Costs

Costs for the virtual machines are billed on a pay-per-use basis. For the detailed prices, see https://www.switch.ch/engines. To determine the costs, the resource usage is measured for the items which have a cost:

  • Virtual CPU
  • RAM
  • GPU
  • Disk space (ephemeral storage / Volumes / Object storage / SSD storage)
  • Public IPv4 addresses
  • Software Licenses

In 2020, the costs are determined as follows:

  • Virtual Machines: vCPU, RAM, GPU, IPv4 addresses and ephemeral storage (usually the 20 GB predefined by the flavor)
  • Storage: volumes used on Ceph (as presented on the SWITCHengines user interface as Volumes) and object storage.
  • Software: As of 1.4.2018: Microsoft software (in particular the operating system Microsoft Windows Server) are billed. The usage of the Windows Server Images is billed on a per virtual CPU core basis per time unit.
  • If the VMs are either shelved or shut off (see below for more details) only the public IPv4 addresses and the storage are taken into account for the bill, the vCPU and RAM are not.
  • Note for GPU-VMs: When a GPU-VM is shelved, only the public IPv4 addresses and the storage are taken into account for the bill, the vCPU and RAM are not. When a GPU-VM is shut off, the public IPv4, the storage and the occupied GPUs are taken into account for the bill.

You can put your VM in different state. Openstack's component Horizon differs between the following ones:

  • Pause Instance: In this state, the server state is preserved in RAM, but operations have been stopped and will resume when instructed. You are still being charged for the computational resources dedicated to the Instance.
  • Suspend Instance: When you suspend a server, its state is stored on disk, all memory is written to disk, and the server is stopped. You are still being charged for the computational resources dedicated to the Instance.
  • Shelve Instance: The Instance is not resident on the compute host. This means you will not be billed for computational resources while the Instance is in this state. You can restart the server when you need it again. However, storage and IPv4's are still being charged.
  • Shut off Instance: Like powering off the Instance. This means you will not be billed for computational resources while the Instance is in this state. You can restart the server when you need it again. However, storage and IPv4's are still being charged, as are GPUs.

Usage reports

Designated contacts of the institutions have access to SWITCHengines usage reports on https://engines.admin.switch.ch.

You can access the reports by clicking on the "Billing" Tab. Then, look for the "CSV Reports" on the top right corner and select the time range via drop down. Once done, please click on the cloud symbole to download the CSV file. Depending on the selected time range the download might take some time.

The reports are provided in CSV format described in the following. The table has the following headers:

Tenant Region ObjectType ObjectID ObjectName ObjectDescription StartDate EndDate Price(CHF)

In the columns the following information is listed:

Tenant: OpenStack project name

Region: OpenStack region (Lausanne or Zurich)

ObjectType: Type of resource (Virtual Machine, Volume, Software, ...). SWITCHengines education VMs are identified by "Virtual Machine (education)"

ObjectID: Reference to identify the resoure

ObjectName: Name for the object provided by the user in case of VMs or volumes. In case of the IP address it's the IP address itself.

ObjectDescription: Further information about the resource such as:

  • For VMs: the VM flavor used
  • For storage: Amount of GB used
  • For IPs: the internally used IP address (if available)

StartDate: Start of usage (in ISO8601 format). Either it's the date of the start of the billing period (beginning of the quarter: 1.1. / 1.4. / 1.7. / 1.10.) or the date the resource was created / started.

EndDate: End of usage (in ISO8601 format). Either it's the date of the end of the billing period (end of the quarter: 30.3. / 30.6. / 30.9. / 31.12.) or teh date the resource was stopped / deleted.

Price(CHF): Price for the period of the usage (start to end date) excl. VAT.

Last update: 17.11.2020