Supported instances and use cases
In order to cater to the increasingly broad range of applications, cloud providers offer a wide range of instance types. It is important to evaluate performance metrics by profiling, load testing and benchmarking. It takes months of effort to find the best suitable instance type in terms of performance and cost effectiveness for an application.
At Instaclustr, our engineers have studied and experimented with various cloud instance types to run Cassandra and Kafka clusters. We have undertaken several tests and benchmarking for different application workloads and have come up with a short list of instance types for Cassandra and Kafka to suit the application. Considering requirements for throughput, latency, data size and cost, we have put together the following table capturing the use cases where each of our instance types are best suited.
Apache Cassandra
AWS
| Instance Name | AWS Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| EBS: tiny | m5.large | 8000 MB | 2 | 250 GB (EBS SSD) |
| Use cases: Smallest available production node. Use this when getting started with minimal production traffic. When you need more capacity than a 3 node cluster, we recommend scaling up to xl nodes rather than scaling out with more m5.large instances. | ||||
| EBS: small | m5.xlarge | 16000 MB | 4 | 400 GB (EBS SSD) |
| EBS: balanced | 800 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| EBS: bulk storage | 1600 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| High Memory: balanced | r5.xlarge | 32000 MB | 4 | 1200 GB (EBS SSD) |
| High Memory: bulk | 2000 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| Use cases: This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select an instance that best matches the profile of your workload. The additional memory of r5 instances can provide improved price/performance for many use cases and is generally our recommended starting point for a production deployment. | ||||
| High Throughput | c5d.2xlarge | 16000 MB | 8 | 186 GB (Local SSD) |
| Maximum Density | i3en.xlarge | 32000 MB | 4 | 2328 GB (Local SSD) |
| Extra Large | i3.2xlarge | 61000 MB | 8 | 1769 GB (Local SSD) |
| Use cases: Local SSD based instances can offer the best price-performance when your use case fits well into the available disk/CPU ratios. Where the application workload requires very low-latency I/O in addition to high throughput, these instances are more suitable than the r5 range as these come with local SSDs. The i3en.xl model can also offer the lowest cost storage option for some scenarios. – c5d.2xlarge: high throughput, low data storage requirement – i3en.xlarge: medium throughput, high data storage – i3.2xlarge: balanced throughput/storage | ||||
Microsoft Azure
| Instance Name | Azure Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| Premium: Tiny | Standard _DS2_v2 | 7000 MB | 2 | 256 GB (Premium SSD) |
| Use cases: Smallest available production node. Use this when getting started with minimal production traffic. When you need more capacity than a 3 node cluster, we recommend scaling up to DS12 or DS13 nodes rather than scaling out with more DS2 instances. | ||||
| Premium: Small | Standard_DS12_v2 | 28000 MB | 4 | 512 GB (Premium SSD) |
| Premium: Balanced | 1023 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| Premium: Bulk Storage | 2046 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| Premium: Extra large | Standard_DS13_v2 | 56000 MB | 8 | 2046 GB (Premium SSD) |
| Use cases: This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select an instance that best matches the profile of your workload. | ||||
GCP
| Instance Name | GCP Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| Tiny | n1-standard-2 | 7500 MB | 2 | 250 GB (Persistent Disk SSD |
| Use cases: Smallest available production node. Use this when getting started with minimal production traffic. When you need more capacity than a 3 node cluster, we recommend scaling up to 4 core nodes rather than scaling out with more n1-standard-2 instances. | ||||
| Small | n1-standard-4 | 15000 MB | 4 | 400 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| Balanced | 800 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| Bulk | 1600 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| High Memory: Small | n1-highmen-4 | 26000 MB | 4 | 400 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| HIgh Memory: Balanced | 800 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| High Memory: Bulk | n1-highmen-4 | 26000 MB | 4 | 1600 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| Use cases: This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select a instance that best matches the profile of your workload. The additional memory of highmem instances can provide improved price/performance for many use cases and is generally our recommended starting point. | ||||
Apache Kafka
AWS
| Instance Name | AWS Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| KFK-PRD-r6g.large-250 | r6g.large | 15250 MB | 2 | 250 GB (EBS SSD) |
| KFK-PRD-r6g.large-400 | 400 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.large-600 | 600 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.large-800 | 800 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.large-1200 | 1200 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.xlarge-800 | r6g.xlarge | 30500 MB | 4 | 800 GB (EBS SSD) |
| KFK-PRD-r6g.xlarge-1200 | 1200 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.xlarge-1600 | 1600 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.xlarge-2400 | 2400 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.2xlarge-1200 | r6g.2xlarge | 61000 MB | 8 | 1200 GB (EBS SSD) |
| KFK-PRD-r6g.2xlarge-1600 | 1600 GB (ESB SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.2xlarge-2400 | 2400 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.2xlarge-3200 | 3200 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| KFK-PRD-r6g.2xlarge-4500 | 4500 GB (EBS SSD) | |||
| Use cases: This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select an instance that best matches the profile of your workload. The additional memory of r5 instances can provide good price/performance for many use cases and are generally our recommended starting point for a production deployment. | ||||
| Max throughput standard | i3.xlarge | 30500 MB | 4 | 884 GB (Local SSD) |
| Max throughput large | i3.2xlarge | 61000 MB | 8 | 1769 GB (Local SSD) |
| Use cases: These instances come with local SSD and are suitable for application workload that require lower I/O latency and higher I/O throughput. | ||||
Microsoft Azure
| Instance Name | Azure Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| Tiny 512 | Standard_DS11_v2 | 14000 MB | 2 | 512 GB (Premium SSD) |
| Tiny 768 | 768 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| Standard 768 | Standard_DS12_v2 | 28000 MB | 4 | 768 GB (Premium SSD) |
| Standard 1500 | 1500 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| Standard 2250 | 2250 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| High throughput 1500 | Standard_DS13_v2 | 56000 MB | 8 | 1500 GB (Premium SSD) |
| High throughput 3000 | 3000 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| High throughput 4500 | 4500 GB (Premium SSD) | |||
| Use cases; This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select an instance that best matches the profile of your workload. The additional memory of DS instances can provide good price/performance for many use cases and the Standard range is generally our recommended starting point for a production deployment. | ||||
Google Cloud
| Instance Name | GCP Instance Type | Memory | CPU Cores | Storage Capacity |
| Tiny 400 | n1-highmen-2 | 13000 MB | 2 | 400 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| Tiny 800 | 800 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| Standard 750 | n1-highmen-4 | 26000 MB | 4 | 750 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| Standard 1500 | 1500 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| Standard 2250 | 2250 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| High throughput 1500 | n1-highmen-8 | 52000 MB | 8 | 1500 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) |
| High throughput 3000 | 3000 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| High throughput 4500 | 4500 GB (Persistent Disk SSD) | |||
| Use cases: This family provides a range of different ratio of disk to processing capacity to allow you to select an instance that best matches the profile of your workload. The additional memory of n1-highmem instances can provide good price/performance for many use cases and the Standard range is generally our recommended starting point for a production deployment. | ||||
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