The Nectar Research Cloud is used for a very broad spectrum of workloads, so we offer a range of flavor classes. A flavor defines the size of compute resources (number of virtual CPUs, memory and storage capacity) that can be assigned automatically to virtual machine instances in a cloud configuration.
Nectar flavors make it easier to support different user requirements and enable efficient use of the Nectar Cloud infrastructure.
Each flavor has an associated "cost" in Nectar Service Units (SU) per unit of time. For convenience, these are shown in the tables below as SU per hour and SU per year. The flavor costs correlate to the compute resources available to the flavor; e.g. the number and priority of the virtual CPUs and the amount of RAM. Other cost adjustments are applied for various reasons. For example, deprecated flavors have a relatively higher SU cost to encourage users to stop using them. The SU costs for each flavor are subject to change.
The following standard flavor classes are offered on the Nectar Research Cloud:
- General Availability flavors
- Reserved Flavors
- Visualisation GPU (g1) (reserved instances only)
- Compute GPU (g2) (reserved instances only)
- Huge RAM (h4) (reserved instances only)
- Visualisation GPU (g1) (reserved instances only)
- Restricted Availability
General Availability flavors
The t3, m3, r3 and c3 flavors are available for use by all projects.
Tiny (t3)
The Tiny (t3) flavors are a great choice for testing and prototyping or even just simple workloads with 1 GB RAM per virtual CPU core available in 1, 2 and 4-core, with smaller 10 GB root disks.
| Name | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Disk (GB) | RAM per VCPU | CPU Shares | SU per hour | SU per year |
| t3.xsmall | 1 | 1 | 1024 | 10 | 1 | 32 | 0.014 | 125 |
| t3.small | 2 | 2 | 2048 | 10 | 1 | 64 | 0.029 | 250 |
| t3.medium | 4 | 4 | 4096 | 10 | 1 | 128 | 0.057 | 500 |
Balanced/Standard (m3)
The Balanced (m3) flavors are suited to most workloads. Balanced (m3) flavors offer 2 GB of RAM per VCPU. This ratio suits typical applications, and it allows efficient use of Nectar infrastructure. (If your applications need more memory, you can use the RAM optimised flavors; see below). All Standard (m3) have a 30 GB root disk. The largest one provides 32 virtual CPUs and 64 GB RAM.
| Name | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Disk (GB) | RAM per VCPU | CPU Shares | SU per hour | SU per year |
| m3.xsmall | 1 | 2 | 2048 | 30 | 2 | 64 | 0.029 | 250 |
| m3.small | 2 | 4 | 4096 | 30 | 2 | 128 | 0.057 | 500 |
| m3.medium | 4 | 8 | 8192 | 30 | 2 | 256 | 0.114 | 1,000 |
| m3.large | 8 | 16 | 16384 | 30 | 2 | 512 | 0.228 | 2,000 |
| m3.xlarge | 16 | 32 | 32768 | 30 | 2 | 768 | 0.457 | 4,000 |
| m3.xxlarge | 32 | 64 | 65536 | 30 | 2 | 1024 | 0.913 | 8,000 |
RAM Optimised (r3)
For workloads that require more memory, the RAM Optimised (r3) flavors are recommended. They provide a ratio of 4 GB of RAM for each VCPU. The root disk size is 30 GB. The largest r3 flavor provides 32 virtual CPUs and 128 GB RAM.
| Name | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Disk (GB) | RAM per VCPU | CPU Shares | SU per hour | SU per year |
| r3.xsmall | 1 | 4 | 4096 | 30 | 4 | 64 | 0.052 | 457 |
| r3.small | 2 | 8 | 8192 | 30 | 4 | 128 | 0.104 | 913 |
| r3.medium | 4 | 16 | 16384 | 30 | 4 | 256 | 0.209 | 1,827 |
| r3.large | 8 | 32 | 32768 | 30 | 4 | 512 | 0.417 | 3,654 |
| r3.xlarge | 16 | 64 | 65536 | 30 | 4 | 1024 | 0.834 | 7,308 |
| r3.xxlarge | 32 | 128 | 131072 | 30 | 4 | 2048 | 1.688 | 14,616 |
CPU Optimised (c3)
For workloads that use more CPU cycles there are the CPU Optimised (c3) flavors. These flavors are best suited to compute-intensive workloads. The CPU Optimised (c3) flavors go up to a maximum size of 32 virtual CPUs and 64 GB RAM. The VCPUs are given a higher priority for CPU cycles on the physical server relative to other flavors.
