Overview of HPC-ready VM images

Tightly coupled high performance computing (HPC) workloads often use the Message Passing Interface (MPI) to communicate between processes and Compute Engine instances. However, the process of building your own OS image that is tuned for optimal MPI performance requires systems expertise, Cloud de Confiance by S3NS knowledge, and extra time for maintenance. To quickly set up an optimized environment for your HPC workloads, use an HPC VM image.

An HPC VM image is based on Rocky Linux 8 or Rocky Linux 9, and is optimized for tightly-coupled HPC workloads. The image includes pre-configured kernel and network tuning parameters required to create compute instances that achieve optimal MPI performance on Cloud de Confiance by S3NS.

For best results, deploy the HPC VM image on a machine type from the compute-optimized machine series. These machine types are designed for tightly-coupled HPC applications. To use Cloud RDMA with H4D, you must use version 20250917 or later of the HPC VM Rocky 8 image.

You can create an HPC VM instance by using any of the methods available to create a compute instance. You can also use SchedMD's Slurm workload manager, to deploy an HPC cluster. Slurm support isn't yet available for HPC VM images based on Rocky Linux 9.

Benefits

The HPC VM image provides the following benefits:

  1. Compute instances pre-configured for HPC workloads. There is no need to manually tune performance, manage compute instance reboots, or stay up to date with the latest Cloud de Confiance updates for tightly-coupled HPC workloads.
  2. Networking optimizations for tightly-coupled workloads. Optimizations that reduce latency for small messages are included. These optimizations benefit applications that are heavily dependent on point-to-point and collective communications. If using the H4D machine series, the HPC VM Rocky 8 image contains the necessary Cloud RDMA drivers.
  3. Compute optimizations for HPC workloads. Optimizations that reduce system jitter are included, which makes single-node high performance more predictable.
  4. Consistent, reproducible performance. OS image standardization gives you consistent, reproducible application-level performance.
  5. Improved application compatibility. Alignment with the node-level requirements of the Intel HPC platform specification enables a high degree of interoperability between systems.

HPC VM image features

The HPC VM image offers several features that are designed to optimize performance for high performance computing (HPC) workloads:

  • Automatic updates disabled
  • MPI collective tunings
  • Pre-installed RPMs

Automatic updates disabled

Automatic updates can have a negative impact on the performance of HPC workloads. Disable automatic updates for HPC VM images by setting the google_disable_automatic_updates metadata entry to TRUE during instance creation. How you set this metadata entry during instance creation depends on the tool that you use to create the instance.

For example, when you use the gcloud compute instances create command to create a compute instance, provide the --metadata argument. For more information, see About VM metadata.

The google_disable_automatic_updates metadata entry is available as follows:

  • HPC VM Rocky 9 images: all versions.
  • HPC VM Rocky 8 images: only in images built on or after July 12, 2024. The build date (formatted as YYYYMMDD) is used as the version number at the end of image names. For example, an HPC VM Rocky 8 image built on the 21st of July, 2025 has the name hpc-rocky-linux-8-v20250721.

If you disable automatic updates on your H4D instances, then you should regularly run the dnf update command on the instance to keep the Cloud RDMA driver up to date.

Intel MPI library

Google recommends that you use the google_install_intelmpi script to install the message passing interface (MPI) library before running MPI jobs on Cloud de Confiance by S3NS. For more information, see Use Intel MPI 2021.

Pre-installed RPMs

The HPC VM image comes with the following RPM packages pre-installed:

  • daos-client
  • gcc-gfortran
  • gcc-toolset-12
  • Lmod
  • dkms
  • htop
  • hwloc
  • hwloc-devel
  • infiniband-diags
  • kernel-devel
  • kmod-idpf-irdma
  • libfabric
  • librdmacm-utils
  • libibverbs-utils
  • libXt
  • ltrace
  • nfs-utils
  • numactl
  • numactl-devel
  • papi
  • pciutils
  • pdsh
  • perf
  • perftest
  • rdma-core
  • redhat-lsb-core (HPC VM Rocky 8 only)
  • redhat-lsb-cxx (HPC VM Rocky 8 only)
  • rsh
  • screen
  • strace
  • wget
  • zsh
  • "Development Tools" package group

Pricing

The HPC VM image is available at no additional cost. Because the HPC VM image runs on Compute Engine, you might incur charges for Compute Engine resources such as vCPUs, disks, and memory. To learn more, see Compute Engine pricing.

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