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Create an AI-optimized A4X Max instance

This document describes the steps to create standalone Compute Engine instances that use A4X Max accelerator-optimized machine types. To learn about compute instance and cluster creation options, see Deployment options overview page.

A4X Max instance type

A Compute Engine instance, or compute instance, is a computing resource hosted on Google's infrastructure that can be either a virtual machine (VM) or a bare metal instance. A4X Max instances are available as bare metal instances, which differ from VM instances by providing direct, non-virtualized access to the underlying physical hardware. To learn more about the A4X Max machine type, see A4X Max series in the Compute Engine documentation.

Limitations

When you create a standalone A4X Max instance, the following limitations apply:

Before you begin

Before creating A4X Max instances, if you haven't already done so, complete the following steps:

  1. Choose a consumption option: your choice of consumption option determines how you get and use GPU resources. To learn more, see Choose a consumption option.
  2. Obtain capacity: the process to obtain capacity differs for each consumption option. To learn about the process to obtain capacity for your chosen consumption option, see Capacity overview.

Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

Console

When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

gcloud

In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

Activate Cloud Shell

At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

REST

To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

    Install the Google Cloud CLI.

    If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create compute instances, ask your administrator to grant you the Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1) IAM role on the project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to create compute instances. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to create compute instances:

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

A4X Max fundamentals

An A4X Max cluster is organized into a hierarchy of blocks and sub-blocks to facilitate large-scale, non-blocking network performance. Understanding this topology is key when reserving capacity and deploying workloads.

A4X Max instance
An A4X Max instance is a single A4X Max machine type that has 4 GPUs attached.
Sub-block
A sub-block is the fundamental unit of A4X Max capacity. For A4X Max, a sub-block consists of 18 A4X Max instances (72 GPUs); these instances form an NVLink domain and are connected using a multi-node NVLink system. You create an A4X Max sub-block by applying a compact placement policy that specifies a 1x72 topology.
Block
An A4X Max block is composed of 25 sub-blocks (NVLink domains), totalling up to 450 A4X Max instances (1,800 GPUs). The sub-blocks are rail-aligned for efficient scaling. Each sub-block requires a compact placement policy. Therefore, for a single A4X Max block, you can create 25 compact placement policies.

The following table shows the supported topology options for A4X Max instances:

Topology (gpuTopology) Number of GPUs Number of instances
1x72 72 18

Overview

Tip: To use an NVLink domain with the 1x72 topology, you can run the single instance creation commands 18 times or use the instances.bulkInsert method that is designed to create multiple instances with a single API request. To create A4X Max instances in bulk, see Create A4X Max instances in bulk.

Creating an instance with the A4X Max machine type includes the following steps:

  1. Create VPC networks
  2. Create a compact placement policy
  3. Create an instance

Create VPC networks

To set up the network for A4X Max machine types, create two VPC networks for the following network interfaces:

For more information about NIC arrangement, see Review network bandwidth and NIC arrangement.

Create the networks either manually by following the instruction guides or automatically by using the provided script.

Instruction guides

To create the networks, you can use the following instructions:

For these VPC networks, we recommend setting the maximum transmission unit (MTU) to a larger value. For A4X Max machine types, the recommended MTU is 8896 bytes. To review the recommended MTU settings for other GPU machine types, see MTU settings for GPU machine types.

Script

To create the networks, follow these steps.

For these VPC networks, we recommend setting the maximum transmission unit (MTU) to a larger value. For A4X Max machine types, the recommended MTU is 8896 bytes. To review the recommended MTU settings for other GPU machine types, see MTU settings for GPU machine types.

  1. Use the following script to create regular VPC networks for the IDPF NICs.

      
    #!/bin/bash

    # Create regular VPC network for the IDPF NICs
    gcloud compute networks create IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net \
      --subnet-mode=custom \
      --mtu=8896 \
      --enable-ula-internal-ipv6

    # Create subnets for the IDPF NICs
    for N in $(seq 0 1); do
      gcloud compute networks subnets create IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-$N \
        --network=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net \
        --region=REGION \
        --stack-type=IPV6_ONLY \
        --ipv6-access-type=INTERNAL
    done

    gcloud compute firewall-rules create IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-internal \
      --network=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net \
      --action=ALLOW \
      --rules=tcp:0-65535,udp:0-65535,58 \
      --source-ranges=IP_RANGE

  2. If you require multiple A4X Max subblocks, use the following script to create the RoCE VPC network and subnets for the four CX-8 NICs on each A4X Max instance.

