You can choose the machine properties of your instances, such as the number of virtual CPUs and the amount of memory, by using a set of predefined machine types or by creating your own custom machine types. There is a varied set of machine types available to you, as can be seen in the preceding screenshot. There are standard machine types as well as machine types optimized for high memory usage and also something known as shared-core machine types.

These are small and are used for non-resource intensive jobs. With the advent of machine learning, GPUs have become increasingly important as well and the machine type choices include the ability to attach GPUs to our instances in some zones. Predefined machine types have preset virtualized hardware properties and a set price, while custom machine types are priced according to the number of vCPUs and memory that the virtual machine instance uses.