Virtual Machines

More like this

Please find here below the list of prices and the Virtual Machine (VMware) options.

Virtual Machines pricing

	A	B	C	D	Above
Price	£49/yr	£98/yr	£196/yr	£392/yr	Available upon request
CPU Cores	1 core	2 cores	4 cores	8 cores
Memory	8GiB	16GiB	32GiB	64GiB
Data Disk[1]	50GiB	100GiB	200GiB	400GiB
Disk Type	Dell Powerstore
Networking	10Gbit
Operating Systems	Microsoft Windows Server 2019 GUI Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Standard Features	8am-6pm Monday-Friday Availability Monitoring Backups with 90 Day Data Retention Managed Anti-Virus Automated Monthly OS Patching Zero-Cost SSL Certificates.(certificates with up to 3 SANs only)
Additional Research-Only Features	SMB/CIFS/NFS Access to Research Filestore Zero-Cost DNS Domain Registration and Management
VM Console Access	By Request

Additional resources (On top of O/S) are charged at:

CPU cores: £16.33 per core,
RAM: £2.04 per GiB, Disk: £0.33 per GiB

[1] The Operating System disk is not included in this figure so this amount is free for use by the user/application.

Requests for a Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine Provision and Charging Overview

iSolutions provides Virtual Machine (VM) services to University staff. The service is chargeable. The charging model is based on an annual charge for up to a 5 year expected lifespan of the VM infrastructure. Costs are paid annually. Prices are subject to revision at the end of each charging period.

Standard operating systems

iSolutions offers three standard operating systems:

Windows Server 2019 GUI
Windows Server 2022
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL8)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL9)

These standard operating systems will be managed by iSolutions and will have their data backed-up by the iSolutions backup service. Operating Systems will be patched on a monthly basis.

Notes on Backup

Backups are performed overnight, with a retention period of up to 90 days.
We strongly advise that the university build is used. Please enquire should you have any other requirements.

Non-standard operating systems

It might be possible to provide other operating systems upon request, but there may be extra licence costs. Data will not be automatically backed-up. Any non-standard systems that are found to be compromised will be immediately shut down and rebuilt to their original settings.

Please contact iSolutions through ServiceLine to discuss any non-standard requirements with our support team.

Data storage requirements

Each specification of virtual machines includes disk space as detailed in the charging schedule.

It is possible to mount storage from the University research filestore to the Virtual Machine. This would normally be the most suitable way of storing data to be accessed by the VM, unless there is a technical reason that extra local disk space is required (see examples of typical uses of each specification in the charging schedule for more information).

Requesting a Virtual Machine (VM)

To request a VM you will require the following details:

Specification of server required (or definition of non-standard service requested if applicable)
Duration required (if possible please provide an end date when the service should be decommissioned)
Usernames and full names of a primary and a secondary contact (used to communicate with the main service owner should any work affecting the service be required)
A valid subproject code
A brief definition of the expected use of the VM service.

Use the "Virtual Machine request" form to request the creation of a Virtual Machine

University of Southampton