This billing-based model is a means of applying service-catalogue or pricing-catalogue charges to virtual machines, high-performance computing, cloud services, static storage and consultancy services. 

Consultancy services

Consultancy services can be sourced for research and other externally funded projects, either in the temporary deployment of internal resources, or through recruitment agencies, or from service providers listed on the procurement system.

Expertise

Price

Price

Project management R508/h for project manager R414/h for senior project administrator
Business analyst R508/h -
Software development R688/h for senior developer R414/h for developer

High-Performance Computing

The purpose of a centralised HPC resource is to provide a reliable, scalable and economic computing facility to UCT’s researchers. Given the cost of electricity both for powering and cooling CPUs, it is imperative that UCT provides an affordable and environmentally friendly means of granting researchers access to computing resources.

Class

Cost

CPU hours

Cores

Days@full

R/CPUH

R/core

Platinum R 400 000 800 000 256 130 0.50 R1 562.50
Gold R 200 000 400 000 128 130 0.50 R1 562.50
Silver R 100 000 200 000 64 130 0.50 R1 562.50
Bronze R 50 000 100 000 40 104 0.50 R1 250.00
Steel R 10 000 20 000 20 42 0.50 R500.00
Copper R 0 0 5 0 0 R0

Virtual machines

Free trial offering (optional)

ICTS will provide a streamlined interface for creating, running and evaluating operating systems and applications in a virtual machine on Windows or Linux PC’s. The free virtual machine will offer 1 vCPU and 512MB memory as a once-off offering for a free trial period of three months.

Time-based discount (optional)

An annual discount rate can be calculated on the specific type of service/s rendered.

Standard machines

A local cloud-based option currently offers the following standard predefined machine types to researchers. Packages include replication of data once per week.

Prices range according to the server specifications required and are market related and therefore subject to change.

Machine type

vCPU

Memory

Root disk

M1-tiny 1 512MB 1GB
M1-small 1 2GB 20GB
M1-medium 2 4GB 40GB
M1-large 4 8GB 80GB
M1-xlarge 8 16GB 160GB
M1-xxlarge 8 32GB 160GB

Custom virtual machines

It is possible to create a custom machine type with a specific number of vCPUs and amount of memory if standard predefined machine types in the African Research Cloud are not optimal for the specified workload. Custom machine types may save on the cost of running on a larger, more expensive machine type if all the resources of that machine type are not required.

Prices are calculated per processing speed, memory and storage required. Packages include replication of data once per week.

Machine type

vCPU

Memory

Root disk

Monthly total

Small 1 1GB 20GB R156.33/month
Medium 4 2GB 60GB R533.51/month
Large 8 4GB 120GB R1 050.92/month

Cost of storage

Service

Plan

Price

One terabyte (TB) storage

Per year payment

R240 per TB month (R2 880 per year)

One storage

Three year payment plan

R180 per TB per month

Example:

  • If you purchase 1TB of storage for 3 years upfront it will be R180 per month = 1 x R180 x 12 months x 3 years = R6 480.
  • If you purchase 3 TB of storage for 3 years upfront it will be R180 per month = 3 x R180 x 12 months x 3 years = R19 440.