SURF User Knowledge Base
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The way that your wallet is charged for the usage of SURF Research Cloud resources depends on the type of contract that backs your wallet.

Contracts and budgets are generally issued for a specific cloud provider (SURF HPC Cloud, Azure, AWS ...). In order to see how your usage will affect your budget, look for the section on the cloud provider you use.

We now explain the financing sources that you can use within our own private cloud provider, known as SURF HPC Cloud.

SURF HPC Cloud

NWO grants

See for full details our main surf.nl webpage: https://www.surf.nl/en/apply-for-access-to-compute-services

NWO Pilots (E-Infra)

Compute resources

With E-Infra grants, we do not calculate in Dollars or Euros but in "credits". For the usage of one core (CPU) for one hour of "wall clock time", there is a price in credits. One hour of GPU usage is charged with five times the amount of a core-hour.

Each E-Infra grant provides your project with a total of 50.000 credits for compute-resources.

Storage

For E-Infra, the amount of granted storage is fixed. It is 2 Terabytes for one year.

NWO compute call

It is a grant that allows you to request at NWO exactly the amounts that you need in terms of compute and storage. It is meant for larger and long-lasting research when an NWO Pilot falls short.

RCCS and project-based contracts

RCCS contracts provide compute capacity to SURF members for special tariffs.

If your institution does not have an RCCS contract, you can make an agreement with SURF about what you need, and we will then create a contract for your project.

Please contact your own institute or SURF customer support ( klantsupport@surf.nl ) about the details.

For information on the conditions please refer to https://www.surf.nl/en/services

This page also has a link to a pdf-document that lists the prices.

In the document, search for "HPC Cloud".

Paused workspaces

Core hours

When a workspace is in the state "paused", no core hours are charged for it.

Storage

Storage will only be charged for if your budget is based on a RCCS contract.

NWO pilot grants ("E-Infra") allow for a fixed amount of storage. So with a grant-based budget it does not matter whether the workspace is paused or not. With grants, the billing of the storage is not time-based.