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Transition phase for old compute flavors – switch now

The new flavors offer various memory/CPU ratios and thus fit even more precisely for the most varied of workloads. Most of the new flavors are also considerably cheaper than the previous ones with similar specifications. Since 2022-07-01, only the new flavors can be selected in our web-based cloud control panel. The old flavors are, however, still available to a limited extent during a transition phase, with existing virtual servers continuing to run unchanged and the old flavors remaining available via API for automated setups.

This transition phase will run until 2022-08-31. Scale your existing servers to one of our new flavors by this date. This only takes a few seconds and can be carried out when it suits you, e.g. when you have to restart your servers anyway to install security patches. Any servers that are still using an old flavor can be identified by a yellow icon in the cloud control panel.

Adapt any automated setups by 2022-08-31, too, in order to ensure that they are only using our new flavors. In the case of the Docker Machine driver, you can either explicitly specify a new flavor or you can use the latest release, which uses a new default value. For the Rancher UI driver, please ensure that all node templates under "GLOBAL APPS > Cluster Management > RKE1 Configuration > Node Templates" are using one of the new flavors. The same applies to Terraform configurations and Ansible playbooks.

Based on current hardware

A significant advantage of using cloud services lies in the fact that the cloud provider deals with the hardware. In addition to maintenance and troubleshooting, this also includes the ongoing evaluation and procurement of new hardware. At cloudscale.ch, we have relied on AMD-based hardware for quite some time now, e.g. due to the large number of PCIe lanes in the case of our storage hosts with NVMe SSDs.

With a view to launching our "Plus" flavors with dedicated cores, we introduced AMD CPUs for our compute hosts as well, and their percentage has been increasing ever since. Now we are decommissioning the previous Intel-based compute hosts. Virtual servers that have been running with Intel CPUs (identifiable in e.g. /proc/cpuinfo) will automatically be migrated to one of our current high-performance AMD compute hosts as soon as you scale to one of the new flavors.

Further advantages

In terms of price, you have already been benefiting automatically: where the new flavors are cheaper than old flavors with comparable specifications were, we have applied the lower price since 2022-07-01 to existing servers with old flavors as well. There are, however, further reasons to scale now. The new Flex-4-1, for example, offers double the memory of the old Flex-2 for the same price, while the new Flex-16-8 comes with 8 instead of the 6 vCPUs of the old Flex-16.

In the case of numerous workloads, there is additional potential for saving money given that the new "memory-optimized" and "CPU-optimized" flavors allow you to adapt your servers even more precisely to your specific needs without having to pay for underused resources. Or you can take the opportunity to test how your application performs if you switch from "Flex" to "Plus" (or vice versa).

Please note that we will only be running the old flavors (with just one digit in the name) until 2022-08-31. Scale existing servers by this date to any one of our new flavors (with two digits in the name) in order to not only ensure a continued smooth operation, but also benefit from potential improvements to the performance and cost efficiency of your servers. It goes without saying that you will also enjoy the same benefits with automated setups. Simply adapt your tooling to the new compute flavors by 2022-08-31.

Ready when you are!
Your cloudscale.ch team