UCT-ICTS offers BL460 dual quad core CPUs with 2.4 GHz Xeon processors. The
blades come with either 16 or 32 GB of RAM, fiber channel HBAs and dual NICs. Compared to Amazon each CPU gives approximately 2 EC2
compute units. This equates to 16 EC2 compute units per blade.
Assume that a fully running blade will consume R20 electricity in
operational power and cooling power a day. Additionally add 1 hour support a day at R100. This last is probably an overestimate on a per
user basis, however it includes general maintenance for both HPC and the Grid.
Factoring in 500GB of SAN storage the cost of a BL460 blade is about R50,000 and
over its expected 3 year life span can can be broken down to R45 per day. To run a 30 day compute job on the UCT cluster fully
utilizing one blade would therefore cost approximately R5,000. A job that consumed only 1 CPU however would cost only 1/8, i.e. R625. This last number is however not strictly accurate, as the server
consumes a base level of power and requires a minimum of cooling regardless of whether it is running jobs. Additionally a job requiring
only 1 CPU may or may not require more or less administrative support, and also may require more or less space on the SAN.
Additionally cost of bandwidth inside the ICTS cluster is essentially
free as it's LAN traffic. 50 GB traffic in and out of the Amazon cloud a month would cost approximately R80, and this does not take the
additional cost of the SANREN bandwidth into account, although this would be fairly minimal. Currently however ICTS is not charging for use of its HPC cluster.
One EC2 Compute Unit provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.2
GHz Xeon processor. There is no Amazon instance that compares directly to ICTS's system which
would slot in somewhere between Amazon options 1 and 2. The prices quoted below assume a R$ exchange rate of 7, as well as access to the US-East Amazon compute region. The three Amazon options most similar to UCT's resources are:
1) High-CPU Extra Large Instance 7 GB of memory, 20 EC2 Compute Units, 1690 GB of local instance storage. A 30 day compute job would cost R3,486
2) High-Memory Double Extra Large Instance 34 GB of memory, 13 EC2
Compute Units, 850 GB of local instance storage. A 30 day compute job would cost R5,124
3) Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large 23 GB memory, 33 EC2 Compute Units, 1690 GB of local instance storage. A 30 day compute job would cost R8,197
An equivalent server from Rack Space; 16GB RAM, 2.8GHz Dual quad core, 620GB disk space and RHEL would cost about R6820 per month at a R£ exchange rate of 11.
Please note that UCT costs are approximate. No comparison of quality of service as well as stability of infrastructure has been taken into account.