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General purpose instance profiles - Intel Gen 3

General purpose instance profiles - Intel Gen 3

The general purpose 3rd generation virtual server profiles (balanced, compute, and memory) are built atop the 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. This generation provides NUMA pinning and increased overall instance throughput up to 200 Gbps. These profiles also include secure boot virtual servers as an option.

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

Operating Systems

  • Linux
  • Windows

Processor Generation

  • Intel 8474C - 4th Generation Xeon® Scalable processor

Availability

  • Status: Generally available
  • Regions: All

Capabilities

  • Core type: Dedicated
  • Dedicated host: Yes
  • Hyperthreading: Yes (SMT-2)
  • Secure boot: Yes, select profiles
  • Confidential computing: No
  • Live migration: Yes
  • Instance storage: Yes
  • NUMA Pinning: Yes
  • Volume bandwidth allocation method: weighted by default, can be updated to pooled.

VM Configuration

  • Hardware type: i440fx
    • Utilizes Q35 hardware type when 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 instance profile options, Gen 3 Intel
Profile vCPUs / Cores / NUMA Domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
bx3d-2x10 2 / 1 / 1 10 4 1x65
bx3d-4x20 4 / 2 / 1 20 8 1x130
bx3d-8x40 8 / 4 / 1 40 16 1x260
bx3d-16x80 16 / 8 / 1 80 32 1x520
bx3d-24x120 24 / 12 / 1 120 48 1x780
bx3d-32x160 32 / 16 / 2 160 64 2x520
bx3d-48x240 48 / 24 / 2 240 96 2x780
bx3d-64x320 64 / 32 / 2 320 128 2x1024
bx3d-96x480 96 / 48 / 2 480 192 2x1560
bx3d-128x640 128 / 64 / 2 640 200 2x2080
bx3d-176x880 176 / 88 / 2 880 200 2x2860

Compute

Compute instance profile options, Gen 3 Intel
Profile vCPUs / Cores / NUMA domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
cx3d-2x5 2 / 1 / 1 5 4 1x65
cx3d-4x10 4 / 2 / 1 10 8 1x130
cx3d-8x20 8 / 4 / 1 20 16 1x260
cx3d-16x40 16 / 8 / 1 40 32 1x520
cx3d-24x60 24 / 12 / 1 60 48 1x780
cx3d-32x80 32 / 16 / 2 80 64 2x520
cx3d-48x120 48 / 24 / 2 120 96 2x780
cx3d-64x160 64 / 32 / 2 160 128 2x1024
cx3d-96x240 96 / 48 / 2 240 192 2x1560
cx3d-128x320 128 / 64 / 2 320 200 2x2080
cx3d-176x440 176 / 88 / 2 440 200 2x2860

Memory

Memory instance profile options, Gen 3 Intel
Profile vCPUs / Cores / NUMA domains Memory (GiB) Bandwidth cap (Gbps) Instance storage (Qty x GB)
mx3d-2x20 2 / 1 / 1 20 4 1x65
mx3d-4x40 4 / 2 / 1 40 8 1x130
mx3d-8x80 8 / 4 / 1 80 16 1x260
mx3d-16x160 16 / 8 / 1 160 32 1x520
mx3d-24x240 24 / 12 / 1 240 48 1x780
mx3d-32x320 32 / 16 / 2 320 64 2x520
mx3d-48x480 48 / 24 / 2 480 96 2x780
mx3d-64x640 64 / 32 / 2 640 128 2x1024
mx3d-96x960 96 / 48 / 2 960 192 2x1560
mx3d-128x1280 128 / 64 / 2 1280 200 2x2080
mx3d-176x1760 176 / 88 / 2 1760 200 2x2860

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

Boot volume profiles

In the current release of Block Storage for VPC offering, only first-generation volumes from the tiered and custom volume profile families can be used as boot volumes for the Intel Gen 3 instances if secure boot is needed. Second-generation boot volumes with the sdp profile do not support secure boot.

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 options, Gen 3 Intel
Profile vCPUs / Cores Memory (GiB) Instance storage Sockets per host (NUMA) Supported instance types
bx3d-host-176x880 176 / 88 608 2x 3.2 TB 2 bx3d (all)
cx3d-host-176x440 176 / 88 608 2x 3.2 TB 2 cx3d (all)
mx3d-host-176x1760 176 / 88 1760 2x 3.2 TB 2 mx3d (all)