How to participate in BRCF pods

If you are associated with a lab or organization that already has a BRCF pod (Available BRCF PODs), just create a BRCF account (Obtaining a BRCF Account) with the appropriate Affiliation specified and we will give you access to that POD.

Otherwise, we offer two cost models for BRCF POD access:

• Standard POD equipment ownership offering: One or more labs or groups purchase pod equipment , then pay a monthly maintenance fee.

• The Rental pod: A group can request access to our Rental POD, which does not require equipment purchase but charges a higher monthly maintenance fee based on desired disk storage.

This page outlines these offerings. Interested parties should contact Anna Battenhouse (abattenhouse@utexas.edu), BRCF manager.

This option is appropriate for those who expect to do heavy computing and/or have large storage requirements, and prefer to have more control over the resources in their computing environment.

In our "Standard POD Equipment Ownership" offering, one or more groups purchase the initial POD server equipment then pay a monthly maintenance fee. PODs can be shared among participants, in which case they share in both initial equipment and monthly maintenance costs. We can assist in finding a suitable partner if you select this option. 

A POD consists of one or more compute servers that share a storage server; thus there are three components to consider:

• Compute server(s) – how many, and how configured for RAM and cores

• Shared storage server – our standard is an empty 36-bay ThinkMate server

• Disks for storage – quantity/size depending on needs

Typical equipment costs for this offering are in the $18,000 - $45,000+ range depending on your desired compute and storage configurations and current server pricing.

You can purchase one or more compute servers. Prices, with the UT Dell discount, vary considerably. Some recent (December 2025) examples:

• Dell R660xs; 128 GB RAM; 16 cores/32 hyper-threads - $5,283

• Dell R660xs; 256 GB RAM; 24 cores/48 hyper-threads - $6,882

• Dell R660xs; 384 GB RAM; 32 cores/64 hyper-threads - $8,267

• Dell R660xs; 512 GB RAM; 48 cores/96 hyper-threads - $10,467

• Dell R660xs; 768 GB RAM; 56 cores/112 hyper-threads - $14,115

GPU-enabled servers are available from other vendors, but typically cost $40,000+. We can work with our UT Dell and ThinkMate representatives to help you order a suitable configuration.

Our standard compute server requirements are as follows:

• Dual power supplies

• Dual 10Gbit network interfaces

• Enterprise iDRAC or equivalent out of band management (OOBM)

• 5 years technical support

Our standard storage server is an empty 36-bay ThinkMate with 256 GB RAM. The cost as of December 2025 is around $9,000, and we can obtain a quote for you.

Our standard ThinkMate storage server has 36 bays, and we populate them in groups of 6 (a "vdev", or virtual device), so up to 6 vdevs can be populated. It is generally best to start with at least 2 vdevs (12 disks), although having just one vdev is acceptable. We also require that you initially purchase extra disks as spares (e.g. 1 extra for each vdev).

Two of each group of 6 vdev disks are reserved for redundancy (RAID-like), so there are effectively 4 storage-available disks in each vdev. The formula for calculating a vdev's available storage is:

So, for example:

• 1 vdev of 16 TB disks is ~56 TB = 16 * 4 * 0.875

• 2 vdevs of 16 TB disks is ~112 TB

• 3 vdevs  of 16TB disks is ~168 TB

Additional storage can be added later, in groups of 6 (plus 1 spare), so folks often start with just 1 - 3 vdevs. However, note that additional vdevs must be populated with the same capacity disks.

We recommend Amazon or NewEgg for disk purchases, which can be made via ProCard. Some recent (March 2026) prices for new (not refurbished) disks are shown below. Disk prices often go up and down (mostly up recently!), so be sure to check the latest.

As of January 1, 2025 through May 31, 2026, BRCF monthly maintenance is $681/month for a full pod, pro-rated by the number of participating groups. For example: $340.50/month for a pod shared by two PIs.

Starting June 1, 2026, a new BRCF full-pod maintenance structure will go into effect, pro-rated by the number of participating groups:

• Monthly maintenance for PODs with no GPU equipment will be $605/month, an 11% decrease.

• Monthly maintenance for PODs with a single type of GPU (either NVIDIA or AMD) will increase to $908/month (1.5x the no-GPU rate).

