Nectar Flavors

Modified on Fri, 30 May at 2:28 PM

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)
Restricted Availability
- Huge RAM (h3)
- Private flavors

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)	Disk (GB)	RAM per VCPU	SU per hour	SU per year
t3.xsmall	1	1	10	1	0.014	125
t3.small	2	2	10	1	0.029	250
t3.medium	4	4	10	1	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 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.

Name	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Disk (GB)	RAM per VCPU	SU per hour	SU per year
m3.xsmall	1	2	30	2	0.029	250
m3.small	2	4	30	2	0.057	500
m3.medium	4	8	30	2	0.114	1,000
m3.large	8	16	30	2	0.228	2,000
m3.xlarge	16	32	30	2	0.457	4,000
m3.xxlarge	32	64	30	2	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)	Disk (GB)	RAM per VCPU	SU per hour	SU per year
r3.xsmall	1	4	30	4	0.052	457
r3.small	2	8	30	4	0.104	913
r3.medium	4	16	30	4	0.209	1,827
r3.large	8	32	30	4	0.417	3,654
r3.xlarge	16	64	30	4	0.834	7,308
r3.xxlarge	32	128	30	4	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)	Disk (GB)	RAM per VCPU	SU per hour	SU per year
c3.xsmall	1	2	30	2	0.043	380
c3.small	2	4	30	2	0.087	760
c3.medium	4	8	30	2	0.173	1,519
c3.large	8	16	30	2	0.347	3,039
c3.xlarge	16	32	30	2	0.694	6,077
c3.xxlarge	32	64	30	2	1.388	12,155
c3.3xlarge	64	128	30	2	2.775	24,309

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.

Name	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Disk (GB)	SU per hour	SU per year
p3.xsmall	1	2	30	0.007	63
p3.small	2	4	30	0.014	125
p3.medium	4	8	30	0.029	250
p3.large	8	16	30	0.057	500
p3.xlarge	12	24	30	0.086	750
p3.xxlarge	16	32	30	0.114	1,000
p3.3xlarge	32	64	30	0.228	2,000

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 (GB)	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Root Disk (GB)	Ephemeral Disk (GB)	SU per hour	SU per year
g1.small	8	16	32	30	300	0.365	3,200
g1.medium	12	30	60	30	500	0.685	6,000
g1.large	24	60	120	30	1,000	1.370	12,000

Compute GPU (g2)

g2 instances come with Nvidia A100 GPUs.

Name	vGPU RAM (GB)	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Root Disk (GB)	Ephemeral Disk (GB)	SU per hour	SU per year
g2.xsmall	8	12	24	30	200	0.719	6,300
g2.small	10	15	30	30	250	0.899	7,875
g2.medium	16	24	48	30	400	1.438	12,601
g2.large	20	30	60	30	500	1.798	15,751
g2.xlarge	40	60	120	30	1,000	3.596	31,501

Huge RAM (h4)

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

Name	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Root Disk (GB)	Ephemeral Disk (GB)	SU per hour	SU per year
h4.xsmall	24	180	30	250	4.677	40,969
h4.small	32	240	30	500	6.236	54,625
h4.medium	48	360	30	1000	9.354	81,938
h4.large	64	480	30	2000	12.472	109,251
h4.xlarge	128	960	30	2000	24.943	218,502

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.

Name	VCPUs	Memory (GB)	Root Disk (GB)	RAM per VCPU	SU per hour	SU per year
h3.large	24	180	30	7.5	2.598	22,761
h3.xlarge	32	240	30	7.5	3.469	30,347
h3.xxlarge	48	360	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.