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Cost of a workstation

Active workstations​

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When you create a workstation, the cost of using the workstation is displayed at the bottom of the page.

Running and stopped workstations are charged per hour of usage. The cost of using a workstation is composed of two factors:

  • Processing and memory: While a workstation is running, you will be charged for its CPUs, GPU, and memory. Processing and memory costs typically constitute the majority of the cost of a workstation.
  • Storage: While a workstation is running or stopped, you will be charged for its local storage. Workstations incur storage charges while they are stopped because their local storage is persisted even while they are stopped. Storage costs are typically a small portion of the total cost of using a workstation.

Terminated workstations​

Terminated workstations do not incur any charges.

Best practices for using workstations cost-effectively​

To use workstations cost-effectively, we recommend following the best practices below:

  • Only run workstations when you need to perform computations. Don't run workstations 24×7, including while they're idle.
  • Enable the auto-stopping and auto-termination options to ensure your workstations are quickly stopped and terminated once they are no longer used.
  • Resize your workstations as your needs wax and wane. Avoid both underprovisioning insufficient compute which delays your progress, as well as overprovisioning excess compute at unnecessary cost.
  • In most cases, store your data in object drives. Object drives are more cost efficient than the local high performance storage drives available with workstations, especially when you need to share data among multiple workstations. Limit your local storage drives to the size needed for your computations.

Managing the costs of workstations​

As introduced above, our workstations have two features to help users manage their costs:

  • Auto-stopping: Users can configure their workstations to automatically stop once they've been idle.
  • Auto-termination: Users can configure their workstations to automatically terminate once they've been stopped.

More information about these features is available here.