| Name | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Disk (GB) | RAM per VCPU | CPU Shares | SU per hour | SU per year |
| c3.xsmall | 1 | 2 | 2048 | 30 | 2 | 256 | 0.043 | 380 |
| c3.small | 2 | 4 | 4096 | 30 | 2 | 512 | 0.087 | 760 |
| c3.medium | 4 | 8 | 8192 | 30 | 2 | 1024 | 0.173 | 1,519 |
| c3.large | 8 | 16 | 16384 | 30 | 2 | 2048 | 0.347 | 3,039 |
| c3.xlarge | 16 | 32 | 32768 | 30 | 2 | 4096 | 0.694 | 6,077 |
| c3.xxlarge | 32 | 64 | 65536 | 30 | 2 | 8192 | 1.388 | 12,155 |
Preemptible (p3)
Preemptible instances or elastic compute enable access to additional compute resources for a short timed period at a low Service Unit (SU) cost. Preemptible instances will be a quarter (ΒΌ) of the SU cost of comparative m3 flavors.
All preemptible instances will be killed after a 24 hour period, instances can be killed before 24 hours depending on current resource restraints.
Reserved Flavors
For more information please read our GPU Flavors and Reservation System article.
Visualisation GPU (g1)
g1 instances come with Nvidia A40 GPUs.
| Name | vGPU RAM | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Root Disk (GB) | Ephemeral Disk (GB) | SU per hour | SU per year |
| g1.small | 8 | 16 | 32 | 32768 | 30 | 300 | 0.365 | 3,200 |
| g1.medium | 12 | 30 | 60 | 61400 | 30 | 500 | 0.685 | 6,000 |
| g1.large | 24 | 60 | 120 | 122880 | 30 | 1000 | 1.370 | 12,000 |
Compute GPU (g2)
g2 instances come with Nvidia A100 GPUs.
| Name | vGPU RAM | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Root Disk (GB) | Ephemeral Disk (GB) | SU per hour | SU per year |
| g2.xsmall | 8 | 12 | 24 | 24576 | 30 | 200 | 0.719 | 6,300 |
| g2.small | 10 | 15 | 30 | 30720 | 30 | 250 | 0.899 | 7,875 |
| g2.medium | 16 | 24 | 48 | 49152 | 30 | 400 | 1.438 | 12,601 |
| g2.large | 20 | 30 | 60 | 61440 | 30 | 500 | 1.798 | 15,751 |
| g2.xlarge | 40 | 60 | 120 | 122880 | 30 | 1000 | 3.596 | 31,501 |
Huge RAM (h4)
h4 instances are available in larger RAM sizes than h3 and also come with fast ephemeral disk.
| VCPUs | Ephemeral Disk (GB) |
| 24 | 250 |
| 32 | 500 |
| 48 | 1000 |
| 64 | 2000 |
| 128 | 2000 |
Restricted Availability
The following flavors are restricted in use. Access to these flavors needs to be requested through:
- The allocation system for h3 flavors.
- Via a support request for the private flavors.
- The allocation system, and then the GPU reservation system for GPU system flavors.
Huge RAM (h3)
The Huge RAM flavors are available for applications and workloads that require a very large amount of RAM. The Huge RAM (h) flavors offer 7.5 GB of RAM per VCPU core and start at 180 GB RAM. The RAM consumed by the Huge RAM flavors is a very limited resource. Users will need to provide a strong technical justification on the allocation request form to be granted access to these flavors.
| Name | VCPUs | Memory (GB) | Memory (MB) | Root Disk (GB) | RAM per VCPU | SU per hour | SU per year |
| h3.large | 24 | 180 | 184320 | 30 | 7.5 | 2.598 | 22,761 |
| h3.xlarge | 32 | 240 | 245760 | 30 | 7.5 | 3.469 | 30,347 |
| h3.xxlarge | 48 | 360 | 368640 | 30 | 7.5 | 5.196 | 45,521 |
Private flavors
Nectar nodes may offer additional flavors to selected users. These private flavors and their details (including SU costs) are Nectar node specific. The flavors are frequently associated with hardware whose purchase was funded by or for a specific project. Access to private flavors may be requested via a Nectar Support ticket.
