Version
Date
Description of revision
0.1
17 March 2014
Early draft for internal review
0.2
19 March 2014
Initial draft for review by the client
0.3
31 March 2014
Revised draft including further suggestions from Lee Gillam
0.4
7 April 2014
Revised draft including comments from EPSRC and Jisc
0.5
14 April 2014
Final draft for approval by EPRSC and Jisc
1.0
30 June 2014
Issue version, including additional non-cloud comparison
Introduction
1
A previous report, published in early 2012, provided advice and guidance on the financial
implications of using ‘the cloud’ for research computing,1 including an analysis of the prices
offered by a range of then current cloud providers. That report noted that cloud computing
service offerings and prices would most likely be subject to rapid change. This report provides an
update of cloud computing costs, based on research finalised in early – mid March 2014, just
ahead of the ‘price war’ that started in late March 2014 (see paragraph 6). It should be read in
conjunction with the previous report.
Price
2
There seems to be a dynamic market for cloud services suitable for research. Further suppliers
have entered the market (eg Google Compute Engine and HP Cloud) and new instance types are
available. Both have been included to allow comparison with the other cloud providers and
existing instance types.
3
With some exceptions, there has been a reduction in the price per core-hour across the various
compute categories2 considered since autumn 2011. For those cloud providers that have reduced
prices, this is equivalent to an average reduction of ~2p – ~5p per core-hour, depending on the
compute category considered. There is also an additional benefit because the instances used in
March 2014 typically represent an unquantified improvement in compute capability.
4
The price for storage (£/month/GB) has either stayed the same or decreased for most cloud
providers considered. The average decrease in price is ~1.4p/month/GB.
5
Fewer cloud providers now charge for inbound data transfers (7 out of 12 in autumn 2011 and 3
out of 12 in March 2014). The average reduction is ~3.3p/GB. Most cloud providers continue to
charge for outbound data transfers and there has only been a very modest average reduction in
price (~0.2p/GB) with some cloud providers increasing the price.
6
Since the research for this report was carried out in early – mid March 2014, Google-Compute
Engine has announced a 32% reduction in prices for its cloud services across all regions, sizes and
classes from 1 April 2014, together with a simplification of the charging structure. Amazon EC2
and Azure have responded with significant price reductions. At the time of finalising this report, it
is too early to say what the implications are for the cloud market as a whole, but it is entirely
possible that other cloud providers will also respond.
Comparison with institutional research computing
7
The reduction since autumn 2011 for on-demand cloud compute costs changes the comparison
of cloud computing with that of institutional research computing.3 The majority of the cloud
computing instances, rented on an on demand hourly basis, are less expensive or the same price
per core-hour as well managed, locally provided clusters in modern data centres operating at
high utilisation levels.4
1
Final report to EPSRC and JISC: cost analysis of cloud computing for research, CC497D002-1.2, 22 February 2012,
2
3
4
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Publications/reports/CC497D002-1_2FinalReportToEPSRCandJISC.pdf.
‘Compute category’ refers to the various types of computing for research considered (see paragraph 1.4.6).
Representative instances have been selected for each cloud provider and each compute category.
It is assumed that the estimated cost of institutional research computing of 5p – 7p per core-hour found by the previous
study remains true in March 2014.
The previous report stated “between one-and-a-half to two times…”
CC551D001-1.0
1
8
It is perhaps more accurate to say that the price ranges of public cloud providers and institutions
overlap and have a similar upper bound. Under some circumstances, cloud will offer a ‘better’
solution and that for others a traditional data centre will remain more appropriate. The final
decision will depend on the precise performance of the selected approach. The trend of price
reductions such as the recent ones by Amazon, Google Compute-Engine and Azure reinforces
these findings.
9
Importantly, this comparison takes no account of the performance implications of the different
infrastructures for specific research tasks. The degree of overlap will be different for each
institution.
10
Spot and reserved options provide an opportunity for significant price reductions (20% - 80%)
over on-demand prices. This does need to be considered in the context of disadvantages such as
increased commitment, increases in elapsed processing time, overnight working, etc.
11
Given the trend of continual price discounting and improved offerings, alongside alternate pricing
approaches such as reserved instances and spot markets, it is now clear that use of cloud
computing can often be more economic than using institutional resources and should be
considered alongside institutional computing when planning research. Orchestration services
such as those provided by CycleCloud may also prove useful in achieving further price reductions.
Getting best value for money
12
There are many cloud service providers offering a bewildering array of options and prices from
which to choose. Choices will also depend on how well a particular application or code runs on a
particular architecture or technology. Moreover, there have been considerable changes since
autumn 2011 in the cloud offering (eg more and better instance types), in the pricing models,
and even in the cloud providers (eg SoftLayer is now an IBM Company and IBM SmartCloud is
being closed). This makes it likely that a researcher will have neither the time nor the inclination
to properly analyse and compare the different options – and, of course, price may not necessarily
be the most important factor in deciding which provider to use.
13
Making the optimum choice applies at both the individual research project and at the research
level. On the one hand, a piecemeal approach is unlikely to benefit from the economy of scale
needed to get the best value for money across research. On the other hand, the introduction of
the ‘dead hand of bureaucracy’ may slow the take-up of cloud computing for research and may
affect the potential quality of research and concomitant outputs.
2
CC551D001-1.0
Executive summary
1
List of abbreviations and glossary
4
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
Introduction
General
Background
Objectives and scope
Approach
Overview of this report
5
5
5
5
6
9
2
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
Cloud prices
Introduction
Prices for compute categories
Storage
Data transfer
Reserved and spot instances
Comparison with cost of institutional research computing
How prices have changed
Google Compute-Engine, Amazon and Azure prices from 1 April 2014
10
10
10
11
13
14
16
17
20
A
A.1
A.2
A.3
A.4
Cost model for an owned server
Introduction
Cost model
Cost per core-hour
Assessment
23
23
23
24
24
B
B.1
B.2
B.3
B.4
B.5
B.6
Cloud prices at March 2014
Introduction
Compute
Storage
Data transfer
Reserved and spot instances
Pricing models
25
25
25
29
31
31
32
C
C.1
C.2
C.3
C.4
Cloud prices at autumn 2011
Introduction
Compute
Storage
Data transfer
35
35
35
37
38
CC551D001-1.0
3
EPSRC
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
GB
Gigabyte (109 bytes)
GiB
Gibibyte (230 bytes)
GPU
Graphics Processing Unit
GRS
Geographically Redundant Storage (Windows Azure)
HDD
Hard Disk Drive
HEI
Higher Education Institution
HPC
High Performance Computing
IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
IO
Input Output
IOPS
IO Operations per Second
LRS
Locally Redundant Storage (Windows Azure)
RA-GRS
Read-Access Geographically Redundant Storage (Windows Azure)
RRS
Reduced Redundancy Storage (Amazon S3)
SAN
Storage Attached Network
SAS
Serial Attached SCSI (drive interface standard)
SATA
Serial AT Attachment (drive interface standard)
SSD
Solid State Disk
4
CC551D001-1.0
1
1.1
General
1.1.1
Curtis+Cartwright Consulting Ltd, with support from John O’Loughlin and Dr Lee Gillam of the
University of Surrey, undertook this ‘Refresh of the cost analysis of cloud computing for research’
on behalf of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Jisc. This
document is the final report.
1.2
Background
1.2.1
A previous study that reported in early 2012 developed advice and guidance on the financial
implications of using ‘the cloud’ for research computing.5 This study included an analysis of the
prices offered by a range of then current cloud providers. The research for that analysis was
carried out in autumn 2011. That report noted that cloud computing service offerings and prices
would most likely be subject to rapid change. This report provides an update of the analysis,
based on research finalised in March 2014. It needs to be read in conjunction with the previous
report.
1.3
Objectives and scope
1.3.1
The primary audience is the EPSRC and Jisc. However, the discussion and findings in this report
may be of interest to anyone in the HE community with an interest in cloud computing, and
especially:
–
Researchers interested in using cloud computing for their research.
–
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and research computing managers, who may be
considering providing access for their researchers to cloud computing services.
–
Funding bodies in addition to EPSRC, who fund research computing through grant awards,
and the reviewers of grant applications.
1.3.2
The report looks at Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) through the providers of public cloud. Most
such public clouds provide access to virtual machines. Some cloud providers provide “bare metal”
options where the users have full access down to the “bare metal”.
1.3.3
Based on discussions with research computing managers, and the information they shared in
confidence, the previous report estimated that the costs of institutional research computing
were around 5p to 7p per core-hour.6 While investigating these figures is out of scope for this
study, it is assumed that they will not be significantly different. A worked example of the costs for
an institutional server broadly equivalent to an Amazon EC2 instance that supports this
assumption is provided at Annex A. It is also vital to recognise that costs at institutions do vary
significantly.
5
Final report to EPSRC and JISC: cost analysis of cloud computing for research, CC497D002-1.2, 22 February 2012,
6
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Publications/reports/CC497D002-1_2FinalReportToEPSRCandJISC.pdf.
This is estimate was based on conversations and information provided by research computing managers. As supporting
material, it should be noted that Appendix A of the HPC-SIG’s 2010 report found that 5 of 11 respondents to their survey
reported FEC rates per CPU hour of 0-5p, 4 of 11 had costs of 6-10p and 2 respondents had costs in the 11-15p range.
See http://www.hpc-sig.org/Home?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=HPC-SIG_Report.pdf [accessed 21 March 2014].
CC551D001-1.0
5
1.4
Approach
1.4.1
The basic approach for this work was to investigate the current prices of the cloud providers that
were considered by the original study. This was both to look at trends in prices between the two
times and to compare the prices across a range of cloud providers.
1.4.2
Ideally, we would have used the same (or equivalent) instances to allow comparison between the
late 2011 and the March 2014 findings. However, this has rarely been possible since most cloud
providers have changed their offering considerably, introducing new instances with newer
processor technology and subsequently withdrawing older offerings. A similar issue arises for
comparing prices between cloud providers. Here, differences in the underlying processor
technology, configuration and choice of RAM and storage mean that a meaningful comparison
can only be achieved through detailed benchmarking.
1.4.3
Moreover, further suppliers have entered the market (eg Google Compute Engine and HP Cloud)
and new instance types are available. Both have been included to allow comparison with the
other cloud providers and existing instance types.
1.4.4
The team has used its skills and understanding of the use of the cloud computing for research to
pick compute instances that have roughly the same or better overall performance for the various
compute categories and cloud providers. These can then be used both for tracking prices over
time and for comparison of prices between cloud providers.
