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:

  • Tiny (t3)
  • Balanced (m3)
  • RAM Optimised (r3)
  • CPU Optimised (c3)
  • Preemptible (p3) (Coming soon)
  • GPU Visualisation (g1) (reserved instances only)
  • GPU Compute (g2) (reserved instances only)
  • Huge RAM (h4) (reserved instances only)
  • Huge RAM (h3) 

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 1GB RAM per virtual CPU core available in 1, 2 and 4-core, with smaller 10GB root disks.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
t3.xsmall111024100.014125
t3.small222048100.029250
t3.medium444096100.057500


Balanced (m3)

The Balanced (m3) flavors are suited to most workloads. Balanced (m3) flavors offer 2GB 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 30GB root disk.  The largest one provides 32 virtual CPUs and 64GB RAM.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
m3.xsmall122048300.029250
m3.small244096300.057500
m3.medium488192300.1141,000
m3.large81616384300.2282,000
m3.xlarge163232768300.4574,000
m3.xxlarge326465536300.9138,000


RAM Optimised (r3)

For workloads that require more memory, the RAM Optimised (r3) flavors are recommended. They provide a ratio of 4GB of RAM for each VCPU.  The root disk size is 30GB.  The largest r3 flavor provides 32 virtual CPUs and 128GB RAM.

NameVCPUsMemory (GB)Memory (MB)Disk (GB)SU per hourSU per year
r3.xsmall144096300.052457
r3.small288192300.104913
r3.medium41616384300.2091,827
r3.large83232768300.4173,654
r3.xlarge166465536300.8347,308
r3.xxlarge32128131072301.68814,616


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 64GB 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)SU per hourSU per year
c3.xsmall122048300.043380
c3.small244096300.087760
c3.medium488192300.1731,519
c3.large81616384300.3473,039
c3.xlarge163232768300.6946,077
c3.xxlarge326465536301.38812,155


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 see GPU flavours & reservation system.


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


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


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 flavours

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 7.5GB of RAM per VCPU core and start at 180GB 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.