Nectar will soon be introducing some new instance flavors for virtual machines. The new flavors will make it easier to support different user requirements, and enable efficient use of the Nectar Cloud infrastructure.
Changes the new flavors will introduce are:
Removal of ephemeral disk
There was little benefit to using ephemeral storage in our existing flavors at most sites, as the storage backend was the same for the root disk. We found that many users were unsure about the intended purpose of ephemeral storage and the caveats associated with it. For example, that it wouldn’t be backed up in an instance snapshot. For these reasons, we’ve decided to remove it from our new flavors.
For situations where you may require more disk space than what is provided as part of the root filesystem of the instance, we recommend creating and attaching Volume Storage, which can be any size required. There are also other storage options like the Shared File System Storage service and Object Storage which are well suited for different use cases.
Consistent root disk size
Our current flavors have varying root sizes, which actually makes it difficult to snapshot and restore to a smaller sized flavor. We’re standardising on a 30GB root disk, so a snapshot of an instance of any flavor will be able to be restored to any other flavor. The exception here is the new tiny flavor types, which have a 10GB disk instead.
More choice for CPU and RAM requirements
The Nectar Research Cloud is used for a very broad spectrum of workloads, so naturally we should offer a broad spectrum of options for our flavors, so we’re introducing a range of flavor classes.
The new flavor classes are:
Balanced (m3)
RAM Optimised (r3)
CPU Optimised (c3)
Tiny (t3)
Balanced (m3)
Balanced (m3) flavors are an evolution of the existing m1 and m2 flavors and are suited to most workloads. We’ve given the new Balanced (m3) flavors more VCPUs over the older m1 and m2 flavors and made the CPU/RAM balance more consistent. All Balanced (m3) will come with a 30GB root disk and will go up to a maximum of 32 virtual CPUs and 64GB RAM.
RAM Optimised (r3)
For workloads that require more memory, we’re offering the RAM Optimised (r3) flavors. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them through the Project Allocation Form.
CPU Optimised (c3)
For workloads that need more CPU, we have the CPU Optimised (c3) flavors. We think these will be best suited to HPC workloads. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them through the Project Allocation Form. The CPU Optimised (c3) flavors go up to a maximum size of 32 virtual CPUs and 64GB RAM, with the VCPUs given a higher priority over other flavors.
Tiny (t3)
The Tiny (t3) flavours are great for testing and prototyping or even just simple workloads with 1GB RAM per virtual CPU core available in 1, 2 and 4-core, with smaller 10GB root disks.
Phasing out the older m1 and m2 flavors
Older m1 and m2 flavors will be phased out but will still be available until January 31st 2019, when they will be removed.
During this time, we encourage you to start using the new flavors in your projects and update any Heat templates, scripts or any other build systems you may be using.
Current instances will continue to run unaffected, even after the old flavors have been removed.
Jo Morris
Nectar will soon be introducing some new instance flavors for virtual machines. The new flavors will make it easier to support different user requirements, and enable efficient use of the Nectar Cloud infrastructure.
Changes the new flavors will introduce are:
Removal of ephemeral disk
There was little benefit to using ephemeral storage in our existing flavors at most sites, as the storage backend was the same for the root disk. We found that many users were unsure about the intended purpose of ephemeral storage and the caveats associated with it. For example, that it wouldn’t be backed up in an instance snapshot. For these reasons, we’ve decided to remove it from our new flavors.
For situations where you may require more disk space than what is provided as part of the root filesystem of the instance, we recommend creating and attaching Volume Storage, which can be any size required. There are also other storage options like the Shared File System Storage service and Object Storage which are well suited for different use cases.
Consistent root disk size
Our current flavors have varying root sizes, which actually makes it difficult to snapshot and restore to a smaller sized flavor. We’re standardising on a 30GB root disk, so a snapshot of an instance of any flavor will be able to be restored to any other flavor. The exception here is the new tiny flavor types, which have a 10GB disk instead.
More choice for CPU and RAM requirements
The Nectar Research Cloud is used for a very broad spectrum of workloads, so naturally we should offer a broad spectrum of options for our flavors, so we’re introducing a range of flavor classes.
The new flavor classes are:
Balanced (m3)
RAM Optimised (r3)
CPU Optimised (c3)
Tiny (t3)
Balanced (m3)
Balanced (m3) flavors are an evolution of the existing m1 and m2 flavors and are suited to most workloads. We’ve given the new Balanced (m3) flavors more VCPUs over the older m1 and m2 flavors and made the CPU/RAM balance more consistent. All Balanced (m3) will come with a 30GB root disk and will go up to a maximum of 32 virtual CPUs and 64GB RAM.
RAM Optimised (r3)
For workloads that require more memory, we’re offering the RAM Optimised (r3) flavors. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them through the Project Allocation Form.
CPU Optimised (c3)
For workloads that need more CPU, we have the CPU Optimised (c3) flavors. We think these will be best suited to HPC workloads. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them through the Project Allocation Form. The CPU Optimised (c3) flavors go up to a maximum size of 32 virtual CPUs and 64GB RAM, with the VCPUs given a higher priority over other flavors.
Tiny (t3)
The Tiny (t3) flavours are great for testing and prototyping or even just simple workloads with 1GB RAM per virtual CPU core available in 1, 2 and 4-core, with smaller 10GB root disks.
Phasing out the older m1 and m2 flavors
Older m1 and m2 flavors will be phased out but will still be available until January 31st 2019, when they will be removed.
During this time, we encourage you to start using the new flavors in your projects and update any Heat templates, scripts or any other build systems you may be using.
Current instances will continue to run unaffected, even after the old flavors have been removed.