• Monthly maintenance for PODs with both types of GPUs (NVIDIA and AMD) will increase to $1,210/month (2x the no-GPU rate).

The monthly maintenance increases for PODs with GPU servers reflects the substantial additional effort required to support GPU equipment, GPU-enablement libraries, and GPU-enabled software.

This option is appropriate for those with less demanding computational requirements, need less storage initially, or cannot fund the initial POD equipment purchase.

In this "Rental POD" offering, participants have no initial equipment buy-in but instead pay a larger per-TB/month maintenance fee, based on the amount of desired storage. Storage allocations can be increased at any time, and all we need from you to get started is an account number for monthly billing. 

While we bill based on storage, all Rental pod groups have access to the pod’s compute resources. As described in Available BRCF PODs, the Rental pod has three Dell PowerEdge compute servers available. Although these are nice beefy servers, the Rental POD is shared among a number of groups, so it is important to be a responsible user of POD resources. See Using POD resources wisely for more information.

Like all BRCF pods, the Rental pod is provisioned with a large set of bioinformatics tools and general-purpose utilities, as well as web-based RStudio and JupyterHub applications. Standard BRCF backup and archiving is also performed.

Monthly Rental pod fees are based on the amount of Work area storage desired in Terabytes (TB), enforced via quota and available to all users in the participating group. In addition to the Work area storage, each user has a Home directory (100 GB quota), and each group is provisioned with between 2 and 5 TB of complementary Scratch area storage, depending on Work area size.

Note that we periodically adjust our maintenance rates to address changing costs for both support personnel and equipment. For example, Rental pod monthly maintenance fees will go into effect June 1, 2026 as shown below.

Monthly Rental pod maintenance fees January 1, 2025 through May 31, 2026:

Monthly Rental pod maintenance fees starting June 1, 2026. This increase more accurately reflects the value of Rental pod resources to groups, as well as the substantial effort required to support a growing number of Rental pod participants and their bioinformatics workflow demands.

POD maintenance is performed by our inter-disciplinary BRCF support team.

Standard maintenance covers all aspects of hardware and software support for POD resources, including these standard services:

• Responding to user support requests

  • Email rctf-support@utexas.edu

• Deployment and maintenance of a large variety of bioinformatics tools and packages

• Support for web-based RStudio and JupyterHub servers

• Maintaining this public Wiki for users

• User account and group membership management via self-service Account Management web interface

  • http://rctf-account-request.icmb.utexas.edu/

• Weekly backup of Home and Work areas to spinning disk at the UT Data Center

• Periodic archiving of backup data to TACC's Ranch tape archive system

• Appropriate system configuration to comply with IT best practices and security requirements

• Operating system installation, updates and upgrades

• Monitoring system usage and addressing issues

• Hardware-level monitoring via Out-Of-Band Management (OOBM) interfaces

• Addressing hardware issues (e.g. replacing disks as needed)

We also:

• Attempt to install custom software requested by our users, and try to resolve issues encountered running bioinformatics and other programs.

  • This is not always possible, but we use our best efforts.

• Offer other available POD services upon request.

A group may join an existing pod with the agreement of the BRCF and existing pod participants. In such cases, an "equipment buy-in" is required, such as purchasing/providing an additional compute server, or upgrading the storage server or increasing its disk capacity. Maintenance fees for the resulting set of pod participants will be pro-rated as suggested by the BRCF or agreed upon by participants.

A group may request to leave a POD with a minimum of two full months notice:

• User accounts for the departing group will be deactivated after the notice period.

• One additional month of maintenance will be charged for decommissioning efforts.

• An additional fee may also be charged for migrating existing pod data, if requested, depending on volume.

A group may request removal of some or all POD equipment with a minimum of two full months notice. Disposition of standard POD ownership equipment is as follows:

• For single-owner PODs, equipment will be shut down and returned to the owner.

• For multiple-owner PODs, non-essential equipment will be shut down and returned to the owner, except:

  • Storage servers and their disks cannot be removed until all POD participants leave.

  • If the owned compute server is the only one on the POD, it cannot be removed until all POD participants leave.

• In both cases, owners may elect to donate one or more pieces of equipment to the BRCF.