1.4.5
Some cloud providers have various reduced price or free programmes for cloud use.7 While
institutions should be encouraged to take advantage of offers of free or reduced price cloud
computing, these are not included as part of the comparison.
Compute categories
1.4.6
The following instance categories are presented for each cloud provider:8
–
High Performance Computing (HPC) Low and HPC High: these are designed to be
appropriate for CPU-bound scientific problems. Differentiated on CPU where possible,
otherwise by RAM.
–
Low: the lowest price per core-hour available. This excludes some “micro” type instances
where the instance does not have an allocated virtual core proportion.
–
High: Aiming for a specification similar to Amazon’s erstwhile High CPU extra-large instance
type (c1.xlarge).
–
High Memory Large: An instance with the largest amount of RAM.
–
GPU: instances offering Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cards as a processing resource.
1.4.7
The first four of these were also discussed in the original report; the last two reflect current
trends in the use of the cloud for research computing. In addition, if a cloud provider offers HPCspecific nodes, this is highlighted.
7
These include grants available from Amazon (see http://aws.amazon.com/education/) and the Amazon free usage tier
(see http://aws.amazon.com/aws-free-usage-tier0/) [all accessed 14 April 2014].
The specific instances chosen for each cloud provider are listed at Table B-3 for the March 2014 analysis and Table C-2
for the autumn 2011 analysis.
8
6
CC551D001-1.0
Prices
1.4.8
Compute prices are calculated in £/core-hour with the lowest commitment, so bulk discounting is
not considered. The focus is on CPU rather than RAM, and storage and data transfer costs are
excluded wherever possible. Prices are also given for storage (£/GB/month) and for input and
output of data (£/GB). The report also examines the current situation for spot and reserve
instances.
1.4.9
Public cloud providers often quote prices in US dollars. For this report, we have chosen to give all
prices in pounds sterling using a nominal exchange rate of $1.6 to £1.9
Note on prices
1.4.10
Section 2 contains prices for a range of current cloud providers. However, the purpose of this
work is not to offer a robust price comparison and, although we have tried to ensure that prices
are accurate, we make no guarantees as to their veracity. It is important to understand that
offerings and prices, and even the pricing model have changed frequently and are likely to
continue to do so. Moreover, different cloud providers have very different charging and billing
approaches. Readers must perform their own price assessment of cloud services tailored to the
specifics of their research tasks and circumstances. However, we hope that the information
provided and the issues highlighted in this report make their task easier.
1.4.11
The prices were last checked fully on 12 March 2014. Since then, both Google Compute Engine
and Amazon EC2 have announced price reductions that apply from 1 April 2014.10 In addition,
Azure has announced similar price reductions that will apply from 1 May 2014.11 All prices are
based on the use of Linux. Prices exclude VAT.
Cloud providers considered
1.4.12
There were 12 cloud providers examined in the earlier report. This time 15 cloud providers are
considered.12
Cycle Computing
1.4.13
Cycle Computing is included as it was covered in the autumn 2011 report, but it now operates in
a different way - as an orchestration layer to help achieve savings through use of reserved and
spot instances. Cycle Computing has been omitted from the price change analysis of
subsection 2.5 because of this different approach. This is discussed further at paragraph 2.5.4.
9
This is the same as the nominal exchange rate used in the previous report.
See
Amazon
HALVES
cloud
storage
prices
after
Google's
shock
slash,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/26/amazon_price_cut/ [accessed 28 March 2014].
See
Microsoft
Azure
Matches
Amazon’s
Price
Cuts
and
Introduces
New
“Basic”
Tier,
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/31/microsoft-azure-matches-amazons-price-cuts-and-introduces-new-basic-tier/
[accessed 2 April 2014].
The additional cloud providers are Google Compute Engine, HP Cloud, Rackspace and SoftLayer. IBM acquired SoftLayer
Technologies Ltd in 2013 and is now investing in this and moving from its previous cloud offering (IBM SmartCloud
Enterprise) to a Softlayer-based offering (see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/ibm-to-invest-1-2-billionto-build-on-softlayer-cloud-services.html [accessed 7 March 2014]). In addition, NewServers has changed its name to
Baremetalcloud.
10
11
12
CC551D001-1.0
7
13
Provider
URLs
Amazon EC2
Notes
G:http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
I: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#instance-details
I: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/details/
P: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
P: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
G: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/solutions/
I: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dn197896.aspx
P: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/
P: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/
Formerly Windows Azure
G: http://www.baremetalcloud.com/index.php/en/hardware/dedicated-servers.htm
I: https://noc.baremetalcloud.com/web.html
P: https://noc.baremetalcloud.com/web.html
Formerly NewServers
Cycle Computing
http://www.cyclecomputing.com/cyclecloud/overview
CycleCloud offers an
orchestration layer to
help with the process of
establishing and
operating an HPC Cloud
Eduserv
G: http://assets-production.govstore.service.gov.uk/G4/Eduserv0244/51f978b012a2fcb9e8000979/QD1/CloudCompute(IL0-2)_ServiceDefinition_Eduserv.pdf
I: http://govstore.service.gov.uk/cloudstore/cloud-compute-il0-il2-4-g4-0244-213
P: http://assets-production.govstore.service.gov.uk/G4/Eduserv0244/51f978b012a2fcb9e8000979/QD4/CloudCompute(IL0-2)_Pricing_Eduserv.pdf
ElasticHosts
G: http://www.elastichosts.co.uk/
I: http://www.elastichosts.com/cloud-servers/virtual-machines/
I: http://www.elastichosts.com/support/faq/
P: http://www.elastichosts.co.uk/cloud-servers-quote/
Flexiscale
G: http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/
I: http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/specifications/
I: http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/faq/
P: http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/
GoGrid
G: http://www.gogrid.com/products/cloud-servers
I: http://www.gogrid.com/products/cloud-servers
P:http://www.gogrid.com/pricing
Google Compute
Engine
G: https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/
I: https://developers.google.com/compute/pricing
P: https://developers.google.com/compute/pricing
New for March 2014
HP Cloud
G: http://www.hpcloud.com/products-services/compute
I: http://www.hpcloud.com/pricing
P: http://www.hpcloud.com/pricing
New for March 2014
Joyent
G: http://www.joyent.com/products/compute-service
I: http://www.joyent.com/products/compute-service/pricing
P: http://www.joyent.com/products/compute-service/pricing
Penguin
G: http://www.penguincomputing.com/services/hpc-cloud/pod
I: http://docs.pod.penguincomputing.com/wiki/POD_MT1
P: https://pod.penguincomputing.com/services
Warning: the offering has
changed frequently
throughout the study
Rackspace
G: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud
I: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud/servers/pricing
P: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud/servers/pricing
Compute prices new for
March 2014.
Softlayer
G: http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/computing/
I: http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/computing/#
P: http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/build-your-own-cloud
New for March 2014
Previously IBM
SmartCloud
Terremark vCloud
Express
G: http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/default.aspx
I: http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/specifications.aspx
P: http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/pricing.aspx
Azure
Baremetalcloud
Table 1-1: Cloud service providers considered for the cost comparison and related URLs
13
URLs are categorises as General (G), Instance Type (I) or Pricing (P). General covers an introduction/overview of the
offering. Instance type provides information on the processors, RAM and disk storage for instances. Pricing covers the
details of the price for the selected instances. Sometimes instance descriptions and pricing are combined on the
suppliers’ website and sometimes not. All URLs correct as at 12 March 2014.
8
CC551D001-1.0
1.5
Overview of this report
1.5.1
This report is structured as follows:
–
Section 2 lists the prices for the compute categories listed at paragraph 1.4.6, and storage
and data transfer for each of the cloud service providers identified at Table 1-1. It also
discusses how prices have changed since the last report.
–
Annex B and Annex C document the specific instance types selected for the compute
categories together with prices as at March 2014 and autumn 2011 for these instance
(£/core-hour) together with prices for data storage (£/month/GB) and for data transfers
(£/GB).
CC551D001-1.0
9
2
2.1
Introduction
2.1.1
This Section lists the prices for the compute categories listed at paragraph 1.4.6, and storage and
data transfer for each of the cloud service providers identified at Table 1-1. It also discusses how
prices have changed since the last report.
2.2
Prices for compute categories
2.2.1
The prices for the compute categories listed at paragraph 1.4.6 are set out for March 2014 (no
shading) and autumn 2011 (with shading) at Table 2-1. Details of the instances used can be found
at Table B-3 and Table B-4 for March 2014 and Table C-2 for autumn 2011. The key features of
on-demand charging for each cloud provider considered are summarised at Table B-9.
Provider
HPC low
Low
0.047
Amazon EC2
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
HPC high
HPC
nodes
High
memory
large
Data centre used for
14
price
GPU
0.038
0.070
0.047
Y
0.068
0.051
0.047
0.053
0.053
0.10
Y
-
-
0.038
0.039
0.038
0.038
N
0.103
N
0.075
0.075
0.075
0.075
N
-
-
0.054
0.047
0.054
0.054
N
0.054
N
0.047
0.047
0.069
0.098
N
-
-
15
Azure
High
US East
US East
Standard price
0.047
0.043
0.092
0.046
N
0.185
N
7.1×10–4
0.012
0.032
0.067
N
-
-
0.188
0.080
0.012
0.188
N
0.188
N
0.026
0.026
0.04
0.037
N
-
-
0.045
0.018
0.045
0.027
N
0.027
N
0.033
0.022
0.055
0.055
N
-
-
0.038
0.038
0.038
0.038
N
0.038
N
0.12
0.11
0.12
0.12
N
-
-
0.041
0.065
0.065
0.065
N
0.076
N
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
0.094
0.019
0.070
0.127
N
0.211
N
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
0.045
0.035
0.075
0.075
N
0.127
N
0.053
0.053
0.175
0.10
N
-
-
0.075
0.075
0.075
0.075
Y
-
-
Standard price/corehour across range
0.193
0.068
0.193
0.19
Y
-
-
Standard price
0.125
0.030
0.030
0.125
N
0.125
N
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
0.037
0.030
0.049
0.037
N
0.037
N
0.052
0.052
0.084
0.054
N
-
-
Terremark vCloud
Express
0.050
0.022
0.050
0.073
N
0.073
N
0.008
0.008
0.1
0.15
N
-
-
Eduserv
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
GoGrid
Google Compute Engine
HP Cloud
Joyent
Penguin
Rackspace
UK
UK
UK - priced in
Flexiscale units
Standard price
US
Standard price
Standard price
UK
Europe
Standard price
Table 2-1: March 2014 and autumn 2011 prices (£/core-hour) for various compute categories
(no shading is for March 2014 data and with shading is for autumn 2011 data)
14
15
10
Some cloud provides have different prices for the same instance from each data centre (eg US East and EU (Ireland) data
centres for Amazon EC2). Other cloud providers have standard prices for each instance.