      
    #!/bin/bash

    # List and make sure network profiles exist in the machine type's zone
    gcloud compute network-profiles list --filter "location.name=ZONE"

    # Create network for RDMA NICs
    gcloud compute networks create RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net \
      --network-profile=ZONE-vpc-roce-metal \
      --subnet-mode custom \
      --mtu=8896

    # For RoCE VPC networks for bare metal instances, a single subnet named
    # default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net is automatically provided.
    # For more details, see https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/rdma-network-profiles.

    Replace the following:

    • IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX: the custom name prefix to use for the regular VPC networks and subnets for the IDPF NICs.
    • RDMA_NAME_PREFIX: the custom name prefix to use for the RoCE VPC network and subnets for the CX-8 NICs.
    • ZONE: specify a zone in which the machine type that you want to use is available, such as us-central1-a. For information about regions, see GPU availability by regions and zones.
    • REGION: the region where you want to create the subnets. This region must correspond to the zone specified. For example, if your zone is us-central1-a, then your region is us-central1.
    • IP_RANGE: the IP range to use for the SSH firewall rules.
  3. Optional: To verify that the VPC network resources are created successfully, check the network settings in the Google Cloud console:
    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC networks page.

      Go to VPC networks

    2. Search the list for the networks that you created in the previous step.
    3. To view the subnets, firewall rules, and other network settings, click the name of the network.

Create a compact placement policy

To create a compact placement policy, select one of the following options:

gcloud

To create a compact placement policy, use the gcloud beta compute resource-policies create group-placement command:

gcloud beta compute resource-policies create group-placement POLICY_NAME \
    --collocation=collocated \
    --gpu-topology=1x72 \
    --region=REGION

Replace the following:

REST

To create a compact placement policy, make a POST request to the beta resourcePolicies.insert method. 

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/resourcePolicies
  {
    "name": "POLICY_NAME",
    "groupPlacementPolicy": {
      "collocation": "COLLOCATED",
      "gpuTopology": "1x72"
    }
  }

Replace the following:

Create an A4X Max instance

To obtain a GPU topology of 1x72, create 18 A4X Max instances. When you create the instances, apply the compact placement policy that specifies the gpuTopology field. Applying the policy ensures that Compute Engine creates all 18 A4X Max instances in one sub-block to use an NVLink domain. If a sub-block lacks capacity for an A4X Max instance, then the request to create the instance fails.

To create an A4X Max instance, select one of the following options.

The following commands also set the access scope for your instances. To simplify permissions management, Google recommends that you set the access scope on an instance to cloud-platform access and then use IAM roles to define what services the instance can access. For more information, see Scopes best practice.

gcloud

To create the A4X Max instance, use the gcloud compute instances create command.

gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE_NAME  \
    --machine-type=a4x-maxgpu-4g-metal \
    --image-family=IMAGE_FAMILY \
    --image-project=IMAGE_PROJECT \
    --zone=ZONE \
    --boot-disk-type=hyperdisk-balanced \
    --boot-disk-size=DISK_SIZE \
    --scopes=cloud-platform \
    --network-interface=nic-type=IDPF,network=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,subnet=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-sub-0 \
    --network-interface=nic-type=IDPF,network=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,subnet=IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-sub-1,no-address \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --network-interface=subnet=default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net,stack-type=IPV6_ONLY,nic-type=MRDMA \
    --reservation-affinity=specific \
    --reservation=RESERVATION \
    --provisioning-model=RESERVATION_BOUND \
    --instance-termination-action=TERMINATION_ACTION \
    --maintenance-policy=TERMINATE \
    --restart-on-failure \
    --resource-policies=POLICY_NAME

Replace the following:

  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the A4X Max instance.
  • IMAGE_FAMILY: the image family of the OS image that you want to use. For a list of supported operating systems, see Operating system details.
  • IMAGE_PROJECT: the project ID of the OS image.
  • ZONE: the zone in which the machine type that you want to use is available. You must use a zone in the same region as the compact placement policy. For information about regions, see GPU availability by regions and zones.
  • DISK_SIZE: the size of the boot disk in GB.
  • IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX: the name prefix that you specified when creating the VPC networks and subnets that use IDPF NICs.
  • RDMA_NAME_PREFIX: the name prefix that you specified when creating the VPC networks and subnets that use RDMA NICs.
  • RESERVATION: the reservation name, a block, or a subblock within a reservation. To get the reservation name or the available blocks, see View reserved capacity. Based on your requirements for instance placement, choose one of the following:
    • To create A4X Max instances on any single block: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME
    • To create A4X Max instances on a specific block: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME
    • To create A4X Max instances in a specific subblock: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME/reservationSubBlocks/RESERVATION_SUBBLOCK_NAME

  • TERMINATION_ACTION: whether Compute Engine stops (STOP) or deletes (DELETE) the A4X Max instance at the end of the reservation period.

