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.

The followin flavor classes are offer on the Nectar Research Cloud:

  • Tiny (t3)

  • Balanced (m3)

  • RAM Optimised (r3)

  • CPU Optimised (c3)

  • Huge RAM (h3)

Tiny (t3)

The Tiny (t3) flavours are a great choice 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.

Name

VCPUs

Memory (GB)

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

RAM per VCPU

CPU Shares

t3.xsmall

1

1

1024

10

1

32

t3.small

2

2

2048

10

1

64

t3.medium

4

4

4096

10

1

128

Balanced (m3)

The Balanced (m3) flavors are suited to most workloads. Balanced (m3) flavors offer more VCPUs over the older m1 and m2 flavors but the memory per core has been reduced to 2GB since many applications don't need more than that, and it allows more efficient  use of the infrastructure. If you need more memory you can request RAM optimised flavors (see below). All Standard (m3) will come with a 30GB root disk and will go up to a maximum of 32 virtual CPUs, 64GB RAM.

Name

VCPUs

Memory (GB)

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

RAM per VCPU

CPU Shares

m3.xsmall

1

2

2048

30

2

64

m3.small

2

4

4096

30

2

128

m3.medium

4

8

8192

30

2

256

m3.large

8

16

16384

30

2

512

m3.xlarge

16

32

24576

30

2

768

m3.xxlarge

32

64

32768

30

2

1024

RAM Optimised (r3)

For workloads that require more memory, the RAM Optimised (r3) flavors are recommended. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them from the Allocations request or amendment forms on the Nectar Research Cloud dashboard.

Name

VCPUs

Memory (GB)

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

RAM per VCPU

CPU Shares

r3.xsmall

1

4

4096

30

4

64

r3.small

2

8

8192

30

4

128

r3.medium

4

16

16384

30

4

256

r3.large

8

32

32768

30

4

512

r3.xlarge

16

64

65536

30

4

1024

r3.xxlarge

32

128

131072

30

4

2048

CPU Optimised (c3)

For workloads that use more CPU cycles there are the CPU Optimised (c3) flavors. These flavors will be best suited to compute-intensive workloads. These flavors can be made available to you by requesting them from the Allocations request or amendment forms on the Nectar Research Cloud dashboard 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 for CPU cycles on the physical server over other flavors.

Name

VCPUs

Memory (GB)

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

RAM per VCPU

CPU Shares

c3.xsmall

1

2

2048

30

2

256

c3.small

2

4

4096

30

2

512

c3.medium

4

8

8192

30

2

1024

c3.large

8

16

16384

30

2

2048

c3.xlarge

16

32

32768

30

2

4096

c3.xxlarge

32

64

65536

30

2

8192

Huge RAM (h3)

For workloads that have very large memory requirements, the Huge RAM flavors are recommended. Huge RAM (h) flavors differ from the RAM Optimised (r) flavors by increasing the RAM per VCPU to from 4GB to 7.5GB of RAM per VCPU core and start at 180GB RAM. Huge RAM flavors are a very limited resource and users will need to provide a strong justification in their use case through the allocation request form in order to be granted permission to use these flavors.

Name

VCPUs

Memory (GB)

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

RAM p/VCPU

CPU Shares

h3.large

24

160

184320

30

7.5

6144

h3.xlarge

32

240

245760

30

7.5

8192

h3.xxlarge

48

360

368640

30

7.5

12288


Please note

that the third generation flavors don't have any ephemeral disk. Ephemeral storage is less portable and flexible than Persistent Volume Storage as it can't be snapshotted, shared, easily migrated or resized. For situations where you may require more disk space than what is provided as part of the root file system of the instance, it is recommended to create and attach 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.