This has been amended from the previous report to reflect a change of view on hyperthreading for this instance and for
a rounding/typographic error.
CC551D001-1.0
2.2.2
The autumn 2011 data was analysed for the previous report (see Annex C.2). It was found that,
while noting that researchers need to trade-off application performance with cost and choice of
cloud instance, they could expect to pay up to 19p per core-hour for instances most suitable for
CPU-bound tasks, with the majority of providers charging in the region of ~7p to ~10p per corehour.
2.2.3
The analysis has been repeated for the March 2014 data (see Annex B.2) with a very similar
result. In particular, it was found while noting that researchers need to trade-off application
performance with cost and choice of cloud instance, they can expect to pay up to 19p per corehour for instances most suitable for CPU-bound tasks, with the majority of providers charging
~6.5p to ~7.5p per core-hour).
2.3
Storage
2.3.1
The cloud providers considered offer many types of data storage16 with differing characteristics
(eg performance, capacity, local or geographical redundancy, etc). This can makes comparison
difficult. Storage can be ephemeral (where data held vanishes once the related instance is
stopped) or persistent. This report categorises persistent storage as:17
–
Block: This provides instance-attached persistent storage; once an instance is stopped, the
data is retained until deleted (eg Amazon EBS, Azure and Google Compute-Engine).
–
Object: This provides the means to store data and virtual machine images, accessible from
anywhere until deleted (eg Amazon S3, Azure and Google Compute-Engine).
–
Virtual disk: This covers persistent provisioned HDD or SSD storage (eg Eduserv,
ElasticHosts).
–
Other: This covers other storage types, where available, such as archive storage (eg Amazon
Glacier) or snapshot storage.
2.3.2
Indicative prices for storage for each of the cloud service providers considered are set out at
Table 2-2 for March 2014 (no shading) and autumn 2011 (with shading). Complete information
across the categories was not collected for autumn 2011.
16
This excludes RAM.
This
is
based
on
OpenStack
storage
concepts
ops/content/storage_decision.html [accesses 28 March 2014].
17
CC551D001-1.0
(see
http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-
11
18
Cloud provider
Amazon EBS
20
Amazon S3
Storage charge (£/month/GB)
Object
0.031
-
-
-
Standard: flat rate plus £0.031 per million IO requests for 1GB-1TB
0.060
-
-
-
Standard: flat rate plus £0.031 per million IO requests for 1GB-1TB
0.078
-
-
-
-
-
0.095
Snapshots stored on S3: flat rate
-
Standard: tiered structure
-
0.038 – 0.053
-
-
0.031 – 0.043
-
21
Azure
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
-
-
RRS: tiered structure
-
-
0.006
Glacier archive storage: flat rate
-
-
-
-
-
0.039 – 0.045
LRS: tiered structure
0.040 – 0.055
0.046 – 0.061
-
0.046 - 0.061
GRS: tiered structure
0.052 – 0.071
0.059 – 0.077
-
0.059 – 0.077
RA-GRS: tiered structure
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tiered, lower range corresponds to 10TB target
-
-
Tiered, lower range corresponds to 10TB target
-
Current offering is 36GB, 73GB, 146GB or 300GB.
0.054 - 0.180
-
-
-
0.091 – 0.245
-
-
For a Storage Attached Network (SAN) volume
-
0.054 - 0.183
-
0.020
-
For a dedicated 250GB drive
-
-
0.300
Tier 1 (SAS or SATA and SSD hybrid storage): flat rate
-
-
0.175
Tier 2 (SATA storage with SSD metadata acceleration): flat rate
-
-
0.067
Assumed Tier 2 equivalent
-
-
0.110
Tier 3 (SATA storage supporting archiving): flat rate
-
-
0.300
SSD: flat rate
-
-
0.060
HDD: flat rate
-
-
0.060
-
-
0.045
-
-
0.075
GoGrid
IOPS: flat rate plus £0.063/provisioned IOPS/month for 1GB-1TB
0.032 – 0.032
0.054 -0.180
Eduserv
Other
0.032 - 0.044
0.088
Baremetalcloud
(was
NewServers)
Attached
19
disk
Notes
Block
-
0.046- 0.055
HDD: flat rate
-
Flat rate for disk storage, plus £0.018 per GB transferred
-
Flat rate for disk storage, plus £0.018 per GB transferred
-
-
Block storage: flat rate
-
0.063 – 0.074
-
-
Cloud storage: tiered with first 10 GB/month free
-
0.094
-
-
Cloud storage: tiered with first 10 GB/month free
Table 2-2: March 2014 persistent storage costs for a range of commercial cloud providers (part
1 of 2)
18
19
20
21
12
The first element of a range given for a tiered structure gives the price for 500TB/month, unless otherwise stated (eg,
where 500TB of storage is not offered). The second element gives the price for lowest charged-for tier.
Attached disk can be virtual or physical, depending on the offering.
Standard S3 storage offers multiply redundant, highly available storage. Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) provides a
lower level of redundancy. Glacier provides highly available archive and backup storage (see
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/details/ [accessed 28 March 2014]).
Azure offers Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), Geographically Redundant Storage (GRS) and Read-Access GRS (RA-GRS).
Other refers to prices for NoSQL database storage.
CC551D001-1.0
22
Cloud provider
Google Compute
Engine
HP Cloud
Storage charge (£/month/GB)
Object
-
-
0.025
-
Persistent disk: flat rate
-
-
-
0.078
Snapshot storage: flat rate
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Flat rate plus £0.062 per million IO requests
-
0.056
-
-
Flat rate plus £0.006 per 10,000 object requests
-
-
-
0.063
Snapshot stored in HP object storage: flat rate
-
-
-
-
-
0.094
Joyent
0.040 – 0.054
23
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
Terremark
vCloud Express
NFS (NetApp)
-
-
Manta: tiered, this is the price per copy with the default being 2
copies but 1 – 6 copies possible, spread across 3 data centres in
US-East
-
0.229
-
-
-
-
0.063
-
-
Free for instance allocated storage. Uses CEPH distributed object
storage system
0.000
0.125
-
-
-
0.370
-
-
-
SSD volume: flat rate, 100GB to 1 TB, up to 14 volumes
-
0.090
Rackspace
Other
0.063
-
Penguin
Attached
disk
Notes
Block
-
-
Standard volume: flat rate, 100GB to 1TB,up to 14 volumes
-
0.058 – 0.070
-
-
Cloud files: tiered structure
-
0.110
-
-
Cloud files
-
-
-
0.070
Snapshot: flat rate
-
0.063
-
-
Object storage: flat rate, in 20GB increments up to 300GB as
additional instance drive
-
0.068
-
-
Object storage
0.469
-
-
-
SAN (iSCSI): flat rate, in 20GB increments
-
-
0.313
-
NAS: flat rate, in 20GB increments
-
-
0.156
-
Flat rate: up to 15 virtual disks (including system) up to 512GB
each
-
-
0.156
-
-
Table 2-2: March 2014 persistent storage costs for a range of commercial cloud providers (part
2 of 2)
2.4
Data transfer
The prices for data transfer for each of the cloud service providers considered are set out at Table 2-3 for
March 2014 (no shading) and autumn 2011 (with shading).
22
23
The first element of a range given for a tiered structure gives the price for 500TB/month, unless otherwise stated (eg,
where 500TB of storage is not offered). The second element gives the price for lowest charged-for tier.
Storage charge is based on $0.012 per day and 30.5 days in a month.
CC551D001-1.0
13
Cloud provider
Data transfer in from
internet (£/GB)
Data transfer out to
internet (£/GB)
0.000
0.037 – 0.075
Outbound has tiered structure with
first 1GB free, plus costs to transfer
between availability zones for
outbound
0.000
0.03 - 0.07
Plus costs to transfer between
availability zones for outbound
0.000
0.044 – 0.080
Charges for data transfer out are
tiered with first 5GB out free
0.000
0.09375 - 0.125
Amazon EC2
Azure
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
Eduserv
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
GoGrid
Google Compute Engine
HP Cloud
Rackspace
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
Terremark vCloud Express
-
0.000
0.000
Free Internap
0.0625
0.0625
-
0.000
0.105
Flat rate
0.000
0
-
0.100
0.200
0.100
0.200
Committed in advance
Burst above committed level
0.100 - 0.200
0.100- 0.200
-
0.045
0.045
Flat rate
0.018 – 0.022
0.018 – 0.022
-
0.000
0.053 – 0.075
Free private network data transfer
between servers within a single data
centre plus free inbound data transfer
Outbound has tiered structure with
first 1GB free
0.181
0.181
-
0.000
0.050 – 0.075
For egress to EMEA
Tiered structure, 0.050 applies for
more than 10TB/month
-
-
-
0.000
0.049 – 0.100
Tiered structure with first 1GB free,
Low corresponds to 250TB/month
-
-
-
0.000
0.037 – 0.075
Tiered structure with first 1 GB out
free
0.080
0.080
Free 20TB internet transfer per
24
month, then £0.08 per GB/month
0.000
0.000
Covered by log in node charges (if
any)
0.000
0.000
-
0.000
0.046 - 0.080
Tiered structure
0.000
0.120
-
0.063
0.063
Flat rate
0.050 - 0.094
0.050 - 0.094
-
0.106
0.106
Flat rate
0.106
0.106
-
Joyent
Penguin
Notes
Table 2-3: March 2014 and autumn data transfer costs for a range of cloud providers
2.5
Reserved and spot instances
2.5.1
Reserved and spot instances provide a means of obtaining a discount on the price in return for an
increased commitment or other trade-offs (eg only running a job when the spot price is below a
pre-fixed level). The potential discounts achievable need to be considered in the context of these
trade-offs. There may also be other obstacles to the use of such instances (eg the previous report
observed that institutional policies might currently demand a tendering procedure be followed to
take advantage of reserved and spot instances).
24
This option was withdrawn in September 2013.
