Nectar Flavors

Modified on Thu, 25 Jul at 11:53 AM

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

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.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)RAM per VCPUCPU SharesSU per hourSU per year
t3.xsmall111024101320.014125
t3.small222048101640.029250
t3.medium4440961011280.057500

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 Balanced (m3) have a 30 GB root disk. The largest one provides 32 virtual CPUs and 64 GB RAM. Note that flavors m1 and m2 are deprecated.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)RAM per VCPU
CPU Shares
SU per hourSU per year
m3.xsmall122048302640.029250
m3.small2440963021280.057500
m3.medium4881923022560.1141,000
m3.large816163843025120.2282,000
m3.xlarge1632327683027680.4574,000
m3.xxlarge32646553630210240.9138,000

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.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)RAM per VCPU
CPU Shares
SU per hourSU per year
r3.xsmall144096304640.052457
r3.small2881923041280.104913
r3.medium416163843042560.2091,827
r3.large832327683045120.4173,654
r3.xlarge16646553630410240.8347,308
r3.xxlarge3212813107230420481.68814,616

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.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)RAM per VCPU
CPU Shares
SU per hourSU per year
c3.xsmall1220483022560.043380
c3.small2440963025120.087760
c3.medium48819230210240.1731,519
c3.large8161638430220480.3473,039
c3.xlarge16323276830240960.6946,077
c3.xxlarge32646553630281921.38812,155

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 (¼) 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.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
p3.xsmall122048300.00763
p3.small244096300.014125
p3.medium488192300.029250
p3.large81616384300.057500
p3.xlarge122424576300.086750
p3.xxlarge163232768300.1141000
p3.3xlarge326465536300.2282000

Reserved Flavors

For more information please read our GPU Flavors and Reservation System article.

Visualisation GPU (g1)

g1 instances come with Nvidia A40 GPUs.

NamevGPU RAMVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Root Disk (GB)Ephemeral Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
g1.small8163232768303000.3653,200
g1.medium12306061400305000.6856,000
g1.large24601201228803010001.37012,000

Compute GPU (g2)

g2 instances come with Nvidia A100 GPUs.

NamevGPU RAMVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Root Disk (GB)Ephemeral Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
g2.xsmall8122424576302000.7196,300
g2.small10153030720302500.8997,875
g2.medium16244849152304001.43812,601
g2.large20306061440305001.79815,751
g2.xlarge40601201228803010003.59631,501

Huge RAM (h4)

h4 instances are available in larger RAM sizes than h3 and also come with fast ephemeral disk.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Root Disk (GB)Ephemeral Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
h4.xsmall24180184320302504.67740,969
h4.small32240245760305006.23654,625
h4.medium483603686403010009.35481,938
h4.large6448049152030200012.472109,251
h4.xlarge12896098304030200024.943218,502

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.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Root Disk (GB)RAM per VCPUSU per hour
SU per year
h3.large24180184320307.52.59822,761
h3.xlarge32240245760307.53.46930,347
h3.xxlarge48360368640307.55.19645,521

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.

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