Including e-Research Costs on Grants¶
Introduction to e-Research Costing¶
This page should provide the information required to build a budget for e-Research resources (compute and storage) when writing grant applications. The information provided here should be sufficient for grant applications to be completed independently but if anything is unclear please do get in touch to discuss this.
While the focus of this document is primarily aimed at grant writers the same approach can be used for departments or facilities wishing to use internal budgets to secure more e-Research resources.
When the funding is available with an associated activity code you should contact us to ask for the purchase to be executed. At this point the charge will be reflected as an internal budget transfer between your activity code and e-Research's. Each transfer of funds will have a clear identifier tying it back to your ticket to facilitate ease of audit.
Storage¶
| Storage Type | Free tier | Cost (TB/annum) | Description | Further information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Research Data Storage (RDS) | 5TB | £50 | 2 copies in independent sites, nightly back up to tape, general purpose research data storage | RDS docs |
| High Performance Computing (HPC) scratch | 1TB | £50 | Large data processing area mounted on HPC compute nodes, not backed up | CREATE HPC docs |
- Charges can be paid per annum or for multiple years upfront, where possible paying for multiple years upfront is preferable
- Allocations are generally made per research project, where projects are typically associated with a PI and funding body
- A small amount of meta data will be requested as part of the project's registration process
- Where the cost of storage types is the same (e.g. RDS and HPC scratch) quotas are transferable between the systems for duration funded
- e-Research storage capacity is typically available at the point of request, requests for larger amounts of storage (e.g. > 100TB) may require system expansion prior to fulfillment
Compute¶
Currently, unlike storage, we do not charge for compute resources that have already been purchased. Where researchers require more capacity than is freely available in the CREATE HPC and Cloud services dedicated servers will be purchased with the funding secured.
To select the appropriate server(s) for your project please review our Server Price List which is updated on a quarterly basis by our preferred supplier. If you are unsure of which server(s) fit your requirement or want something that isn't listed please get in touch to discuss.
Once purchased servers will be hosted in the CREATE ecosystem in one of the following configurations:
| Configuration | Description | Use case |
|---|---|---|
| HPC node | Installed in the CREATE HPC cluster within in a private Slurm partition, available to other users when idle | Multi-user CPU or GPU based batch processing |
| Hypervisor | Installed in the CREATE Cloud as an OpenStack hypervisor | Long-lived multiple virtual machine based deployments |
| Stand-alone | Installed within the CREATE Cloud as a stand-alone server | When Slurm and/or OpenStack are not suitable |
Compute lead times
Due to the ongoing and well documented global supply chain issues orders for new server hardware are often taking several months to fulfill. As such it is advisable to contact us as soon as funding is confirmed to place the order for your new hardware.
Upcoming compute options
- We will be developing a more granular recharge model for OpenStack projects (i.e. per core/mem per annum charging)
- We expect to add costs for Supermicro based RTX GPU configurations later in 2022 (this requires an additional market exercise to identify the supplier)
Cost calculations¶
Our costs are calculated with the aim of replenishing the underlying hardware capacity which is consumed by the chargeable allocation. This allows King's to recover the hardware costs associated with allocations outside of the free tiers. Free tier allocations are covered via research overheads. We review these calculations annually to ensure they reflect the current market prices.
Detailed quotations and cost breakdowns are available for audit purposes, if required please get in touch.