Virtual Machines
CHPC operates and maintains two virtual machine (VM) farms which are available to researchers. One is for general use, and one is in the protected environment (PE) for researchers working with sensitive data, such as Protected Health Information (PHI).
Note in the following the top portion is the information about the current VM farms, Prismatic2 in the PE and Sawmill2 in the general environment. As of October 2021, all new VMs will be on this new hardware.
We have left the specification for the old VM hardware, Prismatic and Sawmill. as it will remain in service, running for at least a coupe more years.
Current VM Hardware - Sawmill2 and Prismatic2
Each of the current VM farms is comprised of two servers, and is capable of having an additional two servers added. Each server has:
- an AMD Epyc 7502P processor (2.5 GHz, 32 physical cores)
- 512 GB RAM
- 2 x 40G ethernet cards
The storage is a Seagate STX-2U12 RAID disk enclosure, with 12 x 3.84 TB self encrypted SSDs.
For more information about access and allocation of the general VM farm, please see:
- Policy 1.4.2 Virtual Machine Allocation Policies
- Policy 2.6 Virtual Machine Policies (Note that the Virtual Machine backup policies are described on this page)
Pricing of VMs:
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 | $425 |
| 2 | 8 | 2 | 100 | $615 |
| 4 | 16 | 4 | 200 | $990 |
| 8 | 32 | 8 | 400 | $1745 |
| 16 | 64 | 8 | 800 | $3250 |
A limited amount of additional storage local to the VM is available, in 100GB increments, at a cost of $1400/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.
Old General VM Farm Hardware Specs - Sawmill
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.
Old Protected VM Farm Hardware Specs - Prismatic
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:
- 72 3GHz cores
- 1.1TB RAM
- 30TB SSD storage
- 16TB encrypting spinning storage