OVHcloud Cost & Infrastructure
All prices are for the GRA9 (Gravelines) region, sourced from the OVHcloud Public Cloud pricing page (March 2026). Prices are ex. VAT, billed per hour with 730 hours used for monthly estimates. Always verify against current OVH pricing before planning.
Pricing References
| Service | OVH Documentation |
|---|---|
| Instances (flavors) | Virtual Machine Instances |
| Managed Kubernetes (MKS) | MKS Pricing |
| Block Storage (Cinder) | Block Storage |
| File Storage (Manila / NFS) | File Storage |
| Object Storage (S3) | Object Storage |
| Load Balancer | Load Balancer |
| Gateway | Gateway |
| Floating IP | Floating IP |
| Managed Private Registry (MPR) | MPR Pricing |
| Full pricing page | OVHcloud Public Cloud Prices |
Baseline Cost (Always-On Infrastructure)
This is the cost for all resources running 24/7, even when no WES tasks are executing through TES/Funnel.
| Component | Flavor / Plan | Rate | Monthly (~730 h) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MKS control plane | Free tier | — | €0 | Max 100 nodes, 1 AZ, 99.5% SLO |
| System node | d2-4 (2 vCPU, 4 GB) |
€0.0198/hr | ~€14.45 | Hosts Karpenter + Funnel server pod |
| OVHcloud Gateway | Gateway S (200 Mbps) | €0.0028/hr | ~€2.04 | Required for LoadBalancer service |
| Load Balancer | LB S (200 Mbps) | €0.0083/hr | ~€6.06 | funnel-lb Kubernetes service |
| Floating IP | IPv4 /32 | €0.0025/hr | ~€1.83 | Public IP attached to the Load Balancer |
| Manila NFS share | 150 GB, standard-1az |
Free (beta) | ~€0 | See note below |
| Managed Private Registry | Plan S (200 GB) | €0.0237/hr | ~€17.30 | Harbor registry for container images |
| S3 Object Storage | Standard, ~5 GB standing | €0.00000972/GiB/hr | ~€0.04 | Reference data, standing logs |
| Private vRack network | — | Free | €0 | 192.168.100.0/24 internal network |
| Total baseline | ~€41.70 / month |
Manila NFS (File Storage): OVHcloud File Storage (Manila-backed NFS shares) is currently in free public beta in GRA (Gravelines). When the service reaches General Availability (GA), pricing is expected to be approximately €0.07–0.10 / GB / month, which would add ~€10–15 / month to the baseline. Monitor the OVHcloud roadmap for GA announcements.
MKS Standard tier: If the project outgrows the Free plan (> 100 nodes or multi-AZ), the Standard tier is approximately €70 / month for the control plane alone. The Free tier is sufficient for this deployment.
Per-Sample Variable Cost (WES Analysis)
Benchmark figures are derived from actual runs on this cluster. A typical WES sample generates ~50 GB of intermediate and output data and completes in approximately 2 hours of active compute time.
Outgoing (egress) traffic on OVHcloud Public Cloud in GRA is free — no egress charges apply to S3 downloads or worker node output.
Compute (Karpenter workers)
Karpenter spins up b3/c3 worker nodes on demand and terminates them after task completion. All worker time is billed per second.
| Component | Estimated Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Karpenter worker nodes | ~€1.10 | Benchmark average (mix of b3/c3 flavors) |
| Cinder volumes (temp, per-task) | ~€0.02–0.05 | ~100 GB × 2 h × €0.000119/GiB/hr; auto-cleaned after task |
Storage (S3)
| Component | Estimated Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| S3 during analysis (50 GB × 2 h) | ~€0.001 | €0.00000972/GiB/hr × 50 × 2 — negligible |
| S3 egress | €0 | Outgoing public traffic is free in GRA |
| S3 long-term retention (5 GB cold archive) | ~€0.008 / month | Cold Archive (PAR); €0.00000228/GiB/hr × 730 h; only final results kept |
Per-Sample Total
| Scenario | Cost |
|---|---|
| Analysis only (results extracted + S3 purged) | ~€1.12–1.15 |
| + 1 month cold archive (5 GB, Cold Archive PAR) | ~€1.13 |
Long-Term Archive Accumulation (6 000 Samples / Year)
Assuming 6 000 WES samples archived per year, each retaining 5 GB in Cold Archive (€0.00000228/GiB/hr, PAR region). Archive grows linearly; the monthly rate at end of year N = N × 6 000 × 5 GiB × €0.001664/GiB/month ≈ N × €50/month. Annual cost uses the average monthly rate for that year.