  • POLICY_NAME: the name of the compact placement policy.

REST

To create the A4X Max instance, make a POST request to the instances.insert method.

POST https://compute.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/instances
{
  "machineType": "projects/PROJECT_ID/zones/ZONE/machineTypes/a4x-maxgpu-4g-metal",
  "name": "INSTANCE_NAME",
  "disks":[
    {
      "boot":true,
      "initializeParams":{
        "diskSizeGb": "DISK_SIZE",
        "diskType": "hyperdisk-balanced",
        "sourceImage": "projects/IMAGE_PROJECT/global/images/family/IMAGE_FAMILY"
      },
      "mode": "READ_WRITE",
      "type": "PERSISTENT"
    }
  ],
  "serviceAccounts": [
    {
      "email": "default",
      "scopes": [
        "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "networkInterfaces": [
    {
      "accessConfigs": [
        {
          "name": "external-nat",
          "type": "ONE_TO_ONE_NAT"
        }
      ],
      "network": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/global/networks/IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "IDPF",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY",
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-sub-0"
    },
    {
      "network": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/global/networks/IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "IDPF",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY",
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX-sub-1"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    },
    {
      "subnetwork": "projects/NETWORK_PROJECT_ID/region/REGION/subnetworks/default-subnet-1-RDMA_NAME_PREFIX-net",
      "nicType": "MRDMA",
      "stackType": "IPV6_ONLY"
    }
  ],
  "reservationAffinity":{
    "consumeReservationType": "SPECIFIC_RESERVATION",
    "key": "compute.googleapis.com/reservation-name",
    "values":[
      "RESERVATION"
    ]
  },
  "scheduling":{
    "provisioningModel": "RESERVATION_BOUND",
    "instanceTerminationAction": "TERMINATION_ACTION",
    "onHostMaintenance": "TERMINATE",
    "automaticRestart": true
  },
  "resourcePolicies": [
    "projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/REGION/resourcePolicies/POLICY_NAME"
  ]
}

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: the project ID of the project where you want to create the A4X Max instance.
  • ZONE: the zone in which the machine type that you want to use is available. You must use a zone in the same region as the compact placement policy. For information about regions, see GPU availability by regions and zones.
  • INSTANCE_NAME: the name of the A4X Max instance.
  • DISK_SIZE: the size of the boot disk in GB.
  • IMAGE_PROJECT: the project ID of the OS image.
  • IMAGE_FAMILY: the image family of the OS image that you want to use. For a list of supported operating systems, see Operating system details.
  • NETWORK_PROJECT_ID: the project ID of the network.
  • IDPF_NETWORK_PREFIX: the name prefix that you specified when creating the VPC networks and subnets that use IDPF NICs.
  • REGION: the region of the subnetwork.
  • RDMA_NAME_PREFIX: the name prefix that you specified when creating the VPC networks and subnets that use RDMA NICs.
  • RESERVATION: the reservation name, a block, or a subblock within a reservation. To get the reservation name or the available blocks, see View reserved capacity. Based on your requirements for instance placement, choose one of the following:
    • To create A4X Max instances on any single block: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME
    • To create A4X Max instances on a specific block: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME
    • To create A4X Max instances in a specific subblock: 
          projects/RESERVATION_OWNER_PROJECT_ID/reservations/RESERVATION_NAME/reservationBlocks/RESERVATION_BLOCK_NAME/reservationSubBlocks/RESERVATION_SUBBLOCK_NAME

  • TERMINATION_ACTION: whether Compute Engine stops (STOP) or deletes (DELETE) the A4X Max instance at the end of the reservation period.

  • PROJECT_ID: the project ID of the compact placement policy.
  • REGION: the region of the compact placement policy.
  • POLICY_NAME: the name of the compact placement policy.

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