Intel Brings 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable CPUs & Optane Persistent Memory To Google Cloud

Today at the Google Cloud Next 2019 Event in San Francisco, Intel and Google Cloud announced their new strategic partnership aimed at accelerating hybrid clouds through seamless deployment of applications on-prem and in the cloud. The two companies are working on a new reference design, Anthos, that is based on the new 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is working with Intel And SAP to offer virtual machines that support Intel Optane DC persistent memory (the first public cloud with support for this new memory class) for SAP workloads. 


Today at the Google Cloud Next 2019 Event in San Francisco, Intel and Google Cloud announced their new strategic partnership aimed at accelerating hybrid clouds through seamless deployment of applications on-prem and in the cloud. The two companies are working on a new reference design, Anthos, that is based on the new 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is working with Intel And SAP to offer virtual machines that support Intel Optane DC persistent memory (the first public cloud with support for this new memory class) for SAP workloads. 

Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud are becoming the norm in many enterprises. While this presents organizations with many new benefits, it also raises challenges around migrating workloads across clouds. Anthos, as well as an optimized Kubernetes software stack, will help address these migration challenges. The companies state that Anthos will deliver a stack optimized for workload portability, enabling deployment of applications across on-premise data centers and public cloud provider services.

Aside from the above, Intel and Google are working with SAP. Together the companies have announced VMs that support Optane DC persistent memory for SAP workloads. Optane DC persistent memory is ideal for in-memory databases such as SAP HANA. GCP announced the alpha availability of VMs with 7TB of total memory utilizing Intel Optane DC persistent memory. SAP says early customers have seen up to a 12x improvement in SAP HANA startup times leveraging these new VMs. This can lead to a lower TCO comparing Optane to traditional DRAM.

GCP also announced new compute- and memory-optimized VMs based on 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The new compute-optimized VMs a 40% performance improvement over the current compute-optimized VMs. These VMs can run at a sustained clock speed of 3.8 GHz. The VMs are available up to 60 vCPUs, 240 GBs of memory, and up to 3TB of local storage. The latest memory-optimized VMs offer up to 12TB of memory and up to 416 vCPUs. 

Availability and Pricing

Anthos is expected by mid 2019. GCP VMs that support Optane DC persistent memory for SAP workloads are available now. The new Compute-Optimized VMs will start at $0.209/hr for a c2-standard-4, and up to $3.13/hr for a c2-standard-60 instance. C2 VMs are also available as Preemptible VMs starting at $0.0505/hr. Pricing for the newest M2 VMs will be announced at a later date.

Google Cloud Platform

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Adam Armstrong

Adam is the chief news editor for StorageReview.com, managing our internal and freelance content teams.

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