No worries, the amount of resources (the credits) added to the standard packages are only a starting point. More credits can be added at any time. An increase in credit capacity can be request by contacting sales or simply within ColdStream.
With pay-per-use we measure the time you use your compute resources during the month. At the end of the month, we invoice the corresponding cost by multiplying the measured compute-hours with the cost per hour.
Some customers prefer a pre-paid model for budgeting reasons, which we support as well. With pre-paid we simply assume you will use all your compute resources full time during the whole month, i.e. for a duration of 24h x 30 days = 720h. In return for this commitment, we can offer a significant reduction on the compute-hour price.
Typically, we recommend new customers to start with pay-per-use until their usage profile is sufficiently clear.
By default, we invoice monthly. The monthly invoice consists two parts: (1) the monthly subscription fee of the base package and optional additions of your choosing, and (2) the fee for the credit usage, which can be either pre-paid for the month to come or paid-per-use at the end of the month.
Note that every package comes with a number of HPC hours included every month. The total credit usage is diminished with this amount and only the remainder is invoiced.
A compute-hour is the unit for computational time by your dedicated part of our supercomputer. If you use your full resources for one hour, that's one compute-hour. Within ColdStream, we represent your resources by a certain amount of credits which enables you to only use part of your resources. For instance, if your part of the supercomputer is the equivalent of 100 credits and you use 10 credits for 1 hour, then that's 0.1 compute-hour. Similarly, if you use 100 credits for 10 hours, then that's 10 compute-hours.
Note that if you change the amount of resources by increasing or decreasing the number of credits you have, also the compute-hour price will change proportionally. Our sales team is available to explain you in more detail how this works exactly.
6 months, regardless the package.
Your user profile reflects your expected use of ColdStream. Via the user profile, you can optimize your monthly fee based on the expected usage. A small user won't need a design every month while a frequent user probably wants to run multiple designs simultaneously.