Compute Engine Preemptible VMs are now Generally Available
In May, we introduced Preemptible VMs to enable Compute Engine customers to save up to 70%
on compute-intensive workloads compared to our already industry-leading prices for regular VMs.
Since then, customer adoption has been enthusiastic. Starting today, Preemptible VMs are
generally available, making it easier for you to get your work done and leverage the cloud in a
very affordable way.
In addition, Cycle Computing's full suite of products now work on Google Compute Engine,
including use of Preemptible VMs. Cycle Computing has deep, industry-leading expertise in
managing and scaling large compute workloads; we’re thrilled to welcome them to the Google
Cloud Platform ecosystem.
Cycle Computing recently ran a 50,000+ core workload for the Broad Institute using CycleCloud
with Preemptible VMs, performing three decades of cancer research computations in an
afternoon. Over the past decade, the Broad Institute has collected and either sequenced or
genotyped the equivalent of more than 1.4 million biological samples. They’re a pioneer in
genomics research to benefit human health, and we’re very happy that our products are
furthering this important mission. This new data suite is designed to be affordably re-run as new
experimental data becomes available, and Preemptible VMs enable that affordability and
flexibility.
“These types of analyses provide the clues that can lead to breakthroughs in disease research,
such as cancer research, and this kind of cloud-based infrastructure helps us remove some of the
local computing barriers that can stand in the way,” said Chris Dwan, Acting Director of
Information Technology at the Broad Institute. “Flexible processing power allows us to think on a
much larger scale.”
To help the Broad Institute scale this workload, Cycle Computing implemented the ability to
launch CycleCloud workloads on Compute Engine in a remarkably short time – going from 0 to
51,200 in just a few weeks!
“The porting process for CycleCloud was very easy to accomplish. We were even able to simplify
some of our existing code, because Google features like per-minute billing mean that we don’t
have to worry about optimizing usage for hourly charges,” said Rob Futrick, CTO for Cycle
Computing.
Customers already using CycleCloud will find that Google Compute Engine Preemptible VMs are
an easy choice for reducing costs for financial, big data, insurance, manufacturing, life sciences
and engineering workloads, whether you need 50 cores or 50,000.
“Preemptible VMs are a great new offering for big compute, analytics and batch workloads, and
we’re happy to support them as an option for our customers. The Broad Institute’s story
showcases a production workload running in 6 hours instead of 6 weeks, thanks to Preemptible
VMs,” said Jason Stowe, CEO of Cycle Computing.
During our beta, many customers both big and small have used Preemptible VMs to realize
savings for themselves — in the areas of genomics and pharmaceuticals, financial modeling and
simulation, rendering, media transcoding, manufacturing design, big data, and web crawling, to
name a few. Preemptible VMs have also been integrated into a growing number of popular
frameworks and libraries, making it easier for users to start saving on their cloud bills as easily as
checking a box or adding --preemptible in a config file. Our own Zync rendering solution is
also making Preemptible VMs available as an option for customers looking to lower their
rendering costs.
Thank you to all of our early adopters, who’ve helped us by providing feedback and testing this
great new feature of Compute Engine. The system has seen extensive production use across our
global fleet with tens of thousands of jobs launched during beta, and we’ve made a number of
improvements based on insights from this usage to ensure you have the best experience.
Whether you’ve been trying them out during beta or you’re just now exploring, there’s more spare
capacity waiting (especially on nights and weekends… hint, hint!), so we look forward to seeing
the savings you get as you take advantage of Preemptible VMs!
For more details about using Preemptible VMs, please see the documentation. If you have
questions or feedback, let us know here. To get started using Google Compute Platform,
including Preemptible VMs, you can join with a Free Trial today.
- Posted by Paul Nash, Senior Product Manager, Google Compute Engine