Subscription and Credits

The Nuvolos platform natively provides compute resources and configurable tools for computational research and educational use cases, as well as for combinations of both.

The pricing structure of Nuvolos consists of two parts: the Nuvolos subscription and on-demand resources. The Nuvolos subscription is based on your contract with us and runs on an annual basis (different terms are possible by agreement). The on-demand resources are additional resources that can be purchased with Credits on top of those provided by the Nuvolos subscription. You can have a Nuvolos subscription without Credits, but you cannot spend Credits on Nuvolos without a subscription. Resources include compute capability and storage (see below).

The Nuvolos subscription

A Nuvolos subscription is based on a yearly contract with ALPHACRUNCHER AG (or ALPHACRUNCHER Inc.), the company that develops Nuvolos. Different contract terms are possible by agreement.

The subscription is tailored to your use case rather than packaged into fixed tiers. You describe your use case and approximate number of users; Nuvolos sizes the subscription against that information. This avoids the typical SaaS problem of paying for an unused tier - what you pay tracks what you actually need.

What a subscription allocates

A base subscription covers three independent dimensions:

• Access - how many users can concurrently use the platform. Seats distinguish between full-time and part-time users, and compliance is monitored by reviewing average concurrent utilisation rates.

• Compute allocation - a total number of Nuvolos Compute Unit (NCU) hours for the subscription period. NCUs are spent on concurrent Application runs (Airflow, VS Code, Spyder, and so on) up to the allocated total.

• Storage allocation - high-performance file system capacity on the Nuvolos file system (NFS).

The three dimensions are independent - the cost of a subscription scales with each separately. A use case with many light users may need many seats but few NCUs; a use case with few heavy users may need the opposite.

How the compute allocation is measured

Compute is measured in NCU hours. Your contract states the term total. The allocation is interpreted as an average over the year, which permits short-term fluctuations that exceed the allocation rate — useful for the spiky usage patterns of research workloads. Sustained over-consumption is billed against Credits (see [Cost control](link to 8.3) for management strategies).

For the underlying definition of an NCU (1 vCPU + 4 GB RAM) and how Application sizes consume NCUs, see Concepts › The hierarchy and resource model.

Credits

Credits are the unit of measure for everything beyond the regular subscription. They provide on-demand access to additional NCUs and to special allocations: credit-based Application sizes, GPUs, dedicated nodes, Large File Storage, database computation overage, and professional services.

Buying and using Credits

• Credits can be purchased at any time as long as you have a Nuvolos subscription.

• Unused Credits roll over to the next year provided the subscription is renewed.

• Credits cannot be acquired or used independently of a subscription.

• Credits can be applied to any resource available through Microsoft Azure cloud services, including specific compute needs, GPUs, and storage types.

To request a Credit purchase, contact [email protected] for a quote.

Application resource accounting

Each application on Nuvolos has a size that determines both the resources it uses and how those resources are billed. Sizes fall into two categories:

• Included sizes - consume NCUs from your subscription.

• Credit-based sizes - consume Credits.

Included sizes

When you run an Application at an Included size, the resource usage is recorded in NCUs. This usage is regularly compared against your subscription limit. Included sizes do not come with resource guarantees - an Application with 4 NCUs can use up to 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of RAM of a larger machine, but at peak load it may receive a smaller share depending on what other platform users are doing.

You can change the NCU allocation of an Application by changing its size. Self-service changes within the platform are possible between 1 and 16 NCUs.

Credit-based sizes

When you run an Application at a credit-based size, the Application's resource pool is charged in Credits according to the size's price. Credit-based sizes:

• Run on dedicated compute nodes - CPU, RAM, and GPU are guaranteed exclusively for the Application, regardless of other platform users.

• Must be enabled per Space by a space administrator before Instance Editors can use them (see Administration › Space and Instance administration).

• Are charged in real time: charges start when the Application starts and stop when it stops - through inactivity, Credit shortage, or the user stopping it explicitly. During runtime, Credit charges are accounted every 15 seconds.

Applications on credit-based sizes can scale between 8 vCPUs / 32 GB RAM and 120 vCPUs / 456 GB RAM, with corresponding GPU options. As with Included sizes, you can scale up and down as needed from inside the platform.

Storage

A Nuvolos subscription includes sufficient high-performance storage for your use case by default. Storage is backed by the Nuvolos file system, with Snowflake as the underlying database provider for tabular data.

Specific storage needs beyond the included allocation can be purchased with Credits:

• SQL-compliant table storage in the Scientific Data Warehouse, for tabular data that benefits from query and join capabilities.

• Large File Storage (LFS) for unusually large volumes of unstructured data (over 100 GB), where the cost profile of the standard file system would be inefficient.

Where to go next

• To understand how resources are organised into cost centres, see Resource pools and budgets.

• For practical strategies to reduce subscription consumption, see Pricing and cost control.

• For day-to-day monitoring of consumption, see Administration › Resource monitoring.