Overall expectations of our services for researchers

• All RC services and platforms are centrally funded by UAB at 5x8 support (5 days per week, 8 hours per day).
• Like all engineering and business ventures, IT groups must find an appropriate operating point for their purposes. The operating point involves a tradeoff among service quality, availability (uptime), and cost. Research Computing trades in availability for higher service quality and reduced cost. Increasing availability would mean less storage and fewer compute resources.
• Across our four major services (Cheaha, Cloud.rc, LTS, GitLab) we average about 98% availability at less than 8% of the cost of comparable commercial cloud offerings. For comparison, NSF guidelines for "Advanced Computing System" awards require 95% availability.
• On top of our low cost, we offer full-time facilitation, light consultation, and flexible problem solving at no additional charge.
• If you need a higher level of service availability, we are willing to explore commercial cloud offerings with you. Please be mindful that our funding does not cover payments to commercial cloud vendors.

Summarizing: We offer abundant resources with 98% service availability at a fraction of the cost of commercial cloud. If you need higher availability, please contact us.

Source for NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/advanced-computing-systems-services-adapting-rapid-evolution/nsf24-583/solicitation, section V.A.2.c "Resource Reliability and Usability".