14
CC551D001-1.0
Reserved instances
Some cloud providers offer discounts if customers agree to purchase resources for a fixed period
– for example, Microsoft Azure offers approximately 20% off compute prices for the instances set
out at Table B-3 for a 6 to 12 month plan. Probably the most complex of these offerings are
Amazon’s reserved instances. Three tiers are available, intended for light, medium, and heavy
usage, and each may be reserved for a term of 1 or 3 years. An up-front fee is charged, leading to
reduced hourly charges. The previous report considered the example of the Amazon EC2
cc2.8xlarge. The on demand and the reserved instance prices have not changed between autumn
2011 and March 2014. Figure 2-1 sets out the total price of each reserved instance type
compared with the on-demand version at different utilisation levels25 for a one-year and threeyear reserved cc2.8xlarge (Cluster Compute) instance.
2.5.2
25,000
25,000
20,000
20,000
15,000
15,000
10,000
10,000
5,000
5,000
-
-
% uptime over 1 year
On demand
Light
Medium
% uptime over 3 years
Heavy
On demand
Light
Medium
Heavy
Figure 2-1: Total cost over 1 and 3 years at different levels of utilisation for the reserved and ondemand instances of the Amazon EC2 cc2.8xlarge cluster compute instance26
Spot instances
2.5.3
Spot instances provide an opportunity to bid for use of instances when the market price of such
instances is below a user-specified value - with the price set dynamically and instances dropped
when the price goes above the user-specified value. A snapshot of the spot prices for the Amazon
EC2 compute categories (see Table B-3) is set out at Table B-8. This illustrates that use of spot
instances can achieve savings of 70% – 80% over the on-demand prices, but at the risk of work
being lost if the price changes suddenly.
Cycle Computing
2.5.4
Cycle Computing is included as it was covered in the autumn 2011 report. However, it now
operates in a different way. Its CycleCloud offering is a software layer that helps orchestrate the
creation of technical computing and HPC clusters in the cloud. CycleCloud makes it easier for
researchers and scientists to deploy, secure, automate, and manage running calculations
dynamically. This includes managing spot and reserved instances to achieve value for money (eg,
users can specify the maximum cost per core-hour). Cycle Computing claims savings of 25 – 40%
over on-demand instances. Users typically have a separate account with a cloud services provider
and pay a monthly fee to Cycle Computing for this service. The fee is tiered with the lowest level
providing up to 26,667 core-hours per month for $800.
25
For a reserved instance, utilisation is the proportion of time that the instance is running, rather than the proportion of
time that a scientific load is running on it.
The 3-year heavy utilisation line was incorrect in the earlier report and this has been corrected.
26
CC551D001-1.0
15
2.6
Comparison with cost of institutional research computing
2.6.1
Figure 2-2 shows the on-demand price per core-hour costs for the High and HPC high instances
for autumn 2011 and March 2014.27 In the previous report is was found that:
“On a pure price comparison, the more powerful cloud computing instances, rented on an
hourly basis, appear to be one-and-a-half to two times the price per core-hour of wellmanaged, locally-provided clusters in modern data centres operating at high utilisation
levels.”
March 2014
0.200
0.175
0.175
0.150
0.150
£ per core-hour
£ per core-hour
Autumn 2011
0.200
0.125
0.100
0.075
0.050
0.125
0.100
0.075
0.050
0.025
0.025
-
-
High
High
HPC High
HPC High
Institutional low range per core-hour
Institutional low range per core-hour
Institutional high range per core-hour
Institutional high range per core-hour
Figure 2-2: Autumn 2011 and March 2014 comparison per core-hour price (£) for on-demand
High and HPC High compute categories with estimated institutional research computing costs
2.6.2
Examination of Figure 2-2 suggests a different answer for March 2014. The previous report (see
paragraph 1.3.3) estimated that the costs of institutional research computing were around 5p to
7p per core-hour. Using the estimate from the previous report that the costs of institutional
research computing were around 5p to 7p per core-hour (see paragraph 1.3.3), Table 2-4 sets out
the number of instances for the HPC Low, Low, High and HPC High compute categories below 5p,
7p and 7.7p per core-hour. The latter price is a 10% uplift on the upper range. The majority of the
instances (48/56) for these compute categories are now below the 7.7p per core-hour compared
to 31/44 in autumn 2011. Similarly, 33/56 instances are now below 5p per core-hour compared
to 13/44 in March 2011. This represents a significant reduction in on-demand prices since the
previous report.
Provider
When
HPC low
Low
High
HPC high
Instances below 5p per corehour
Autumn 2011
5/11
5/11
2/11
1/11
March 2014
9/14
11/14
7/14
6/14
Instances below 7p per corehour
Autumn 2011
7/11
9/11
5/11
4/11
10/14
12/14
11/14
8/14
Instances below 7p per corehour + 10%
Autumn 2011
8/11
10/11
6/11
5/11
11/14
13/14
13/14
11/14
March 2014
March 2014
Table 2-4: Comparison of costs per core-hour for on demand instances with institutional
research computing
27
16
Low and HPC Low compute categories have been omitted to simplify the Figures.
CC551D001-1.0
Overall, it seems that in March 2014, the revised statement should be:
2.6.3
“On a pure price comparison, the majority of the cloud computing instances, rented on an
on demand hourly basis, are less expensive or the same price per core-hour as wellmanaged, locally-provided clusters in modern data centres operating at high utilisation
levels.”
2.6.4
It is perhaps more accurate to say that the price ranges of public cloud providers and institutions
overlap and have a similar upper bound. Under some circumstances, cloud will offer a ‘better’
solution and that for others a traditional data centre will remain more appropriate. The final
decision will depend on the precise performance of the selected approach. The trend of price
reductions such as the recent ones by Amazon, Google Compute-Engine and Azure reinforces
these findings.
2.6.5
Importantly, this comparison takes no account of the performance implications of the different
infrastructures for specific research tasks. The degree of overlap will be different for each
institution.
2.6.6
The above analysis reflects on-demand prices only. The comparison with estimated institutional
research computing costs for reserved or spot instances is illustrated in Figure 2-3, which shows
the comparison if reductions of 20% and 80% can be extrapolated for each on-demand price (see
subsection 2.5). There are disadvantages of reserved and spot instances such as increased
commitment, increases in elapsed processing time, overnight working, etc, which need to be
taken into account when making a decision. However, it is clear that use of the cloud computing
can be more economic than using institutional resources.
March 2014 80% discount
0.200
0.175
0.175
0.150
0.150
£ per core-hour
£ per core-hour
March 2014 20% discount
0.200
0.125
0.100
0.075
0.125
0.100
0.075
0.050
0.050
0.025
0.025
-
-
High
High
HPC High
HPC High
Institutional low range per core-hour
Institutional low range per core-hour
Institutional high range per core-hour
Institutional high range per core-hour
Figure 2-3: March 2014 comparison of per core-hour price (£) for reserved and spot instances
for High and HPC High compute categories with estimated institutional research computing
costs
2.7
How prices have changed
Price per core-hour
2.7.1
The changes in the price per core-hour between autumn 2011 and March 2014 for each cloud
provider and for each compute category are shown at Figure 2-4. With some exceptions, there
has been a reduction in the price per core-hour across the various compute categories since
autumn 2011. For those cloud providers that have reduced prices, this is equivalent to a
reduction of ~2p – ~5p per core-hour on average across the compute categories.
CC551D001-1.0
17
2.7.2
Relative prices also change between the different compute categories for the same cloud
provider. For example, Flexiscale has changed its prices so that the HPC high category is now
cheaper than the HPC Low category.28
2.7.3
It is important to understand that the instances used to represent the compute categories in
March 2014 (Table B-3) and autumn 2011 (Table C-2) are of necessity different because of
changes in the offering. It follows that the reductions need to be seen in the context of the
otherwise unquantified improvements in compute capability represented by these changed
instances.
Change (£ per core-hour)
-0.100
0.100
-0.200
0.200
Amazon EC2
Azure
Baremetalcloud (previously NewServers)
Eduserv
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
GoGrid
Joyent
Penguin
SoftLayer previously IBM SmartCloud)
Terremark vCloud Express
HPC Low
Low
High
HPC High
Figure 2-4: Comparison of per core-hour prices (£) between autumn 2011 and March 201429
Storage and data transfer
2.7.4
The changes in the price for storage and data transfer between autumn 2011 and March 2014
are set out at Figure 2-5.30
2.7.5
The price for storage (£/month/GB) has either stayed the same or decreased for nearly all31 cloud
providers considered. The average decrease in price is ~1.4p/month/GB.
28
29
30
31
18
This leads to the shaded bar in Figure B-1.
Cycle Cloud has been excluded from the comparison because of its different business model (see paragraph 2.5.4).
The comparison is only given where there is an offering in both autumn 2011 and March 2014. The measure used is the
difference between the midpoints of the price ranges in autumn 2011 and March 2014.
Eduserv and Amazon EC2 have increased prices for storage. The increase for the latter is very small and is possibly the
result of a difference in rounding for the previous report.
CC551D001-1.0
2.7.6
In autumn 2011, 5 out of 12 cloud providers considered did not charge for inbound data
transfers. In March 2014, 9 out of 12 cloud providers considered in autumn 2011 did not charge
for these transfers. The average reduction is ~3.3p/GB. Most cloud providers continue to charge
for outbound data transfers and there has only been a very modest average reduction in price
(~0.2p/GB) with some cloud providers increasing32 the price.
-0.200
-0.100
Change (£/GB)
-
0.100
0.200
Amazon EBS
Azure
Baremetalcloud (previously NewServers)
Eduserv
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
GoGrid
Joyent
Penguin
Rackspace
SoftLayer previously IBM SmartCloud)
Terremark vCloud Express
Block
Object
Attached
Transfer in
Transfer out
Figure 2-5: Comparison of storage and data transfer prices (£/GB) between autumn 2011 and
March 201433
Reserved and spot instances
2.7.7
The only reserved instance that was documented in autumn 2011 was the Amazon EC2
cc2.8xlarge instance with Linux from the US East data centre. Neither the on-demand nor the
reserved instance prices have changed for this instance. As many other instances and prices have
changed between autumn 2011 and March 2014, this is unlikely to represent the general case.
2.7.8
In autumn 2011, the spot prices for the same instance had been offered at lows of £0.021 per
core-hour, but with peak prices of £0.113 and £0.141 per core-hour compared to the on-demand
32
Eduserv and Amazon EC2 have increased prices for outbound data transfers. Again, the latter price might be due to a
difference in rounding for the previous report.
Cycle Cloud has been excluded from the comparison because of its different business model (see paragraph 2.5.4).
