Overview
Exoscale Compute Instances are high-performance, KVM-based virtual machines designed to support a wide range of workloads—from small-scale applications to complex, distributed systems. They offer rapid provisioning, flexible scaling, and seamless integration with DevOps tools like Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes.
Terminology
Understanding the basic terms used in Exoscale Compute will help you get up and running quickly.
- Instance
- A Compute Instance is a virtual machine (VM) running in the Exoscale cloud. It behaves like a traditional server but is virtualized and runs on shared physical infrastructure. Instances are fully self-contained environments and can run various operating systems (Linux, Windows, custom ISOs).
- Instance Type
- The Instance Type defines the resource configuration of your VM — such as
number of vCPUs, amount of RAM, and local SSD storage. Exoscale offers
different instance families optimized for CPU, memory, storage, or GPU
workloads.
Instance Family Use Case RAM Range CPU Cores Local Storage Availability Standard General-purpose workloads 512MB-225GB 1-24 10GB-1.6TB All zones CPU Optimized Compute-intensive applications 16GB–128GB 8–40 10GB–1.6TB All zones Memory Optimized RAM-intensive applications 16GB–128GB 2–12 10GB-1.6TB All zones Storage Optimized Data-heavy workloads 16GB–128GB 4–16 1TB–10TB All zones - Template
- A Template is a pre-configured disk image used to launch instances. Templates define the base OS and system configuration. You can use public templates provided by Exoscale or upload your own.
Features
- Rapid Deployment
- Launch virtual machines within seconds through the Exoscale Portal, CLI, or API.
- Flexible Instance Types
- Choose from various instance families tailored to specific workloads.
- Local SSD Storage
- All instances come with enterprise-grade local SSD RAID10 storage, ensuring high I/O performance and low latency.
- Custom Templates & Snapshots
- Create and deploy instances using custom templates and take snapshots for backups or cloning purposes.
- Anti-Affinity Groups
- Distribute instances across different physical hypervisors to enhance availability.
- vTPM and Secureboot
- Enhance instance security with vTPM for TPM 2.0 support, enabling Windows Bitlocker encryption, and Secure Boot to ensure only signed OS images are loaded.
- Built-In IAM
- Granular Identity and Access Management allows precise control over API key permissions.
- Instance Pools
- Automatically manage groups of identical instances for high availability and scalability.
Availability
| Zone | Country | City | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
at-vie-1 | Austria | Vienna | |
at-vie-2 | Austria | Vienna | |
bg-sof-1 | Bulgaria | Sofia | |
ch-dk-2 | Switzerland | Zurich | |
ch-gva-2 | Switzerland | Geneva | |
de-fra-1 | Germany | Frankfurt | |
de-muc-1 | Germany | Munich | |
hr-zag-1 | Croatia | Zagreb |
Limitations
The following table shows which limits are enforced on Compute usage. It also highlights some of the characteristics of the product:
- Instance Quotas
- Organizations can create up to 20 instances. Quota increases can be requested via the Exoscale Portal.
- Special Instance Types
- Access to certain instance types (e.g., GPU, Mega, Titan, Jumbo) requires activation by the support team. Requests can be made during instance creation.
- vTPM and Secureboot
- This setting conflicts with netboot profiles as those are not signed and will not boot on an instance with Secureboot enabled.
- Zone Constraints
- Instances and Instance Pools are confined to a single zone and cannot be migrated across zones post-creation.
- Elastic Ips
- Organizations are initially limited to 5 Elastic IPs. Instances sharing an Elastic IP cannot communicate with each other using that IP.
- Block Storage Attachments
- A maximum of 5 block storage volumes can be attached to a single instance by default.