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Storage costs

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Storage Costs

Storage is billed for all files that belong to your projects. This includes the files you upload to BioData Catalyst powered by Seven Bridges and files that are produced as results of analyses. If your project is in an AWS-based location, the storage service is Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). If your project has been created in a Google-based location, your storage service is Google Cloud Storage (GCS).

Cloud service provider/regionService nameCharging unit
Amazon Web Services (AWS US East)Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)per GB-Month
Google Cloud PlatformGoogle Cloud Storageper GB-Month

Please keep in mind that file storage is not charged twice for the same file. If a file is present in more than one of your projects that belong to one billing group, storage will be charged only once. When we calculate your monthly storage cost, we collect all files across all projects belonging to a single billing group, and then bill only once for each individual file within that billing group. A file is billed once regardless of which project it was uploaded to or how many times it was copied across any number of projects.

However, note the following scenarios in which we actually do bill for multiple appearances of a single file:

  • When a file is copied to a project belonging to a different billing group: in this scenario, both billing groups are treated as "owning" a file, and both will pay for one copy. Again, each billing group may have multiple copies of that file in any number of projects, and will only pay once.
  • When a file is re-uploaded: we do not detect for content equality, so if you upload the same file twice, the Platform sees (and bills for) two different files.
  • When a file is archived and restored: restoring a file is considered as creating a temporary copy that can be worked on. While a file is restored, we bill both for keeping the archived copy and the one in active storage that can be used as input.

You are not charged for storing public files from our Public reference files repository or from our public datasets when you copy them into your project. However, you are responsible for the costs of any files derived from processing these public files. For instance, if you remap reads, you are charged for the storage of the resulting BAM files.

Sample storage cost calculation

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Please note that the calculation is for information purposes only and is made according to the prices at the time of writing this page. To find out the current prices, visit the following pages depending on the selected project location:

As shown in the table above, storage is charged on a per GB per month basis. This example shows how the total number of GB per month is calculated, given that the amount of data stored is likely to vary during one month.

Assume you store 100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes) of data for 15 days in March, and 100 TB (109,951,162,777,600 bytes) of data for the final 16 days in March.

At the end of March, you would have the following usage in Byte-Hours: Total Byte-Hour usage= [107,374,182,400 bytes x 15 days x 24 hours per day] + [109,951,162,777,600 bytes x 16 days x 24 hours per day] = 42,259,901,212,262,400 Byte-Hours.

Let’s convert this to GB-Months: 42,259,901,212,262,400 Byte-Hours / 1,073,741,824 bytes per GB / 744 hours per month = 52,900 GB-Months

Based on the calculated number of GB-Months, we will do cost calculation for AWS:

Sample Calculation: Amazon Web Services

Amazon S3 storage has three pricing tiers depending on the amount of data stored. This is a calculation of the monthly cost based on the amount of GB-Months calculated above:

  • First 50 TB per month: 51,200 GB (50 x 1024) x $0.023 = $1,177.60
  • Next 450 TB per month: 1,700 GB (remainder) x $0.022 = $37.40
  • Over 500 TB per month: 0 GB = $0.00

Total Storage Cost = $1,177.60 + $37.40 + $0.00 = $1,215.00

Sample Calculation: Google Cloud Storage

This is the calculation for Google Cloud Storage:

  • 52,900 GB x $0.026 = $1375.40

Total Storage Cost = $1375.40

Updated almost 4 years ago