33
CC551D001-1.0
19
price of £0.094 per core-hour. Over the period 22 February to 23 March 2014, the spot price for
this instance was £0.011 per core-hour with peaks of £0.0145 and £0.013 per core-hour.
Is cloud computing competitive?
2.7.9
The previous report found that there is no easy answer to the question ‘what does cloud
computing cost compared to other means of providing research computing?’
“It is a question that is specific to each and every institution depending on the performance
of the local hardware and its capital and operating costs and priorities. Public cloud
computing providers’ charges are at least transparently published, even if it is not always
clear how they stack-up in real-life research situations or what ‘bang for the buck’ is actually
possible. However, comparative costing is made more difficult by the complicated system of
research computing funding – and the costing models can change from institution to
institution.
So far as specific comparisons can be made, there is enough evidence to suggest that cloud
computing can be cost-effective for research – at least for some researchers in some
institutions. For other researchers, the cloud cannot compete on price alone with
institutional services. However, in this dynamic environment the balance of relative costs
for any given research task can change. For example, the competitive environment of public
cloud computing may push costs down, but on the other hand, it is possible that profitdriven organisations may raise charges, for example in the face of higher energy bills or
taxes as relate to their areas of operation.”
2.7.10
This report concurs with this finding but notes that the general trend in price reduction found
and the potential of reserved and spot prices mean that the cloud is likely to be more
competitive for research computing than in autumn 2011.
2.8
Google Compute-Engine, Amazon and Azure prices from 1 April 2014
2.8.1
Since the research for this report was carried out in early – mid March 2014, Google-Compute
Engine has announced a 32% reduction in prices for its cloud services across all regions, sizes and
classes from 1 April 2014, together with a simplification of the charging structure. Amazon EC2
has responded with significant price reductions from 1 April 2014, as has Azure from 1 May 2014.
Prices for compute categories
2.8.2
20
The changes in instance pricing for Amazon EC2, Google Compute-Engine and Azure for the
compute categories are set out in Table 2-5.
CC551D001-1.0
Provider
HPC low
Low
High
HPC high
HPC
nodes
High
memory
large
GPU
Data centre used
34
for price
Amazon EC2 – March
0.047
0.038
0.070
0.047
Y
0.068
0.051
US East
Amazon EC2 – April
0.039
0.028
0.044
0.033
Y
0.068
0.051
US East
Reduction
16.7%
26.7%
37.8%
30.0%
-
0.0%
0.0%
Google Compute Engine March
0.041
0.065
0.065
0.065
N
0.076
N
US
Google Compute Engine April
0.028
0.044
0.044
0.044
N
0.051
N
US
32.6%
32.7%
32.4%
32.5%
-
32.8%
-
Azure - March
0.038
0.039
0.038
0.038
N
0.103
N
US East
Azure – May
0.038
0.039
0.038
0.038
N
0.080
N
US east
Percentage reduction
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
N
Percentage reduction
35
-22.4%
-
-
-
-
Table 2-5: Comparison of March and post May 2014 prices for Amazon, Google-ComputeEngine and Azure (£/core-hour) for various compute categories
Storage
2.8.3
For storage, Amazon has reduced the prices for Amazon S3 storage (Table 2-6) and left Amazon
EBS unchanged. Google Compute-Engine has left storage prices unchanged.
36
Cloud provider
Storage charge (£/month/GB)
Block
Object
Attached
disk
Notes
Other
Amazon S3 March
-
0.038 – 0.053
-
-
Standard: tiered structure
-
0.031 – 0.043
-
-
RRS: tiered structure
Amazon S3 April
-
0.018 – 0.019
-
-
Standard: tiered structure
-
0.015 – 0.015
-
-
RRS: tiered structure
-
52.8 – 64.7%
-
-
Standard: tiered structure
-
52.8 – 64.7
-
-
RRS: tiered structure
Reduction
Table 2-6: Comparison of March and April 2014 persistent storage costs for Amazon S3
Data transfer
2.8.4
Neither Amazon nor Google-Compute Engine has changed data transfer prices.
Reserved and spot instances
2.8.5
Amazon has also reduced some reserved instance prices in line with the changes in prices for the
compute categories. The reserved instances prices for the Amazon EC2 CC2.8xlarge instance used
as an exemplar for the prices savings available by using reserved instances(Figure 2-1) is
unchanged, with the exception that the light usage tier appears to be no longer available.
2.8.6
No new pricing for spot instances is yet available.
34
Some cloud provides have different prices for the same instance from each data centre (eg US East and EU (Ireland) data
centres for Amazon EC2). Other cloud providers have standard prices for each instance.
Azure has reduced the price of memory intensive instants from 1 May 2014, which corresponds only to the GPU
compute category. Azure has also introduced a new basic compute tier from 2 April 2014 that removes load balancing
and auto-auto scaling from the standard compute tier.
The first element of a range given for a tiered structure gives the price for 500TB/month, unless otherwise stated (eg,
where 500TB of storage is not offered). The second element gives the price for lowest charged-for tier.
35
36
CC551D001-1.0
21
Implications for findings of this report
2.8.7
22
It is too early to say what the implications are for the cloud market as a whole, but it is entirely
possible that other cloud providers will respond. The trend of price reductions reinforces the
findings paragraph 2.7.10.
CC551D001-1.0
A.1
Introduction
A.1.1
This Annex provides a worked example of the cost of providing a broadly equivalent
configuration to an Amazon EC2 m3.2xlarge instance. This is based on Dell prices available on the
Internet for a PowerEdge 720 rack server with an Intel E5-2670V2 processor with 10 cores. The
m3.2xlarge instance is based on slightly earlier technology (the Intel E5-2670 with 8 cores}.
A.2
Cost model
A.2.1
The cost model for the server is set out at Table A-1.
Item
Description
Basic package
Dell PowerEdge R720 rack server with an Intel Xeon
E5-2670V2 2.5GHz processor (10 cores), 32GiB, Red
Hat Linux 6.4, H710p Raid with 2x146GB SAS drives +
2x200GB SSDs with Broadcomm 57800 2x10Gb
DA/SFP+2*1Gb BT daughter network card
Dell NetShelter 42U Rack
Less Dell discount
Less 2x146GB SAS hybrid drives
Less 2x200GB SSDs
Element cost (£)
Subtotal
5,728
900
(897)
(462)
(1,126)
2x100GB SSD 6Gbit/s
748
Dual hot-plug redundant power supply
147
4,891
Reliability package
Additional power cord
8
Dell Smart-UPS 1,500VA
660
Estimated as 1 week of support staff effort @£25k
per annum, including salary, pension, employer NICs
and office space
561
815
Installation and set
up
561
Total up-front cost
Annual running costs
6,267
Ubuntu
0
Dell ProSupport with 8 hour mission critical support
for 3 years (annual rate = 3 year rate/3)
483
Security, hardware, software, operations admin
support (@10% of up-front costs)
627
Power (based on 80% of 495W used and Power
Usage Efficiency of 170%) at 10p per Kw-hour
472
Space (1 m2 @ £50 per ft (£538 per m2 per year)
538
2,120
Total cost over 3
years
Total up-front cost + 3* annual running cost plus
contingency of 20%
15,151
Table A-1: Cost breakdown for a server providing broadly equivalent capability to an
Amazon EC2 m3.2xlarge instance
A.2.2
Assumptions and comments are set out below.
1)
The price was calculated using the Dell inline customisation tool and included a discount of
£897.10. Education discounts may also be available.
2)
The precise configuration of 2x80GB SSDs is not available; this has been modelled by
assuming 2x146GB SSDs could be negotiated with Dell rather than the HDD and SSD
combination available.
CC551D001-1.0
23
3)
RAID, redundant power supply and UPS have been included to provide a similar level of
availability and data integrity to the m3.2xlarge instance.
4)
The cost of space is based on that charged by a university research park.
5)
The utilisation of 80% and power usage efficiency of 170% are taken from a web article on
power costs for large-scale data centres.37 The figure 10% of capital costs for admin support
is from the same source. These may be somewhat low for a small-scale institutional system.
6)
It is assumed that Ubuntu will be used as the operating system at no cost.
7)
The cost per core-hour could be reduced by packing more servers into the rack, which has
42U of space and could thus take 21 servers.
8)
Inevitably, there additional hardware, software elements and support will be required to
make a working system, especially for a low number of servers. Accordingly, a 20%
contingency has been included.
A.3
Cost per core-hour
A.3.1
Table A-2 sets out the per core-hour cost based on the cost model of Table A-1. This assumes
utilisation of 80%. For comparison, the price per core-hour for 100% is 5.93p and that for 50% is
11.05p.
Description
Element cost (£)
Number of hours per year
Element cost (p)
8,760
Utilisation
80%
Number of hours used in 3 years at this utilisation
21,024
Cost per core-hour for 10 cores, made up of:
7.21
Basic package
2.33
Reliability package
0.39
Installation and set up
0.27
Software licence
0.00
Hardware and software support
0.69
Admin support
0.89
Power
0.67
Space
0.77
Contingency
1.20
Table A-2: Breakdown of per core-hour for a server providing broadly equivalent capability to an
Amazon EC2 m3.2xlarge instance
A.4
Assessment
A.4.1
The core-hour cost matches the 5p-7p range found last time. It is towards the top of the range
because there is little economy of scale. What is interesting is that the headline hardware cost is
~2p per core-hour, but the true costs, including security, admin and software operations,
together with power, cooling and maintenance support are around 7p per core-hour.
37
See cost of power in large-scale data centres at
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/11/28/CostOfPowerInLargeScaleDataCenters.aspx [accessed 24 April 2014].
24
CC551D001-1.0
B.1
Introduction
B.1.1
This Annex sets out the instances selected and assumptions used to generate the price
information in Section 2. The data was sourced from cloud providers’ websites and converted to
pounds sterling using an exchange rate of $1.60 to £1.
B.2
Compute
Compute categories
B.2.1
The compute prices in £/core-hour are provided at Table B-238 for the instances listed at Table
B-3. These reflect the lowest commitment, so bulk discounting is not considered. The focus is on
CPU rather than RAM, and storage and data transfer costs are excluded wherever possible. Six
prices are presented for each cloud provider:
–
HPC Low and HPC High: these are designed to be appropriate for CPU-bound scientific
problems. Differentiated on CPU where possible, otherwise by RAM.
–
Low: the lowest price per core-hour available. This excludes some “micro” type instances
where the instance does not have an allocated virtual core proportion.
–
High: Aiming for a specification similar to Amazon’s erstwhile High CPU extra-large instance
type (c1.xlarge).
