# cPouta Flavour Pikkujoulu 2018 Communiqué

DevFeed: [cPouta Flavour Pikkujoulu 2018 Communiqué](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/cpouta-flavour-pikkujoulu-2018-communique-19767.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://cloud.blog.csc.fi/2018/11/cpouta-flavour-pikkujoulu-2018.html>)

Author: Unknown (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2018-11-26T14:44:00Z

Content type: release

Language: en

Sources: [CSC - IT Center For Science - Cloud Team](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/csc-it-center-for-science-cloud-team.md>)

Topics: [cloud-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-infrastructure.md>), [ceph](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ceph.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>)

Tags: [capacity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/capacity.md>), [ceph](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ceph.md>), [cpouta](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cpouta.md>), [energy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/energy.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [hpc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hpc.md>), [standard](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/standard.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>)

## AI overview

The communiqué announces changes to cPouta VM flavours: several older HPC flavours will no longer be available for new launches, while new hpc.4 and standard.xxlarge flavours will be added. The hpc.4 flavours use Ceph for VM root-disk backing storage, replacing older hardware without adding cPouta capacity.

## Source excerpt

We are making some changes to the cPouta flavours offering tl;dr You won't be able to launch _new_ hpc-gen1.*core, hpc-gen2.2core, hpc-gen2.8core, hpc-gen2.16core flavours. We are adding hpc.4 flavours. We are adding a standard.xxlarge flavour. The new hpc.4 flavours The hpc.4 flavours are similar to the similarly named flavour in ePouta. The big difference between the hpc-genX is that hpc.4 will be using Ceph as default backing storage for VM root disks. We have wholesome experiences from Ceph in ePouta where all hpc-flavours are using Ceph as backing storage. One of the benefit is that if a hypervisor breaks, we can either migrate the customer instances away without customer noticing anything, or if the hypervisor has catastrophic failure the instance can be booted up on a new hypervisor without loss of data. Furthermore the sequential reads are much faster than on local spinning disks. This change will not bring additional capacity in cPouta, but replace old energy inefficient hardware in-kind with newer hardware. The new bigger standard flavour standard.xxlarge The standard flavours are the most popular flavours by a huge margin. An interesting thing that we have noticed is that if you combine the amount of hpc-gen2.8core and hpc-gen1.8core flavours that would be the second most popular flavour. We belivie that many will prefer to use standard.xxlarge instead of hpc flavours with similar amount of RAM. The new flavours hpc.4.5core - 5 cores 22GB RAM - replacement for hpc-gen1.1core, hpc-gen1.4core, alternative to hpc-gen2.2core, hpc.4.10core - 10 cores 44GB RAM - replacement for hpc-gen1.8core, alternative to hpc-gen2.8core hpc.4.20core - 20 cores 88GB RAM - replacement for hpc-gen1.16core, alternative to hpc-gen2.16core and hpc-gen2.24core standard.xxlarge - 8 oversubscribed cores, 32GB RAM - alternative to hpc-gen2.8core, hpc-gen1.8core, hpc4.5core and hpc.4.10core Why are the hpc-gen1 flavours disappearing? Existing instances of these flavour will continue to