Capacity overview

To get future reservation resources, the process is as follows:

1. Reserve capacity by contacting your account team.
2. Quota is automatically increased before capacity is delivered. No action is required from you.
3. When you create a Compute Engine instance or cluster, specify the reservation-bound provisioning model. Compute instances and clusters are provisioned from your reserved capacity.

To get future reservation resources, the process is as follows:

1. Search for available capacity and reserve resources.
2. No quota is charged and no action is required from you.
3. When you create a compute instance or cluster, you must specify the reservation-bound provisioning model. Compute instances and clusters are provisioned from your reserved capacity.

For this consumption option, no reservation is required. To get Flex-start resources, the process is as follows:

1. You must request preemptible quota for the GPU machine type that you want to use.
2. When you create compute instances or clusters by using one of the following options, specify the flex-start provisioning model:
   • Create a standalone virtual machine (VM) instance
   • Create MIGs with resize requests

   • Create Slurm clusters:

     • Create a fully managed cluster
     • Create a self-managed cluster

   • Create GKE clusters:

     • Create a cluster with the default configuration
     • Create a custom cluster

   When your requested resources become available, Compute Engine provisions your VMs. Your VMs run for up to seven days.

For this consumption option, reserving capacity is optional. On-demand resources are only available for general GPUs (such as N1, G2, G4, A2, or A3 Edge). To get these on-demand resources, the process is as follows:

1. Request standard GPU quota for the machine type that you want to use. For more information, see Request a quota increase.
2. Verify availability by checking the preferred regions for your hardware in the Compute Engine GPU availability by region and zone list.
3. Create a compute instance or cluster and specify the standard provisioning model. Resources are provisioned immediately based on available capacity.

On-demand reservations (sometimes referred to as reservations) are only available for general GPUs (such as G2, G4, A2, or A3 Edge). To reserve capacity, the process is as follows:

1. Request standard GPU quota for your machine type. For details, see Request a quota increase.
2. Create an on-demand reservation for your specific VM and GPU type by using the Google Cloud console, the gcloud CLI, or other methods. For details about all methods to create reservations, see Create a reservation for a single project.
3. Provision your resources by creating an instance or cluster and targeting your specific reservation.

For this consumption option, you reserve capacity for a future date. Standard future reservations use the standard provisioning model and are only available for general GPUs.

1. Request standard GPU quota for your machine type. For details, see Request a quota increase.
2. Create a future reservation request for your specific VM and GPU type.
3. When the reservation reaches its start time, create compute instances by using your reserved capacity.

For this consumption option, no reservation is required. To get Spot resources, the process is as follows:

1. You must request preemptible quota for the GPU machine type that you want to use.
2. View resource availability in the region or zone where you want to create compute instances.
3. When you create a compute instance or cluster, specify the spot provisioning model. Resources are provisioned for you as capacity becomes available, but can be preempted at any time.