8 8 1x130
cx4-8x16 8 / 4 / 1 16 16
cx4d-8x16 8 / 4 / 1 16 16 1x260
cx4-16x32 16 / 8 / 1 32 32
cx4d-16x32 16 / 8 / 1 32 32 1x520
cx4-24x48 24 / 12 / 1 48 48
cx4d-24x48 24 / 12 / 1 48 48 1x780
cx4-32x64 32 / 16 / 2 64 64
cx4d-32x64 32 / 16 / 2 64 64 2x520
cx4-48x96 48 / 24 / 2 96 96
cx4d-48x96 48 / 24 / 2 96 96 2x780
cx4-64x128 64 / 32 / 2 128 128
cx4d-64x128 64 / 32 / 2 128 128 2x780
cx4-96x192 96 / 48 / 2 192 192
cx4d-96x192 96 / 48 / 2 192 192 2x780
cx4-128x256 128 / 64 / 2 256 200
cx4d-128x256 128 / 64 / 2 256 200 2x780
cx4-176x352 176 / 88 / 2 352 200
cx4d-176x352 176 / 88 / 2 352 200 2x780

Memory

Memory mx4 profile options for x86-64 instances
Profile vCPU / Cores / NUMA domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
mx4-2x16 2 / 1 / 1 16 4
mx4d-2x16 2 / 1 / 1 16 4 1x65
mx4-4x32 4 / 2 / 1 32 8
mx4d-4x32 4 / 2 / 1 32 8 1x130
mx4-8x64 8 / 4 / 1 64 16
mx4d-8x64 8 / 4 / 1 64 16 1x260
mx4-16x128 16 / 8 / 1 128 32
mx4d-16x128 16 / 8 / 1 128 32 1x520
mx4-24x192 24 / 12 / 1 192 48
mx4d-24x192 24 / 12 / 1 192 48 1x780
mx4-32x256 32 / 16 / 2 256 64
mx4d-32x256 32 / 16 / 2 256 64 2x520
mx4-48x384 48 / 24 / 2 384 96
mx4d-48x384 48 / 24 / 2 384 96 2x780
mx4-64x512 64 / 32 / 2 512 128
mx4d-64x512 64 / 32 / 2 512 128 2x780
mx4-96x768 96 / 48 / 2 768 192
mx4d-96x768 96 / 48 / 2 768 192 2x780
mx4-128x1024 128 / 64 / 2 1024 200
mx4d-128x1024 128 / 64 / 2 1024 200 2x780
mx4-176x1408 176 / 88 / 2 1408 200
mx4d-176x1408 176 / 88 / 2 1408 200 2x780

Limits

An instance has a limit for the number of volumes and virtual network interfaces that can be attached. This limit is based on the size of the instance.

General purpose profile family limits for vCPU, maximum volumes, and maximum network interfaces
Number of vCPUs Max volumes Max vNICs
2-16 12 5
17-48 12 10
49+ 12 15

Dedicated host profiles

Dedicated hosts allow users to provision a single-tenant host server and then provision virtual server instances of the corresponding family on the dedicated host.

General purpose dedicated host profile option, Gen 4 Intel
Profile vCPUs / Cores Memory (GiB) Instance storage Sockets per host (NUMA) Supported instance types
bx4d-host-372x1442 372 / 186 1442 2x 2.7 TB 2 bx4, bx4d, cx4, cx4d, mx4, and mx4d

The bx4d dedicated host type is optimized for both bx4 and bx4d instance profile types and workloads. However, you can also choose to mix and match compute, balanced, and memory optimized profiles on the dedicated host.