(project_costing)=

# Project costing

> This task is the responsibility of {ref}`role_project_team`.

## Support costs

The common infrastructure and technical support across all Turing TREs represents a fixed cost across all projects.
We aim to recover a proportion of these costs from each project:

- for short-running projects: **£550** as a one-off charge when the project is set up
- for long-running projects: **£550** for each month of operation

## Azure costs

The basic infrastructure of our TRE contains the following:

- remote desktop gateway
- networking and routing components
- 1 TB of secure file storage
- GitLab server for version control
- CodiMD server for collaborative document writing

The cost of this infrastructure is around **£540 per month**.

You will also need some virtual machines to analyse the secure data.
There is a list of available virtual machine sizes and costs [here](https://azureprice.net/?currency=GBP&timeoption=month&sortField=name).
Our default setup is to use one `Standard_D2s_v3` virtual machine (2 CPUs and 8 GB RAM)

- one Standard_D2s_v3 virtual machine
  - this costs around **£60 per month**

On top of this the following optional components can be added:

- database server (PostgreSQL and/or Microsoft SQL)
  - each database server costs around **£80 per month**

You can also make the following changes

- increase the amount of data storage
  - this costs around **£35 per TB per month**
- increase the number of CPUs and amount of available RAM on the analysis VM
  - costs are dependent on the chosen virtual machine size
- use an analysis VM with an integrated GPU
  - costs are dependent on the chosen virtual machine size

## Example project costings

Some example projects with associated costings are included below.
You may want to use one of these as a template for your own project costing.
Please get in touch with us at trustedresearch@turing.ac.uk if you have any questions.

### Small project

For a project with no special requirements and a small project team, the following should be sufficient.

| Item               | Cost (£ / month) |
| ------------------ | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure |              540 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| **Total**          |              600 |

### Project needing a database

For a project requiring a PostgreSQL or SQL database, the following should be factored in.

| Item                       | Cost (£ / month) |
| -------------------------- | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure         |              540 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM         |               60 |
| PostgreSQL or SQL database |               80 |
| **Total**                  |              680 |

### Project needing more processing power

For a project that needs to do a lot of parallel or batch processing, the standard virtual machine will be too small.
See [here](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes-compute) to read more about compute-optimised virtual machine sizes.
Using, for example, a `Standard_F16s` (16 CPUs and 32 GB RAM) will give the following costs:

| Item               | Cost (£ / month) |
| ------------------ | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure |              540 |
| Standard_F16s VM   |              500 |
| **Total**          |             1040 |

### Project needing more memory

For a project that needs to do in-memory caching or manage large datasets in memory, the standard virtual machine will be too small.
See [here](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes-memory) to read more about memory-optimised virtual machine sizes.
Using, for example, a `Standard_E8_v5` (8 CPUs and 64 GB RAM) will give the following costs:

| Item               | Cost (£ / month) |
| ------------------ | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure |              540 |
| Standard_F16s VM   |              320 |
| **Total**          |              860 |

### Project needing a GPU

For a project that wants to do computer vision or deep learning, a GPU might be needed.
See [here](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes-gpu) to read more about GPU-optimised virtual machine sizes.
Using, for example, a `Standard_NC6` (6 CPUs, 1 GPU and 56 GB RAM) will give the following costs:

| Item               | Cost (£ / month) |
| ------------------ | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure |              540 |
| Standard_NC6 VM    |              570 |
| **Total**          |             1110 |

### Project with many participants

For a project with many participants it may be convenient to deploy several different virtual machines.
For example, a project with ten people that wants to share each virtual machine between two people would have the following costs:

| Item               | Cost (£ / month) |
| ------------------ | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure |              540 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| Standard_D2s_v3 VM |               60 |
| **Total**          |              840 |

### Project needing lots of data storage

For a project that deals with large datasets, the standard 1 TB of data storage might be insufficient.
Using, for example, 10 TB of storage instead will have the following costs (using a typical cost of £35 per month for each TB of storage).

| Item                       | Cost (£ / month) |
| -------------------------- | ---------------: |
| SRE infrastructure         |              540 |
| Additional 9 TB of storage |              315 |
| **Total**                  |              855 |