# Sole-Tenant Node

> Sole-tenant nodes bill for the entire dedicated physical server, whether 1 VM or 30 are packed onto it. ZopNight discovers node groups via Cloud Asset Inventory and analyzes VM packing density, flagging under-filled nodes where the dedicated-hardware premium pays for empty capacity that ordinary multi-tenant VMs would never incur.

Source: https://zop.dev/integrations/gcp/sole-tenant
Updated: 2026-08-19

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Sole-tenant nodes are dedicated physical servers that host only your VMs, billed for the entire node whether or not VMs fill it. Under-packed sole-tenant nodes waste the premium you pay for dedicated hardware.

## Paying for the whole server, occupied or not

The meter on a sole-tenant node is the node: an entire physical host's worth of vCPUs and memory, charged for every hour the node is reserved to you. The VMs placed on it do not add compute charges; they consume capacity you have already bought. That inverts the usual cloud economics. On multi-tenant Compute Engine, an idle VM stopped is money saved; on a sole-tenant node, stopping a guest VM changes the bill not at all, because the host underneath keeps billing at full price.

## Density is the only cost lever

Since the node's price is fixed, cost efficiency is purely a function of how much of it you use. ZopDev discovers sole-tenant nodes via Cloud Asset Inventory and analyzes VM packing density to flag under-utilized nodes: hosts where the guest VMs' combined footprint claims a small slice of the hardware you are paying to reserve exclusively. The finding is always the same shape: consolidate guests onto fewer nodes, or shrink the node group.

## Where the dedicated-hardware premium leaks

Common cases: a node group sized for a migration wave that ended, leaving half-empty hosts; workloads that justified sole tenancy for licensing reasons being decommissioned while their nodes remain; and autoscaled node groups whose minimum keeps a spare host reserved around the clock for guests that arrive twice a month. Each is invisible from the VM list (the guests all look healthy) and only visible from the node's occupancy.

## Node groups and occupancy in the console

Google Cloud console → Compute Engine → Sole-tenant nodes lists node groups, their node templates, and per-node occupancy, meaning which VMs sit on which host. Nodes showing a short guest list against a large template are the ones the packing-density analysis will have flagged.