VM Flavors

 

Overview

The STFC Cloud provides a number of flavors to users but these fall into 4 categories at the moment.

The larger the flavor you choose the more resources you will be holding and the more power is consumed by the instance you have created. This also prevents other users from using these resources.

It is important that you should use the smallest flavor that meets the requirements of your workloads and if possible delete the instance when you are not using it.

No flavor has resilient storage. If this is required you should boot from Volume at VM creation time

Note: our flavors are created in such a way that they will efficiently pack onto the hardware we have - due to this we cannot create additional flavors on demand as that may lead to scheduling difficulties under heavy utilisation.

Compute flavors

l flavors

(e.g. l6.c252, l3.nano, l2.xsmall)

These are flavors which utilize local SSD storage on the hypervisors with all of the storage being allocated to the root disk. Larger l flavors may struggle to live migrate due to capacity availability and disk image sizes so where possible be sure that you can recreate your machines using other methods, such as configuration management.

le flavors

(e.g. le3.small, le2.medium)

These are flavors which utilize local SSD storage on the hypervisors with 100GB being allocated to the root disk and the rest to an ephemeral disk. Larger le flavors may struggle to live migrate due to capacity availability and disk image sizes so where possible be sure that you can recreate your machines using other methods, such as configuration management.

Compute flavor list

Name

RAM (MB)

Disk (GB)

Ephemeral Disk (GB)

VCPUs

Name

RAM (MB)

Disk (GB)

Ephemeral Disk (GB)

VCPUs

l3.nano             

8,192

50

0

2

l3.micro            

16,384

100

0

4

[dep-]l2.tiny             

30,720

200

0

8

l3.tiny             

30,720

200

0

8

[dep-]l2.xsmall           

61,440

400

0

16

l3.xsmall           

61,440

400

0

16

[dep-]le2.small           

125,952

100

700

30

le3.small           

125,952

100

700

30

[dep-]l2.small            

125,952

800

0

30

l3.small            

125,952

800

0

30

[dep-]le2.medium          

250,880

100

1500

60

 le3.medium          

250,880

100

1500

60

[dep-]l2.medium           

250,880

1600

0

60

 l3.medium           

250,880

1600

0

60

[dep-]le2.large           

501,760

100

3100

124

 le3.large           

501,760

100

3100

124

[dep-]l2.large            

501,760

3200

0

124

 l3.large            

501,760

3200

0

124

l6.c32

122,880

650

0

32

l6.c64

235,520

1300

0

64

l6.c124

471,859

2700

0

124

l6.c252

943,718

5400

0

252

GPU flavors

GPU flavors are not available by default and capacity is limited. To request access please contact STFC cloud support.

g flavors

(e.g. g-a100.x1, g-rtx4000.x4)

These have the same CPU configuration as l*.* flavors but have a GPU attached:

  • g-rtx4000.* have one or more NVidia Quadro RTX 4000 cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

  • g-rtx4000-ref.* have one or more NVidia Quadro RTX 4000 cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

    • These are older, out of warranty nodes which have been refitted with new GPUs. For this reason these are primarily reserved for short term use such as training courses. If you have a use case you want to use these for then please get in touch with cloud support.

  • g-a4000.* have one or more NVidia RTX A4000 cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

  • g-a4000-ref.* have one or more NVidia RTX A4000 cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

    • These are older out of warranty nodes which have been refitted with new GPUs. For this reason these are primarily reserved for short term use such as training courses. If you have a use case you want to use these for then please get in touch with support.

  • g-v100.* have one or more NVidia Tesla V100 32GB cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

  • g-a100.* have one or more NVidia Tesla A100 40GB cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

  • g-a100-n100.* have one or more NVidia Tesla A100 40GB cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4) with higher core count and more network bandwidth

    • These are currently reserved for specific projects.

  • g-a100-80gb.* have one or more NVidia Tesla A100 80GB cards attached (the smallest has 1, the largest has 8)

  • g-arc-a770.* have one or two Intel Arc A770 16GB cards

    • These are very limited in number and are primarily in place for prototyping.