–
High Memory Large: An instance with the largest amount of RAM.
–
GPU: instances offering Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cards as a processing resource.
B.2.2
In addition, when a cloud provider offers HPC-specific nodes, this is highlighted.
B.2.3
The elements of the instance description are described using the template explained at Table B-1.
The prices are for the Linux operating system as shown in Table B-4. The changes in cloud
offering between autumn 2011 and March 2014 mean that new instances have typically been
selected for the compute categories that have roughly the same or better overall performance.
Item
Notes
1
Instance name
2
Number of virtual CPUs
3
Processor memory included
Can be in Gibibyte (GiB) or Gigabyte (GB)
4
Number and type of disks
Can be SSD or HDD
5
Network bandwidth
Gbit/s or a bandwidth descriptor (eg high)
Table B-1: Instance description template
38
The Table is in the same order as the March 2014 analysis, with the same names.
CC551D001-1.0
25
Provider
HPC low
Low
High
HPC high
HPC
nodes
High
memory
large
GPU
Data centre used
for price
Amazon EC2
0.047
0.038
0.070
0.047
Y
0.068
0.051
US East
Azure
0.038
0.039
0.038
0.038
N
0.103
N
US East
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
0.054
0.047
0.054
0.054
N
0.054
N
Standard price
0.063
1.386
0.202
0.063
Y
0.073
N
The example is
based on US East
Amazon EC2
instances with a
20% utilisation
and 30% cost
savings generated
by the use of
CycleCloud’s
orchestration
software (see
paragraph 2.5.4)
Eduserv
0.047
0.043
0.092
0.046
N
0.185
N
UK
ElasticHosts
0.188
0.080
0.012
0.188
N
0.188
N
UK
0.045
0.018
0.045
0.027
N
0.027
N
UK - priced in
Flexiscale units
GoGrid
0.038
0.038
0.038
0.038
N
0.038
N
Standard price
Google Compute Engine
0.041
0.065
0.065
0.065
N
0.076
N
US
HP Cloud
0.094
0.019
0.070
0.127
N
0.211
N
Standard price
Joyent
0.045
0.035
0.075
0.075
N
0.127
N
Standard price
0.075
0.075
0.075
0.075
Y
0.075
N
Standard price per
core-hour across
the range
Rackspace
0.125
0.030
0.030
0.125
N
0.125
N
UK
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
0.037
0.030
0.049
0.037
N
0.037
N
Amsterdam –
Western Europe
Terremark vCloud
Express
0.050
0.022
0.050
0.073
N
0.073
N
Standard price
Cycle Computing
39
CycleCloud
Flexiscale
Penguin
Table B-2: March 2014 on-demand prices (£/core-hour) for various compute categories
39
26
The Cycle Cloud price assumes savings of 30% for 50% utilisation for each compute category and with core-hours being
within the lowest price tier of $800 per month. This model is realistic for each compute category, except for low. This is
because the savings assumed are much less than the monthly charge in this case.
CC551D001-1.0
Provider
HPC Low
Low
High
HPC High
Amazon EC2
cc2.8xlarge
32 vCPU (16
cores ex hyper
threading)
60.5GiB
4x840GB
10Gbit/s
m1.small
1 vCPU
1.7GiB
1x160GB
m3.2xlarge
8 vCPU
30GiB
2x80GB SSD
High
c3.8xlarge
32 vCPU
60GiB
2x320GB SSD
10Gbit/s
Azure
Extra large (A4)
8 vCPU
14GB
Small (A1)
1 vCPU
1.75GB
Large (A3)
4 vCPU
7GB
Extra large (A4)
8 vCPU
14GB
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
2x2.00GHz
Gainestown
E5504 8 cores
48GB
2x147GB
1x2.66 GHz
Woodcrest
E5150 2 cores
2GB
73GB
2x2.00GHz
Gainestown
E5504 8 cores
48GB
2x147GB
2x2.00GHz
Gainestown
E5504 8 cores
48GB
2x147GB
Cycle Computing CycleCloud
HPC
Nodes
Y
High memory
large
GPU
cr1.8xlarge
32 vCPU
244GiB
2x120GB SSD
10Gbit/s
g2.2xlarge
8 vCPU
15GiB 1x60GB
SSD
High
N
A7
8 vCPU
56GB
N
N
2x2.00GHz
Gainestown
E5504 8 cores
48GB
2x147GB
N
As for Amazon EC2 as an example
Eduserv
32 vCPU
60.5GB
1 vCPU
1.7GB
8 vCPU
30GB
32 vCPU
60GB
N
32v CPU
244GB
N
ElasticHosts
8 vCPU (20,000
core MHz)
32GB
1 vCPU (2,000
core MHz)
1GB
4 vCPU (10,000
core MHz)
7GB
8 vCPU (20,000
core MHz)
32GB
N
8 vCPU (20,000
core MHz)
32GB
N
Flexiscale
4 vCPU
8GB
1vCPU
0.5GB
4 vCPU
8GB
8vCPU
8GB
N
8vCPU
8GB
N
GoGrid
XX-Large
16 vCPU
16G
800GB
X-Small
0.5 vCPU
0.5GB
25GB
X-Large 8
vCPU
8GB
400GB
XXX-Large
24 vCPU
24GB
1,200GB
N
XXX-Large
24 vCPU
24GB
1,200GB
N
Google Compute Engine
n1-highcpu-16
16 vCPU
14.4GB
0GB
n1-standard-1 1
vCPU
3.75GB
0GB
n1-standard-8
8 vCPU
30GB
0GB
n1-standard-16
16 vCPU
60GB
0GB
N
n1-highmem-16
16 vCPU
104GB
0GB
N
Standard 4XL
12 vCPU
60GB
900GB
Standard extra
small
1 vCPU
1GB
20GB
Standard 2XL
8 vCPU
30GB
570GB
Standard 8XL
16 vCPU
120GB
1,800GB
N
High Memory
2XL
4 vCPU
60GB
570GB
N
Joyent
High CPU
7 vCPU
7GiB
263 GB
up to 1Gbit/s
Standard
1 vCPU
1.75GiB
56GB
up to 1Gbit/s
Standard
8 vCPU
30GiB
1,683GB
up to 1Gbit/s
Standard
8 vCPU
30GiB
1,683GB
up to 1Gbit/s
N
High memory
8 vCPU
68.375GiB
1,122 GB
up to 1Gbit/s
N
Penguin
H30 queue
32 vCPU
128GB
1TB scratch on
login node
10GigE data
network
M40 queue
1 vCPU
4GB
1TB scratch
10GigE data
network
M40 queue
8 vCPU
32GB
1TB scratch on
login node
10GigE data
network
H30 queue
32 vCPU
128GB
1TB scratch on
login node
10GigE data
network
Y
M40 queue
32 vCPU
128GB
1TB scratch on
login node
10GigE data
network
N
Performance
flavours class 2
24 vCPU
90GB
3x300GB SSD
7.5Gbit/s
Performance
flavours class 1
1 vCPU
1GB SSD
1x20GB
200Mbit/s
Performance
flavours class 1
8 vCPU
8GB SSD
1x40GB SSD
+1x80GB SSD
1.6Gbit/s
Performance
flavours class 2
32v CPU
120GB
1x40GB SSD +
1x1,200GB SSD
10Gbit/s
N
Performance
flavours class 2
32 vCPU
120GB
1x40GB SSD +
1x1,200GB SSD
10Gbit/s
N
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
16 vCPU
48GB
100GB
1 vCPU
1GB
100GB
8 vCPU
32GB
100GB
16 vCPU
48GB
100GB
N
16 vCPU
48GB
100GB
N
Terremark vCloud Express
8 vCPU
8GB
1 vCPU
0.5GB
8 vCPU
4GB
8 vCPU
16GB
N
8 vCPU
16GB
N
HP Cloud
Rackspace
Table B-3: Instances used for March 2014 costs
CC551D001-1.0
27
40
Provider
Notes and further information
Amazon EC2
Linux included in price
Azure
Linux and Windows included in price
Baremetalcloud (was NewServers)
OS of choice included in per hour price, including Ubuntu
VMWare+ OpenStack
The instances selected for Baremetalcloud are all bare metal
for comparability with autumn 2011. Baremetalcloud now
also provides virtual servers.
Cycle Computing CycleCloud
As per chosen cloud solution
Eduserv
Linux included in base price
ElasticHosts
Debian 6.0, Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS and CentOS Linux included
in base price
ElasticHosts does not have fixed instance types. The
instances in Table B-3 are chosen as exemplars
Flexiscale
Linux included in base price
GoGrid
Windows Server, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux included in
base price
Google Compute Engine
Linux included in base price
HP Cloud
Linux included in base price
Joyent
Linux included in base price
Penguin
Bare-metal servers
Scyld ClusterWare with support for SUSE Linux Enterprise
included in base price
Support included in price
Data (or Network) transfers both in and out included in
price
Access via CLI (command line interface) or GUI Web Portal
Rackspace
Linux included in base price
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
CentOS Linux included in base price
Terremark vCloud Express
Unlicensed servers (assumed to mean Linux)
Table B-4: Operating systyems selected for March 2014 instance prices
B.2.4
Figure B-1 presents graphically for each cloud provider the range of prices set out at Table B-2.
The thin bars represent the range of prices (Low to High in Table B-2) that would be appropriate
for CPU-bound tasks. The wide bars represent the range of prices for instances likely to be most
suitable for CPU-bound tasks (HPC low to HPC high). These are typically larger instances with
more virtual cores, and in the case of Amazon and Penguin, they represent distinct HPC nodes
with superior characteristics. It is important to note that prices are not normalised by
performance.
B.2.5
The conclusion drawn from this analysis in March 2014 is that, while noting that researchers
need to trade-off application performance with cost and choice of cloud instance, they can
expect to pay up to 19p per core-hour for instances most suitable for CPU-bound tasks (with the
average of the ranges being ~6.5p to ~7.5p per core-hour).
40
All servers are virtualised unless stated otherwise.
28
CC551D001-1.0
Cost per core-hour
£0.20
£0.15
£0.10
£0.05
£0.00
Figure B-1: Range of cloud prices, not normalised for performance; thick bars indicate instances
of most relevance for CPU-bound application (see paragraph B.2.3)
B.3
Storage
B.3.1
Table B-5 shows indicative persistent storage costs for a range of cloud providers. The cloud
providers use either a flat rate or a tiered structure for pricing storage. Small amounts of storage
(eg first 1GB) can be free. For a tiered structure, the range represents the prices for 500TB of
storage, unless specified otherwise, and the smallest charged volume (ie the next GB, where the
first GB is free).
