Container Instances Shapes
A shape is a template that determines the number of OCPUs, amount of memory, and other resources that are allocated to a container instance. This topic provides basic information about the shapes that are available for container instances.
A flexible shape is a shape that lets you customize the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory when launching your container instance. When you create a container instance, you select the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory that you need for the containers that run on the instance. The network bandwidth scales proportionately with the number of OCPUs. This flexibility lets you build container instances that match your workload, enabling you to optimize performance and minimize cost.
Flexible memory is available on flexible shapes.
These are flexible shapes that you can use with Container Instances:
| Shape | OCPU | Memory (GB) | Ephemeral Storage (GB) | Max Network Bandwidth | Max VNICs Total: Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI.Standard.E3.Flex |
Minimum: 1 OCPU Maximum: 64 OCPU (with extended OCPUs) |
Minimum: 1 GB or a value matching the number of OCPUs, whichever is greater Maximum: 64 GB per OCPU, up to 1024 GB total |
15 | 1 Gbps per OCPU, maximum 40 Gbps |
1 VNIC |
| CI.Standard.E4.Flex |
Minimum: 1 OCPU Maximum: 64 OCPU (with extended OCPUs) |
Minimum: 1 GB or a value matching the number of OCPUs, whichever is greater Maximum: 64 GB per OCPU, up to 1024 GB total |
15 | 1 Gbps per OCPU, maximum 40 Gbps |
1 VNIC |
| CI.Standard.A1.Flex |
Minimum: 1 OCPU Maximum: 76 OCPU (with extended OCPUs) |
Minimum: 1 GB or a value matching the number of OCPUs, whichever is greater Maximum: 64 GB per OCPU, up to 488 GB total |
15 | 1 Gbps per OCPU, maximum 40 Gbps |
1 VNIC |
Extended OCPU Container Instances
When you create a container instance, you can allocate an extended number of cores, similar to how you allocate the number of OCPUs for a regular flexible shape. Extended OCPU container instances are designed for demanding workloads that need more cores than 8 cores on x86 (AMD) and 16 cores on Arm (Ampere) shapes.
With extended OCPU container instances, you can create container instances with cores that exceed the regular cores limit. A container instance with extended OCPUs can take longer to create than a container instance without extended OCPUs.
Ephemeral storage
Ephemeral storage is storage that is shared among a container instance and its containers. It is used for a variety of purposes, such as storing container images or backing each container's root overlay filesystem.
Ephemeral storage usage for a container instance is monitored through the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console.
- On the Container instance details page, select the Metrics resource and view the graph titled Ephemeral storage used.
Ephemeral storage capacity is consumed by the following resources:
- Container images
- The ephemeral storage requires free space to download, unpack, and prepare a container image to start on a container instance. The amount of free space required can be up to twice the size of the container image. After the image is ready to use, some of the free space is returned.
- For the default ephemeral storage of 15 GB, container image should be less than 7.5 GB.
- If any of the container images cannot be downloaded and unpacked due to lack of free space, the creation of a container instance fails.
- Container logs
- Container logs retain up to 20 MB of log files per container.
- Container root overlay filesystem
- Ephemeral storage backs up files written to a container's root filesystem.
- emptyDir volumes
- You can use ephemeral storage as the back up storage for an emptyDir volume.
- Internal system processes
- The container instance uses a small amount of ephemeral storage for necessary system processes.