  • g-amd-w6600.* have one or more AMD W6600 8GB cards (the smallest has 1, the largest has 4)

    • These are very limited in number and are primarily in place for prototyping.

f flavors

(e.g. f-xilinxu200.x1)

These are similar to the g* flavors but have fpga accelerators rather than GPUs

  • f-xilinxu200.* have one or more Xilinx U200 FPGA cards

    • These are very limited in number

GPU flavor list

Name

RAM (MB)

Disk (GB)

VCPUs

GPU(s)

Name

RAM (MB)

Disk (GB)

VCPUs

GPU(s)

 g-a4000-ref.x1      

91,200

700

12

1 x A4000

 g-a4000.x1          

122,880

400

16

1 x A4000

 g-a4000.x2          

245,760

800

32

2 x A4000

 g-a4000.x4          

491,520

1600

60

4 x A4000

 g-a4000.x8          

983,040

3200

124

8 x A4000

 g-rtx4000.x1        

92,160

700

12

1 x RTX4000

 g-rtx4000.x2        

184,320

1400

28

2 x RTX4000

 g-rtx4000.x4        

358,400

2800

60

4 x RTX4000

 g-rtx4000-ref.x1    

921,600

700

12

1 x RTX4000

 g-a100.x1           

102,400

1600

12

1 x A100 40GB

 g-a100.x2           

204,800

3200

28

2 x A100 40GB

 g-a100.x4           

460,800

6400

60

4 x A100 40GB

 g-a100.x1hm         

204,800

1600

12

1 x A100 40GB

 g-a100.x2hm         

460,800

3200

30

2 x A100 40GB

 g-a100.x4hm         

870,400

6400

60

4 x A100 40GB

 g-a100-n100.x1      

102,400

800

30

1 x A100 40GB

 g-a100-n100.x2      

225,280

1600

60

2 x A100 40GB

 g-a100-n100.x4      

450,560

3200

124

4 x A100 40GB

 g-a100-80gb.x1      

102,400

800

30

1 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb.x2      

225,280

1600

60

2 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb.x4      

450,560

3200

124

4 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb-2022.x1 

122,880

400

16

1 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb-2022.x2 

245,760

800

32

2 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb-2022.x4 

491,520

1600

60

4 x A100 80GB

 g-a100-80gb-2022.x8 

983,040

3200

124

8 x A100 80GB

 g-v100.x1           

76,800

700

12

1 x v100

 g-v100.x2           

174,080

1400

28

2 x v100

 g-v100.x4           

358,400

2800

60

4 x v100

g-arc-a770-ref.x1

158,720

1400

28

1 x Intel Arc A770

g-amd-w6600-ref.x1

92,160

700

12

1 x AMD w6600

f-xilinxu200.x1

57,344

400

16

1 x Xilinx U200

Flavor Lifetimes

In general flavors are tied to hardware generations. We run these generations for at least the length of their maintenance contracts.

Ideally we try to run these past the end of their maintenance contracts at a reduced SLA. This means that capacity available will decrease over time and all VMs on these flavors should be considered at risk.

There are several things that may shorten the amount of time that we run past the end of the contract.

  • Hardware that is particularly prone to failure leading to high maintenance overheads

  • Needing the rack or power space for increases in capacity, functionality or efficiency

  • Hardware no longer being supported by the software we need to use

Flavor Prefix

Generation Year (FY)

End Of Maintenance

Estimated Draining Date

Estimated Final EOL Date

Flavor Prefix

Generation Year (FY)

End Of Maintenance

Estimated Draining Date

Estimated Final EOL Date

[dep-]l2/le2

2019/20

10/04/2023

10/04/2024

01/09/2024

l3/le3

2020/21

01/04/2026

01/04/2027

01/09/2027

l4

2020/21

01/04/2026

01/04/2027

01/09/2027

l5

2021/22

01/04/2025

01/04/2027

01/09/2027

l6

2022/23

06/11/2025

01/04/2028

01/09/2028

g-rtx4000

2020/21

01/04/2024

01/04/2026

01/09/2026

g-rtx4000

2021/22

01/04/2025

01/04/2027

01/09/2027

g-a4000

2022/23

01/04/2026

01/04/2028

01/09/2028

g-v100

2019/20

01/04/2023

01/04/2025

01/09/2025

g-v100

2020/21

01/04/2024

01/04/2026

01/09/2026

g-a100

2020/21

01/04/2024

01/04/2026

01/09/2026

g-a100-n100

2020/21

01/04/2024

01/04/2026

01/09/2026

g-a100-80gb

2021/22

01/04/2025

01/04/2027

01/09/2027

g-a100-80gb-2022

2022/23

01/04/2026

01/04/2028

01/09/2028

The Draining date is the date when access to the flavors will be restricted

The final EOL date is when the hardware turned off

We will re-evaluate these dates periodically and may revise the draining and EOL dates to be closer to the end of maintenance.

Deprecated flavors

c flavors

(e.g. c2.xlarge, c3.small)

 

l2 and le2 flavors

(e.g. l2.large, le2.small)

these flavors have now been renamed to dep-l2 and dep-le2 to reflect that these are deprecated and should be considered at risk. We will be confirming the Final End Of Life date for these shortly. This will be the date when any remaining running VMs will be terminated.

Related articles

Reviewer

Review period

Reviewer

Review period

Reviewed by @Chris Green May 30, 2024

6 months