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What does my subscription fee pay for? A subscription supports ongoing CIPRES operations. The activities funded by subscriptions include maintaining and improving the existing interface, testing, benchmarking, and releasing new tools, providing user support, monitoring and responding to interruptions in service, ensuring users have equal access to compute resources, helping individual users with special job requirements. Subscription proceeds will only be used to defray current costs, so we can continue to provide service to the community. CIPRES will always be a not-for-profit project. The US NSF still provides the compute time at no cost through the ACCESS project, and as a result, the cost of using CIPRES is much less per cpu hour than a commercial cloud provider.
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Will I be charged based on how much I use the resource, or is it a flat rate? Our model is based on a flat rate, renewable annual subscription. Level 1 subscriptions provide access to CIPRES codes, job submission tools, 150 GB free storage, user support, and 1000 core hours of compute time per year. Enhanced subscriptions provide the same benefits and access to more compute time. The subscription levels provide 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, or 200,000 core hours of compute time per year.
How will my usage be calculated? Usage is calculated based on the amount of compute time you consume in a calendar year. Your account is charged only for compute time you actually use. Most CIPRES jobs run on multiple processor cores, so your account will be charged for the number of compute cores your job used multiplied by the number of hours your jobs run. Further submissions from your account will be halted automatically when you reach your annual limit.
What happens if I need more time? You can access more compute time by purchasing a new subscription at any time. Any user account can purchase a new subscription at any time. Should you require more than 200,000 hours for a year, please contact us.
What happens if I don’t use all of my available time? By default, compute time available at the end of subscription year will not be carried over to the subsequent year, the year begins on the date of the most recent purchase. So you can extend the availability by making an additional purchase.
Can I charge this to my research grant? Yes. CIPRES will accept institutional procurement credit cards as well as purchase orders. Payment must be received before access to resources will be provided.
Why shouldn’t I just get my own ACCESS account and run jobs from the command line there? This is possible if you are at a US institution. However, ACCESS accounts can only be requested by users in the US who have a Ph.D. or are at the Principal investigator level or higher in their organization. ACCESS accounts do not provide a user interface, but instead rely on command line usage. The user is responsible for installing all of the codes they require, and configuring them to run efficiently. CIPRES handles all this for you.
Why shouldn’t I just use a cloud provider instead? It is possible to run your jobs through a cloud provider. However, this will require learning to use the command line interface, installing the tools you require, and benchmarking them so they run efficiently. The cost of running one CPU (provisioned like ours) at AWS is 8.5 cents (US) per hour, and this does not include network and data storage charges. In this model, 5,000 core hours on a “bare metal” AWS instance will cost at least $425 plus the amount of time required to set up the instance and install the code. For $170, a subscription at CIPRES provides 10,000 hours of compute time, access to current tools, 150 GB data storage, a user-friendly point and click interface, and full support.