CC551D001-1.0
29
41
Cloud provider
Amazon EBS
43
Amazon S3
Storage charge (£/month/GB)
Object
0.031
-
-
0.078
-
-
-
-
-
0.095
Snapshots stored on S3: flat rate
44
Baremetalcloud
(was
NewServers)
Cycle Computing
CycleCloud
Eduserv
ElasticHosts
Flexiscale
GoGrid
`HP Cloud
-
-
Standard: tiered structure
-
-
RRS: tiered structure
-
0.006
Glacier archive storage: flat rate
-
0.032 - 0.044
0.032 – 0.032
-
0.039 – 0.045
LRS: tiered structure
0.040 – 0.055
0.046 – 0.061
-
0.046 - 0.061
GRS: tiered structure
0.052 – 0.071
0.059 – 0.077
-
0.059 – 0.077
RA-GRS: tiered structure
0.054 -0.180
-
0.054 - 0.180
-
-
Tiered, lower range corresponds to 10TB target
-
-
Tiered, lower range corresponds to 10TB target
-
Current offering is 36GB, 73GB, 146GB or 300GB.
0.091 – 0.245
Amazon EC2 use for example
-
-
0.300
Tier 1 (SAS or SATA and SSD hybrid storage): flat rate
-
-
0.175
Tier 2 (SATA storage with SSD metadata acceleration): flat rate
-
-
0.110
Tier 3 (SATA storage supporting archiving): flat rate
-
-
0.300
SSD: flat rate
-
-
0.060
HDD: flat rate
-
-
0.045
-
Flat rate for disk storage, plus £0.018 per GB transferred
0.075
-
-
-
Block storage: flat rate
-
-
Cloud storage: tiered with first 10 GB/month free
0.063 – 0.074
0.053
0.025
-
Persistent disk: flat rate
-
-
-
0.078
Snapshot storage: flat rate
0.063
-
-
-
Flat rate plus £0.062 per million IO requests
-
0.056
-
-
Flat rate plus £0.006 per 10,000 object requests
-
-
-
0.063
Snapshot stored in HP object storage: flat rate
0.094
NFS (NetApp)
0.040 – 0.054
-
-
Manta: tiered, this is the price per copy with the default being 2
copies but 1 – 6 copies possible, spread across 3 data centres in
US-East
-
0.063
-
-
First 1GB free, thereafter flat rate
0.370
-
-
SSD volume: flat rate, 100GB to 1 TB, up to 14 volumes
-
-
Standard volume: flat rate, 100GB to 1TB,up to 14 volumes
-
-
Cloud files: tiered structure
-
Terremark
vCloud Express
-
At cost from cloud provider
0.090
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
IOPS: flat rate plus £0.063/provisioned IOPS/month for 1GB-1TB
0.031 – 0.043
-
Rackspace
Standard: flat rate plus £0.031 per million IO requests for 1GB-1TB
0.038 – 0.053
Joyent
Penguin
-
-
-
Google Compute
Engine
Other
Azure
Attached
42
disk
Notes
Block
0.058 – 0.070
-
-
-
0.070
Snapshot: flat rate
-
0.063
-
-
Object storage: flat rate, in 20GB increments up to 300GB as
additional instance drive
0.469
-
-
-
SAN (iSCSI): flat rate, in 20GB increments
-
-
0.313
-
NAS: flat rate, in 20GB increments
-
-
0.156
-
Flat rate: up to 15 virtual disks (including system) up to 512GB
each
Table B-5: March 2014 storage costs for a range of commercial cloud providers
41
42
43
44
30
The first element of a range given for a tiered structure gives the price for 500TB/month, unless otherwise stated (eg,
where 500TB of storage is not offered). The second element gives the price for lowest charged-for tier.
Attached disk can be virtual or physical, depending on the offering.
Standard S3 storage offers multiply redundant, highly available storage. Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) provides a
lower level of redundancy. Glacier provides highly available archive and backup storage (see
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/details/ [accessed 28 March 2014]).
Azure offers Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), Geographically Redundant Storage (GRS) and Read-Access GRS (RA-GRS).
Other refers to prices for NoSQL database storage.
CC551D001-1.0
B.4
Data transfer
B.4.1
Table B-6 shows indicative prices for data transfer to or from the Internet for a range of
providers. The cloud providers use either a flat rate or a tiered structure for pricing data transfer.
Low data transfer volumes (eg first 1GB) can be free. For a tiered structure, the range represents
the prices 500TB of data transfer, unless specified otherwise, and the smallest charged transfer
(eg the next GB transferred after the first free GB).
Cloud provider
Data transfer in from
Internet (£/GB)
Data transfer out to
Internet (£/GB)
Notes
Amazon EC2
0.000
0.037 – 0.075
Outbound has tiered structure with
first 1GB free, 0.037 applies to
500TB/month
Azure
0.000
0.044 – 0.080
Charges for data transfer out are
tiered with first 5GB out free. 0.044
applies to 500TB/month
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
0.000
0.000
Free internap, first 3GB per hour of
local bandwidth free
Cycle Computing CycleCloud
At cost from cloud infrastructure provider
Amazon EC2 use for example
Eduserv
0.000
0.105
Flat rate
ElasticHosts
0.100
0.200
0.100
0.200
Committed in advance
Burst above committed level
Flexiscale
0.045
0.045
Flat rate
GoGrid
0.000
0.050 – 0.075
Free private network data transfer
between servers within a single data
centre plus free inbound data transfer
Outbound has tiered structure with
first 1GB free
Google Compute Engine
0.000
0.050 – 0.075
For egress to EMEA
Tiered structure, 0.050 applies for
more than 10TB/month
HP Cloud
0.000
0.049 – 0.100
Tiered structure with first 1GB free,
Low corresponds to 250TB/month
Joyent
0.000
0.037 – 0.075
Tiered structure with first 1 GB out
free.0.037 applies to 500TB/month
Penguin
0.000
0.000
Covered by log in node charges (if
any)
Rackspace
0.000
0.048 - 0.080
Tiered structure, 0.048 applies to
500GB/month
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
0.063
0.063
Flat rate
Terremark vCloud Express
0.106
0.106
Flat rate
Table B-6: March 2014 data transfer costs for a range of cloud providers
B.5
Reserved and spot instances
Reserved instances
B.5.1
Reserved instances offer lower instance prices for an up-front charge and a reduced hourly
charge. For comparison with the previous report, Table B-7 provides this information for the
Amazon EC2 cc2.8xlarge instance (see Table B-3). This is in fact the same as for autumn 2011.
CC551D001-1.0
31
Reserve type
Up front (£)
On-demand
Cost per instance-hour (£)
0
1.500
Light usage 1 year
1,101
0.565
Light usage 3 years
1,694
0.565
Medium usage 1 year
2,591
0.338
Medium usage 3 years
3,986
0.338
Heavy usage 1 year
3,125
0.226
Heavy usage 3 years
4,794
0.226
Table B-7: March 2014 and reserve prices (£ per instance hour) for Amazon EC2 cc2.8xlarge
instance
Spot instances
B.5.2
A snapshot of the spot prices for the Amazon EC2 compute categories (see Table B-3) is set out at
Table B-8.45 This illustrates that use of spot instances can achieve savings of 70% – 80% over the
on-demand prices, but at the risk of work being lost or delayed if the price changes suddenly.
There does seem to be considerable variation possible in spot prices;46 on some occasions, the
spot price has significantly exceeded the on-demand price.
Provider
HPC low
Low
High
HPC high
High memory
large
GPU
Amazon EC2 - on-demand
0.047
0.038
0.070
0.047
0.068
0.051
Amazon EC2 – spot
0.005
0.005
0.010
0.010
0.007
0.013
Reduction (%)
88.7
88.0
86.3
78.6
89.5
73.7
Table B-8: Spot prices (£ per core-hour) for Amazon EC2 compute categories on 20 March 2014
B.6
Pricing models
B.6.1
The different cloud providers have different approaches to charging for use that can lead to
significant differences in the bill. Table B-9 outlines the key features of on-demand charging for
each cloud provider considered.
45
This was calculated from the spot prices for US East on 20 March 2014. The prices are given on
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/spot-instances/ [accessed 20 March 2014].
At the time of writing, http://awsspotprices.com/ provides a tracker for spot prices by Amazon EC2 instance type for the
last 30 days [accessed 20 March 2014].
46
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Cloud provider
Pricing approach
For details see
See billing topic on http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Amazon EC2
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
There is no data transfer charge between two Amazon Web Services
within the same region (eg US East)
47
Amazon EBS standard and IOPS volumes are charged per GB/month
for provisioned storage until the storage is released
Amazon EBS snapshots to S3 are charged per GB/month for data stored
Amazon S3
Pricing is based on the average storage used throughout the month
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
Instance pricing is on a per minute basis
http://www.windowsazure.com/enus/pricing/details/virtual-machines/
Storage capacity is billed in units of the average daily amount of data
stored (in GB) over a monthly period
http://www.windowsazure.com/enus/pricing/details/storage/
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
Compute instances charged by the hour
Each target includes 1 million IO requests per hour. Additional requests
cost £0.063 per million
Each server hour includes 3GB of internet transit. There is no charge for
bursting up to full port speed (1Gbit/s)
http://documentation.baremetalcloud.com/display/b
mc/Billing
Cycle Computing
CycleCloud
As per infrastructure provider
Azure
Charged on total usage per month
Volume- and commitment-based discounts available
Eduserv
http://assetsproduction.govstore.service.gov.uk/G4/Eduserv0244/51f978b012a2fcb9e8000979/QD1/CloudComput
e(IL0-2)_ServiceDefinition_Eduserv.pdf
http://assetsproduction.govstore.service.gov.uk/G4/Eduserv0244/51f978b012a2fcb9e8000979/QD4/CloudComput
e(IL0-2)_Pricing_Eduserv.pdf
ElasticHosts
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
Storage charged based on virtual drive provisioned
http://www.elastichosts.co.uk/pricing-information/
http://www.elastichosts.co.uk/?s=disk+pricing
Resources are charged in Flexiscale units, which need to be bought in
advance. Flexiscale unit use is charged for every hour the compute
resource is available
Storage charged based on virtual drive provisioned
http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/
Flexiscale
Table B-9: Key features of the on-demand charging models for each cloud provider (part 1 of 2)
47
IOPS volumes included a specified number of IO operations per month.
