Michael Keaton has been working as a cloud security specialist in a multinational company.

Given that Michael Keaton’s nl-standard-1 instance has had low memory utilization, the recommended machine type switching would be to a machine type that is more cost-effective while still meeting the application’s requirements.

Assessing Current Utilization: Keaton’s current machine type, nl-standard-1, has 1 vCPU and 3.75 GB memory. The low memory utilization suggests that the application does not require the full 3.75 GB of memory provided by this machine type.

Choosing the Right Machine Type: Among the options provided:

Option A, g1-small, offers 1 vCPU and 1.7 GB memory, which is a step down in memory but still provides a sufficient amount of memory for the application given its low memory usage.

Option B, n1-standard-2, increases both the vCPU and memory, which is not necessary given the low utilization.

Option C, f1-micro, offers a very minimal amount of memory (614 MB), which might be too low for the application’s needs.

Option D, n1-standard-1, maintains the same memory as the current machine type and therefore does not optimize for the low memory utilization.

Recommendation: Based on the low memory utilization and the need to optimize costs, the g1-small machine type (Option A) is recommended. It provides enough memory for the application’s needs while reducing costs associated with unused resources.

References:

Google Cloud Documentation: Understanding machine types1.

Google Cloud Documentation: Machine type recommendations2.

Google Cloud Documentation: Memory-optimized machine family3.