Flexible Engine Elastic Cloud Server introduces a new feature for changing flavors and series
Flexible Engine
Release Notes
June, 2022
Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) is Flexible Engine’s virtual machine service based on Openstack which offers a wide choice of flavors designed to run your workloads on highly performant instances at the best price.
ECS has receive the following updates :
Elastic Cloud Server is updated with a new feature ‘Modify Specifications’ that enables to change The ECS’s flavor. It provides with the possibility to modify not only the flavor size inside the same series (e.g. from c2.large to c2.2xlarge) but also to migrate your existing workload from an existing series to a completely new series (e.g. from s1 to s6).
- Availability
This Modify Specifications feature is generally available in all our regions and accessible through the ECS console menu and API.
- Benefits
This new Modify Specifications feature provides you with the benefit of changing the specifications of your VMs or even migrating to a different ECS series without any data migration or software reinstallation. The modification is done automatically once triggered and it is applied as quickly as creating a new ECS VM.
- Use Cases
This new Modify Specifications feature allows to upscale or downscale your ECS flavors to meet application performance objectives or new workload needs (e.g. from c6.xlarge to c6.4xlarge).
It is possible also to migrate to the latest available flavors series using this feature which is considered as the simplest and easiest way to benefit from the newest generations advantages like a lower power consumption with higher CPU performances (e.g. from c3.2xlarge to c6.2xlarge.2).
This feature allows you to experience advanced usages of your resources in Flexible Engine. It enables you, for example, to benefit from dedicated compute resources while moving your workloads from an s6 flavor to c6 flavor or to double the RAM to core ratio of you VMs by moving from s6/c6 to m6 series.
Finally, this new feature allows you to easily migrate VMs from the original flavor series of Flexible Engine that are powered by a Xen hypervisor (c1, c2, h1, m1, s1, t2) to our latest ECS generations matching the same use cases (t2, c6, m6, s6). See https://docs.prod-cloud-ocb.orange-business.com/en-us/usermanual/ecs/en-us_topic_0132345719.html to make sure of your Hypervisor (cf. column virtualization type). ECS latest generations flavors based on KVM have an average of 55% more performances with an even higher performance / price ratio compare to the Xen ECS with the same VM size. The recommended target flavors for migrating from Xen to KVM are listed in the table below:
| Original flavor (Xen) | vCPU | RAM (GiB) | Target flavor (KVM) | vCPU | RAM (GiB) |
| t2.micro | 1 | 1 | s6.small.1 | 1 | 1 |
| t2.small | 1 | 2 | s6.medium.2 | 1 | 2 |
| t2.large.2 | 2 | 4 | s6.large.4 | 2 | 8 |
| t2.xlarge.2 | 4 | 8 | s6.xlarge.4 | 4 | 16 |
| t2.2xlarge.2 | 8 | 16 | s6.2xlarge.4 | 8 | 32 |
| s1.medium | 1 | 4 | s6.medium.4 | 1 | 4 |
| s1.large | 2 | 8 | s6.large.4 | 2 | 8 |
| s1.xlarge | 4 | 16 | s6.xlarge.4 | 4 | 16 |
| s1.2xlarge | 8 | 32 | s6.2xlarge.4 | 8 | 32 |
| s1.4xlarge | 16 | 64 | c6.4xlarge.4 | 16 | 64 |
| s1.8xlarge | 32 | 128 | c6.8xlarge.4 | 32 | 128 |
| c1.large | 2 | 2 | s6.large.2 | 2 | 4 |
| c1.xlarge | 4 | 4 | s6.xlarge.2 | 4 | 8 |
| c1.2xlarge | 8 | 8 | s6.2xlarge.2 | 8 | 16 |
| c1.4xlarge | 16 | 16 | c6.4xlarge.2 | 16 | 32 |
| c2.large | 2 | 4 | s6.large.2 | 2 | 4 |
| c2.xlarge | 4 | 8 | s6.xlarge.2 | 4 | 8 |
| c2.2xlarge | 8 | 16 | s6.2xlarge.2 | 8 | 16 |
| m1.large | 2 | 16 | m6.large.8 | 2 | 16 |
| m1.xlarge | 4 | 32 | m6.xlarge.8 | 4 | 32 |
| m1.2xlarge | 8 | 64 | m6.2xlarge.8 | 8 | 64 |
| m1.4xlarge | 16 | 128 | m6.4xlarge.8 | 16 | 128 |
| h1.large.2 | 2 | 4 | c6.large.2 | 2 | 4 |
| h1.xlarge.2 | 4 | 8 | c6.xlarge.2 | 4 | 8 |
| h1.2xlarge.2 | 8 | 16 | c6.2xlarge.2 | 8 | 16 |
| h1.4xlarge.2 | 16 | 32 | c6.4xlarge.2 | 16 | 32 |
| h1.8xlarge.2 | 32 | 64 | c6.8xlarge.2 | 32 | 64 |
| h1.large.4 | 2 | 8 | c6.large.4 | 2 | 8 |
| h1.xlarge.4 | 4 | 16 | c6.xlarge.4 | 4 | 16 |
| h1.2xlarge.4 | 8 | 32 | c6.2xlarge.4 | 8 | 32 |
| h1.4xlarge.4 | 16 | 64 | c6.4xlarge.4 | 16 | 64 |
| h1.8xlarge.4 | 32 | 128 | c6.8xlarge.4 | 32 | 128 |
- Limitations
Before migrating from a Xen to a KVM series, it is important that you check that the requirements are met. For example, especially make sure that the required driver has been installed and configured on the ECS. As a precautionary step, it is also recommended to install the required diver in your private images. See for more details https://docs.prod-cloud-ocb.orange-business.com/en-us/usermanual/ecs/en-us_topic_0013771092.html.
We recommend as well to make a backup of the system disk using the FE CBR service.
The ECS modify specification requires your VM to be stopped before performing the change. The status of the VM is set to “resized” during the operation and then back to “Stopped” after the modification has been performed.
The capability to change of ECS series is proposed only when possible. It is possible to migrate form a Xen series to another Xen series. It is not possible to migrate from a KVM series to a Xen series.
- Console / API and Resource
This new ECS modify specification feature is available through the console and API.