Charity Engine grid
Ultra low-cost, low-carbon cloud computing platform based on 500,000+ desktop PCs. Simple, fast, typically 50% the cost of AWS or less.
1) High-throughput, container-based, batch computing
2) Globally distributed proxy and web crawling using residential IPs
3) Distributed petascale storage
Features
- Compute and application hosting
- Container service
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
- Search
- Other Storage Services
Benefits
- Low cost high throughput batch processing via any docker container
- Crawl the web via our 500k residential IPs
- Process scraped data on each node before returning results
- Text classification and analysis, at scale
- Machine learning, AI training, genetic algorithms, at scale
- Simulations, Monte Carlo, at scale
Pricing
£1.68 to £2.80 a gigabyte
- Education pricing available
- Free trial available
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 12
Service ID
1 2 9 1 5 9 8 9 0 6 8 2 2 0 4
Contact
Charity Engine grid
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Telephone: <removed>
Email: <removed>@8c4fe160-95dd-48b7-aaa4-629b29ad8305.com
Service scope
- Service constraints
-
Technical requirements for computing, container service, and PaaS:
[A] For high-throughput, batch computing:
* LINUX: App in a docker container. Command-line UI required. Tech specs for available instance types published here: www.charityengine.com/instance-types
* WINDOWS: executable with command-line UI. Tech specs for available instance types published here: www.charityengine.com/instance-types . (Custom arrangements required.)
Input/output file size and data transfer limits may apply; contact us for details.
[B] Search:
For web crawling, target site ToS must be respected. No site logins permitted. - System requirements
- N/A
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
- Email and discussion forums. Typical response time is 24 - 48 hours, less if an urgent enquiry
- User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- No
- Phone support
- No
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- No
- Support levels
-
First-tier user support via email and discussion forums.
Escalated issues managed by phone, where required. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
-
Our web UI is, we hope, inuitive. No training required. (Explanatory hints are embedded in the UI)
The remote API and CLI are also straightforward; documentation is provided. - Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
-
- HTML
- End-of-contract data extraction
- Data is available for download during and following any processing.
- End-of-contract process
- Contract terms should include all costs.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Using the web interface
-
Users can submit, manage, and pay for data processing jobs via a simple web UI.
(And also via remote API and CLI) - Web interface accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web interface is accessible
- Simple wording, clear large fonts
- Web interface accessibility testing
- N/A
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
-
Our API allows users to submit and manage work, and to collect results.
(CLI and Web interfaces are also provided.) - API automation tools
- Other
- Other API automation tools
- In development now
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Command line interface
- Yes
- Command line interface compatibility
- Linux or Unix
- Using the command line interface
-
Our CLI allows users to submit and manage work, and to collect results.
(Remote API and Web interfaces are also provided.)
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
- Manual
- Independence of resources
- Only available/idle inventory is listed for use in the various computing interfaces (WebUI, API, CLI). These inventory displays are real-time reports.
- Usage notifications
- No
Analytics
- Infrastructure or application metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
- CPU
- Disk
- HTTP request and response status
- Memory
- Network
- Number of active instances
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Staff screening not performed
- Government security clearance
- None
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
-
- United Kingdom
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- EU-US Privacy Shield agreement locations
- Other locations
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Managed by a third party
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- Another external penetration testing organisation
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with another standard
- Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
- Data sanitisation process
- No
- Equipment disposal approach
- In-house destruction process
Backup and recovery
- Backup and recovery
- No
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Data protection within supplier network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
- Instances are provided on a “spot” basis. Charges are billed when computations are completed.
- Approach to resilience
- Available on request.
- Outage reporting
- Customers are emailed in the event of service outages.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
- Some features are accessed via username and password, others via an authentication key.
- Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Management access authentication
- Username or password
- Devices users manage the service through
- Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- No audit information available
- How long system logs are stored for
- At least 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- No
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- No
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- No
- Security governance certified
- No
- Security governance approach
- Multiple levels of security including digital code signing with offline code generation
- Information security policies and processes
- Internal processes included automated scans and scheduled audits and reviews.
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- All changes are tracked in code, are regularly backed up, and are auditable.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
Vulnerabilities are monitored via automated scans and scheduled audits and reviews.
Updates are ongoing. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
Vulnerabilities are monitored via automated scans and scheduled audits and reviews.
Updates are ongoing. - Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
-
Users report incidents via email.
Reports are provided by email and/or phone.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Supplier-defined process
Separation between users
- Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
- Yes
- Who implements virtualisation
- Supplier
- Virtualisation technologies used
- Oracle VM
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
- Organisations using our infrastructure are kept apart via containerization and virtualization.
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- No
Pricing
- Price
- £1.68 to £2.80 a gigabyte
- Discount for educational organisations
- Yes
- Free trial available
- Yes
- Description of free trial
-
Free runtime and/or crawling traffic is provided to trial the service.
$200 worth, or 7 days, of service. Whichever is sooner.