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33
Cloud provider
GoGrid
Google Compute
Engine
HP Cloud
Pricing approach
https://wiki.gogrid.com/index.php/Billing_Model
All machine types are charged a minimum of 10 minutes. After 10
minutes, instances are charged in 1-minute increments rounded up to
the nearest 1 minute
https://developers.google.com/compute/pricing#mac
hinetype
Persistent disks are charged for provisioned space per disk. IO
operations are included in charges for provisioned space
https://developers.google.com/compute/pricing#persi
stentdisk
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
http://www.hpcloud.com/pricing
Storage pricing is based on average amount of virtual storage used each
month, the amount of data transferred, and the number of requests
(Get, Put, Post, Copy, or List) made
http://www.hpcloud.com/pricing#Block
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
http://wiki.joyent.com/wiki/display/jpc2/Provisioning+
a+Machine
System storage is included in instance charges. Additional storage
charged per GB/month on provisioned level
Joyent
Manta storage is charged per hour or part hour. The hourly rate is
1/730 of the GB/month charge
Penguin
Rackspace
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
Terremark vCloud
Express
For details see
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
Not found on website – call 1 (0) 855 456 9368
Compute instances charged by usage, metered down to 0.001 of a corehour
https://pod.penguincomputing.com/about
Storage is charged per GB/month, for allocated storage, tracked daily
https://pod.penguincomputing.com/services
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
http://www.rackspace.co.uk/calculator
Block storage is charged per GB/month for provisioned volumes
http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud/blockstorage/pricing
Cloud files are charged per GB/month on actual amount used
http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud/files
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
Not found on website – call 1 (0) 866 398 7638
Storage charged per GB/month for provisioned volumes
Compute instances charged by the hour for any provisioned resource.
Partial instance-hours used are charged as full hours
System storage is included in instance charges. Additional storage
charged per GB/month on provisioned level
https://community.vcloudexpress.terremark.com/enus/product_docs/w/wiki/am-i-billed-for-my-serverswhile-they-are-powered-off.aspx
http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/pricing.aspx
Table B-9: Key features of the on-demand charging models for each cloud provider (part 2 of 2)
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C.1
Introduction
C.1.1
This Annex repeats the data and assumptions used to generate the autumn 2011 cloud prices.
The data was sourced from cloud providers’ websites and converted to pounds sterling using an
exchange rate of $1.60 to £1.
C.2
Compute
C.2.1
The compute prices in £/core-hour are provided at Table C-148 for the instances listed at Table
C-2. These reflect the lowest commitment, so bulk discounting is not considered. The focus is on
CPU rather than RAM, and storage and data transfer costs are excluded wherever possible. Four
prices are presented for each cloud provider:
C.2.2
–
HPC Low and HPC High: these are designed to be appropriate for CPU-bound scientific
problems. Differentiated on CPU where possible, otherwise by RAM.
–
Low: the lowest price per core-hour available. This excludes some “micro” type instances
where the instance does not have an allocated virtual core proportion.
–
High: Aiming for a specification similar to Amazon’s erstwhile High CPU extra-large instance
type (c1.xlarge).
In addition, when a cloud provider offers HPC-specific nodes, this is highlighted.
Provider
HPC low
Amazon EC2
0.047
0.053
0.053
0.10
Y
US East
Azure
0.075
0.075
0.075
0.075
N
US East
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
0.047
0.047
0.069
0.098
N
Standard price
0.108
0.064
0.064
0.12
Y
Example based
on Amazon EC2
US East
Eduserv
7.1×10–4
0.012
0.032
0.067
N
UK
ElasticHosts
0.026
0.026
0.04
0.037
N
UK
0.033
0.022
0.055
0.055
N
UK - priced in
Flexiscale units
GoGrid
0.12
0.11
0.12
0.12
N
Standard price
Google Compute Engine
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Joyent
0.053
0.053
0.175
0.10
N
Standard price
Penguin
0.193
0.068
0.193
0.19
Y
Standard price
N
UK
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
0.052
0.052
0.084
0.054
N
Europe
Terremark vCloud Express
0.008
0.008
0.1
0.15
N
Standard price
49
Low
High
HPC high
HPC
nodes
Cycle Computing CycleCloud
Flexiscale
HP Cloud
Rackspace
Data centre used
for price
Table C-1: Autumn 2011 prices (£/core-hour) for various compute categories
48
49
The Table is in the same order as the March 2014 analysis, with the same names.
This has been amended from the previous report to reflect a change of view on hyperthreading for this instance and for
a rounding/typographic error.
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35
Provider
Amazon EC2
HPC Low
Low
High
HPC High
Cluster Compute 8
Extra Large US East
cc2.8xlarge
Calculated on the
basis of 16 cores
(ignoring hyper
threading)
Small instance, US
East m1.small
High CPU Extra Large
US East c1.xlarge
Cluster Compute
Quad Extra Large US
East cc1.4xlarge
Azure
All Azure core-hours have the same cost
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
Jumbo
Jumbo
24 vCPU, 0.5GB RAM
ElasticHosts
20 core GHz (~10
cores), 1GB RAM
Flexiscale
HPC
Nodes
Y
N
Small
Fast
N
1 vCPU, 0.5GB RAM
8 vCPU, 8GB RAM
24 vCPU, 48GB
N
20000 core MHz (~10
cores), 1GB RAM
2000 core MHz, (~1
core), 1GB RAM
20 core GHz (~10
cores), 8GB RAM
N
4 Cores, 8GB RAM
8 Cores, 0.5GB RAM
4 cores, 8GB RAM
8 Cores, 8GB RAM
N
All same price
0.5 core, 0.5GB RAM
Google Compute Engine
-
-
-
-
HP Cloud
-
-
-
-
-
Medium High CPU
Small
XXL 32GB
High CPU XL 8GB
N
Compute node
($0.2/CH) + login
node ($79.95/month
= $0.11/hour)
Just a login node
Compute node
($0.2/CH) + login
node ($79.95/month
= $0.11/hour)
Compute node
($0.2/CH) + login
node ($79.95/month
= $0.11/hour)
Y
-
-
-
-
-
Gold 32bit SUSE
Gold 32bit SUSE
Copper 64bit SUSE
Platinum 64bit SUSE
N
8 Cores, 0.5GB RAM
8 Cores, 0.5GB RAM
8 Cores, 8GB RAM
8 Cores, 16GB RAM
N
Cycle Computing
Eduserv
GoGrid
Joyent
Penguin
Rackspace
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
Terremark vCloud Express
Amazon EC2 + 20%
Y
All same price
N
-
Table C-2: Autumn 2011 instances used for cost comparison
C.2.3
Figure C-1 presents graphically for each cloud provider considered the range of prices set out at
Table C-1. The thin bars represent the range of prices (Low to High in Table C-1) that would be
appropriate for CPU-bound tasks. The wide bars represent the range of prices for instances likely
to be most suitable for CPU-bound tasks (HPC low to HPC high). These are typically larger
instances with more virtual cores, and in the case of Amazon and Penguin, they represent distinct
HPC nodes with superior characteristics. It is important to note that prices are not normalised by
performance.
C.2.4
The conclusion drawn from this analysis in autumn 2011 was that, while noting that researchers
need to trade-off application performance with cost and choice of cloud instance, they could
expect to pay up to 19p per core-hour for instances most suitable for CPU-bound tasks (with the
average of the ranges being ~7p to ~10p per core-hour).
36
CC551D001-1.0
Cost per core-hour
£0.20
£0.15
£0.10
£0.05
£0.00
Figure C-1: Range of cloud prices, not normalised for performance; thick bars indicate instances
of most relevance for CPU-bound application (see paragraph C.2.3)
C.3
Storage
C.3.1
Table C-3 shows indicative storage costs for the cloud providers considered.
50
Cloud provider
Storage charge (£/month/GB)
Attached
disk
Notes
Block
Object
Amazon EBS
0.060
-
-
-
Standard: flat rate plus £0.031 per million IO requests for 1GB-1TB
Amazon S3
-
-
-
-
-
Azure
0.088
-
-
-
-
Baremetalcloud
(was
NewServers)
-
-
-
For a Storage Attached Network (SAN) volume
-
-
0.020
-
For a dedicated 250GB drive
Eduserv
-
-
0.067
ElasticHosts
-
-
0.060
Flexiscale
-
-
GoGrid
-
0.094
Google Compute
Engine
-
-
HP Cloud
-
-
Joyent
-
0.229
Penguin
0.000
Rackspace
SoftLayer (IBM
SmartCloud)
Terremark
vCloud Express
0.054 - 0.183
0.046- 0.055
Other
Assumed Tier 2 equivalent
HDD: flat rate
-
Flat rate for disk storage, plus £0.018 per GB transferred
-
-
Cloud storage: tiered with first 10 GB/month free
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
0.125
-
-
-
-
0.110
-
-
Cloud files
-
0.068
-
-
Object storage
-
-
0.156
-
-
51
Table C-3: Autumn 2011 storage costs for a range of commercial cloud providers
50
51
The first element of a range given for a tiered structure gives the price for 500TB/month, unless otherwise stated (eg,
where 500TB of storage is not offered). The second element gives the price for lowest charged-for tier.
Storage charge is based on $0.012 per day and 30.5 days in a month.
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37
C.4
Data transfer
C.4.1
Table C-4 shows indicative data transfer costs for the cloud providers considered.
Cloud provider
Data transfer in from
internet (£/GB)
Data transfer out to
internet (£/GB)
Amazon EC2
0.000
0.03 - 0.07
Azure
0.000
0.09375 - 0.125
Baremetalcloud (was
NewServers)
0.0625
0.0625
Cycle Computing CycleCloud
At cost from cloud provider
Eduserv
0.000
0.000
ElasticHosts
0.100 - 0.200
0.100- 0.200
Flexiscale
0.018 – 0.022
0.018 – 0.022
GoGrid
0.181
0.181
Google Compute Engine
-
-
HP Cloud
-
-
Joyent
0.080
0.080
Penguin
0.000
0.000
Rackspace
0.000
0.120
SoftLayer (IBM SmartCloud)
0.050 - 0.094
0.050 - 0.094
Terremark vCloud Express
0.106
0.106
Notes
Plus costs to transfer between
availability zones for outbound
Amazon EC2 use for example
2 units per month per GB
Free 20TB internet transfer per
month, then 0.08
Table C-4: Autumn 2011 data transfer costs for a range of cloud providers
38
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