New AMD EPYC-based Compute Engine family, now in beta

Since people from Google Cloud are likely here, one thing I'd like to ask/talk about: are we getting too many options for compute? One of the great things about Google Cloud was that it was very easy to order. None of this "t2.large" where you'd have to look up how much memory and CPU that it has and potentially how many credits you're going to get per hour and such. I think Google Cloud is still easier, but it's getting harder to know what is the right direction.

For example, the N2D instances are basically the price of the N1 instances or even cheaper with committed-use discounts. Given that they provide 39% more performance, should the N1 instances be considered obsolete once the N2D exits beta? I know that there could be workloads that would be better on Intel than AMD, but it seems like there would be little reason to get an N1 instance once the N2D exits beta.

Likewise, the N2D has the basically same sustained-use price as the E2 instances (which only have the performance of N1 instances). What's the point of E2 instances if they're the same price? Shouldn't I be getting a discount given that Google can more efficiently use the resources?

It's great to see the improvements at Google Cloud. I'm glad to see lower-cost, high-performance options available. However, I guess I'm left wondering who is choosing what. I look at the pricing and think, "who would choose an N1 or N2 given the N2D?" Sure, there are people with specific requirements, but it seems like the N2D should be the default in my mind.

This might sound a bit like complaining, but I do love how I can just lookup memory and CPU pricing easily. Rather than having to remember name-mappings, I just choose from one of the families (N1, N2, E2, N2D) and can look at the memory and CPU pricing. It makes it really simple to understand what you're paying. It's just that as more families get added and Google varies how it applies sustained-use and committed-use discounts between the families, it becomes more difficult to choose between them.

For example, if I'm going for a 1-year commitment, should I go with an E2 at $10.03/vCPU or an N2D at $12.65/vCPU. The N2D should provide more performance than the 26% price increase, yes? Why can't I get an EPYC based E-series to really drive down costs?

Again, I want to reiterate that Google Cloud's simpler pricing is great, but complications have crept in. E2 machines don't get sustained-use discounts which means they're really only valuable if you're doing a yearly commitment or non-sustained-use. The only time N1 machines are cheaper is in sustained-use - they're the same price as Intel N2 machines if you're doing a yearly commitment or non-sustained-use. Without more guidance on performance differences between the N2D and N2, why should I ever use N2? I guess this is a bit of rambling to say, "keep an eye on pricing complexity - I don't like spending a lot of time thinking about optimizing costs".

Customers like having choices. Enterprises typically will "certify" one config and would like to stay on that till they absolutely need to move to something else.

That reflects the lumbering, bureaucratic nature of enterprises.

Any company has a problem, which they size the value that it has to be tackled for, so they set budget, measure options, raise possible trade-offs, eventually succeed at dealing with it or get bitten due to lack of proper future-proofing, not evaluating environment/requirements properly, rinse and repeat. Once you've got several problems that require this kind of approach, carefully handpicking the possibly-but-not-proven best solution is not only time consuming but might lead to potentially awfully impactful consequences. When the decision to switch cloud provider services to one that may get you offline for half an hour leading to a million-dollar revenue impact, that's when we're talking enterprise.