Virtual Machines
CHPC operates and maintains two virtual machine farms which are available to researchers. One is for general use, and one is for researchers working with sensitive data, such as Protected Health Information (PHI).
General VM Farm
This primary VM farm is currently being updated and has been named Sawmill. It is comprised of four Dell R7425 servers:
- 2 x AMD Epyc 7351 procs (2.4 GHz cores each, 16 cores/proc) per server
- Each server has 512 GB RAM
- 2 x 40G ethernet cards
The storage is a Dell Compellent tray, with SSD for front end caching, spinning drives for storage, and an usable capacity of 90TB
For more information about access and allocation of the general VM farm, please see:
Pricing of General VMs:
New March 2019 : With the replacement of the VM hardware, VMs will no longer be free). The VM pricing model is based on a block sizing increment, with five different block sizes available, and the cost based on the cost of the hardware and the number of blocks available to sell. The prices are for a 5 year time period (based on the hardware being purchased with a 5 year warranty).
Note that CHPC will offer to deploy a VM for a trial period of up to 6 months free of charge (provided that the VM does not require substantial customization).
| VM description | ||||
| Blocks | RAM (GB) | Cores | Storage (GB) | Price for 5 years |
| 1 | 4 | 2 | 50 | $475 |
| 2 | 8 | 2 | 100 | $705 |
| 4 | 16 | 4 | 200 | $1175 |
| 8 | 32 | 8 | 400 | $2115 |
| 16 | 64 | 8 | 800 | $3995 |
Additional VM storage is available, in 100GB increments, at a cost of $850/TB.
All of the above pricing are internal rates, for University of Utah research projects. Contact CHPC at helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu for pricing for non University of Utah research funded projects.
In addition to the above pricing, there will be additional charges for customization, beyond the base VM installation, at a rate of $75/hour. Please work with CHPC to obtain an estimate of the cost of a VM deployment.
Protected VM Farm
The VM farm in the new PE (Prismatic) is comprised of four Dell R730 servers, each with:
- 24 3GHz cores (2x Intel 2687W-v4)
- 384GB RAM
- 2x 40G ethernet cards
Prismatic storage is comprised of a disk tray containing:
- 12x 3.8TB SSDs (not encrypted)
- 12x 2TB self encrypting 7.2K spinning drives
Note that the PE group space can also be used in conjunction with any Prismatic VM.
Accounting for fail-over and maintenance, this provides total usable resources of:
- 96 3GHz cores
- 1.1TB RAM
- 30TB SSD storage
- 16TB encrypting spinning storage
Pricing of PE VMs:
Note - Pricing updated March 2019
With the replacement of the VM hardware in the PE, VMs will no longer be free. The VM pricing model is based on a block sizing increment, with five different block sizes available, and the cost based on the cost of the hardware and the number of blocks available to sell. The prices are for a 5 year time period (based on the hardware being purchased with a 5 year warranty).
Note that CHPC will offer to deploy a VM for a trial period of up to 6 months free of charge (provided that the VM does not require substantial customization).
| VM description | ||||
| Blocks | RAM (GB) | Cores | Storage (GB) | Price for 5 years |
| 1 | 4 | 2 | 50 | $630 |
| 2 | 8 | 2 | 100 | $1025 |
| 4 | 16 | 4 | 200 | $1810 |
| 8 | 32 | 8 | 400 | $3380 |
| 16 | 64 | 8 | 800 | $6525 |
By default, the storage used will be the SSD, unless the project requires the use of encrypted storage.
Additional VM storage is available, in 100GB increments, at a cost of $1400/TB for SSD storage and $700/TB for encrypted spinning storage.
All of the above pricing are internal rates, for University of Utah research projects. Contact CHPC at helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu for pricing for non University of Utah research funded projects.
In addition to the above pricing, there will be additional charges for customization, beyond the base VM installation, at a rate of $75/hour. Please work with CHPC to obtain an estimate of the cost of a VM deployment.