| End of Year | Samples Archived | Total Stored | Monthly Rate (end of year) | Annual Cost | Cumulative Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 000 | 30 TB | ~€50 | ~€300 | ~€300 |
| 2 | 12 000 | 60 TB | ~€100 | ~€900 | ~€1 200 |
| 3 | 18 000 | 90 TB | ~€150 | ~€1 500 | ~€2 700 |
| 4 | 24 000 | 120 TB | ~€200 | ~€2 100 | ~€4 800 |
| 5 | 30 000 | 150 TB | ~€250 | ~€2 700 | ~€7 500 |
| 6 | 36 000 | 180 TB | ~€300 | ~€3 300 | ~€10 800 |
| 7 | 42 000 | 210 TB | ~€350 | ~€3 900 | ~€14 700 |
| 8 | 48 000 | 240 TB | ~€400 | ~€4 500 | ~€19 200 |
| 9 | 54 000 | 270 TB | ~€450 | ~€5 100 | ~€24 300 |
| 10 | 60 000 | 300 TB | ~€500 | ~€5 700 | ~€30 000 |
Region: OVH Cold Archive is only available in
PAR(Paris), not in GRA9. S3 objects must be moved/written to a PAR bucket. Cross-region writes from GRA9 are free (ingress included); retrieval is charged at €0.009/GiB.
Minimum storage: Cold Archive has a 180-day minimum storage commitment per object. Deleting earlier triggers a charge for the remaining days at the cold archive rate.
Cost Scaling
Projected monthly totals combining fixed baseline with per-sample variable costs.
Assumes results are downloaded and purged from S3 after each analysis.
| Samples / Month | Compute Cost | Baseline | Total | Effective Cost / Sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | ~€11 | €41.70 | ~€52.70 | ~€5.27 |
| 50 | ~€56 | €41.70 | ~€97.70 | ~€1.95 |
| 100 | ~€112 | €41.70 | ~€153.70 | ~€1.54 |
| 500 | ~€560 | €41.70 | ~€601.70 | ~€1.20 |
| 1 000 | ~€1120 | €41.70 | ~€1 161.70 | ~€1.16 |
At higher throughput the baseline becomes negligible and the effective cost converges toward the raw compute cost (~€1.10–1.15 / sample).
Cost Optimization Notes
- Scale-to-zero workers: Karpenter removes idle worker nodes within minutes of task completion. You only pay for actual compute time, not standby capacity.
- MKS Free tier: The free control plane (max 100 concurrent nodes) is sufficient for most bioinformatics workloads. Upgrading to Standard adds ~€70 / month for multi-AZ redundancy.
- S3 data lifecycle: Enable OVH S3 lifecycle policies to auto-expire all intermediate files after analysis. Archive only final results (5 GB / sample) to the Cold Archive class in PAR (~€0.008/sample/month). Keeping the full 50 GB scratch data in Standard S3 would add ~€0.36/sample/month — a 45× overhead vs. cold-archiving results only.
- Egress is free: Downloading analysis results (BAM, VCF, etc.) from S3 to your institution does not incur OVH charges in GRA.
- MPR plan selection: The S plan (200 GB, ~€17.30 / month) is the dominant baseline cost item. It is flat-rate regardless of usage. If the image catalog stays small, this is sufficient; there is no pay-per-pull model.
- Block Storage cleanup: Cinder volumes are high speed, LUKS-encrypted and auto-cleaned by Funnel after task completion. Verify cleanup is working to avoid orphaned volumes accumulating cost (High Speed Gen2: €0.000119/GiB/hr).
- Savings Plans: OVHcloud offers Savings Plans for predictable workloads (1–36 month commitment). The
d2-4Savings Plan rate (1-month) is €0.0206/hr — a marginal saving over on-demand for a node running continuously.