Scan Cloud workstations

Scan is best known for its desktop machines, but the Bolton-based firm also has a dedicated cloud workstation division that offers systems with Nvidia virtual GPUs (vGPUs) hosted in iomart datacentres in the UK.

Customers have a choice of pre-configured vGPU instances, available to rent on a monthly subscription. Alternatively, customers can go down to a granular level, selecting different vCPU, RAM, vGPU and storage options through an online configurator — in much the same way one would spec out a desktop workstation.

Customers get real time feedback on the monthly rental price, then add to the basket when happy. While this shopping basket approach is a great way to understand the costs of components most new customers will likely call Scan’s Cloud workstation division for advice. Here they can help size vGPU instances based on the applications used and types of models created. Building a relationship in this way can also get you a free ‘Proof of Concept’ trial.

Each vGPU instance comes pre-loaded with Windows 10. However, the OS is unlicensed the RAID 0 array finishing 35% faster. The same uncompressed dataset (7,414 scans) was 25% faster, a 3ds max dataset (60 large scene files and 4,400 smaller materials, totalling 4.6 GB) was 24% faster and a Revit dataset (68 files, totalling 4.6 GB) was 11% faster.

Of course, the downside of RAID 0 is it introduces multiple points of failure, so should one drive fail all data is lost. It makes regular backups more important than ever.

The verdict

The Scan 3XS GWP-ME A1128T is a serious workstation for design viz professionals, with buckets of processing power for all different workflows, from real-time to ray trace rendering, video editing and beyond. But it also comes with a serious price tag.

If £16,666 (Ex VAT) seems a lot more than you’re used to paying for a machine of this type, that’s because it probably is. The price of a Threadripper Pro CPU has increased significantly, and the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Generation costs considerably more than its predecessor did at launch.

But that’s the current reality of super high-end workstation hardware. Both AMD (CPU) and Nvidia (GPU) have had little in the way of competition in recent times. But with Intel’s long-awaited ‘Sapphire Rapids’ Xeon W-3400 Series CPUs (see page WS4) and AMD’s Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 GPUs (see page WS28) out now this could change.

— the idea being that customers can save money by using their own Windows 10 corporate licences. Ubuntu is also available.

Scan also points out that there is no charge for uploading or downloading data, which is not the case with hyperscale public cloud providers.

■ www.scan.co.uk/business/scan-cloud