Upsize network specs for faster networking on GCP compute engine instances?

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I have a compute engine instance running, I ran some bigquery queries and now have the result set downloading to the compute engine instance for further work and exploration. The ETA is 5h, and the instance is costing several dollars per hour so it is in my interest to pay more for better network capabilities and reduce the transfer time if that's possible.

Question

Is it possible to select higher networking specs on compute engine instances, and if so, how? (i.e. what is the cli command / option or, alternatively, how is this achieved through the GCP console)

google-compute-engine google-cloud-platform
1 Answers

Unfortunately, it's not possible to select higher networking specs on GCE VMs via Cloud Console or SDK, but you can find some useful information in the documentation.

At first, have a look at the document Machine types section Network bandwidth:

Google Cloud accounts for bandwidth at the VM level, not per network interface (NIC) or IP address. Neither adding more IP addresses to a NIC with alias IP ranges or creating a VM with multiple NICs will increase either inbound or outbound bandwidth.

and

Inbound bandwidth Google Cloud handles inbound traffic to a VM differently depending on whether the packet's destination is an internal IP address or an external IP address.

  • To an internal IP address Google Cloud places no restriction on traffic inbound to an associated internal IP address. A VM is allowed to receive as much internal traffic as its machine type, operating system, and other network conditions and resources permit.

  • To an external IP address Google Cloud limits inbound traffic sent to a VM's associated external IP address to whichever of the following rates that would be exceeded first:

    • 1,800,000 packets per second
    • 20Gb/s

Note: Depending on the machine type of your VM and other factors, actual inbound traffic might be less than 20Gb/s. Bandwidth from the internet, for example, is not covered by any SLA and is subject to network conditions.

on the other hand, outbound bandwidth depends on the machine type of the VM.

After that, have a look at the article 5 steps to better GCP network performance

In addition, I'd recommend you to select proper storage for your GCE VM to reach expected network bandwidth:

Block storage resources have different performance characteristics. Consider your storage size and performance requirements to help you determine the correct block storage type for your instances.

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