OCRE Cloud for Ireland

83 research and education institutions in Ireland can procure sovereign European cloud services through the OCRE 2024 framework.

83Eligible institutions
HEAnetNational research network
FrankfurtDatacenter de-fra-1
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How institutions in Ireland access OCRE cloud

Institutions in Ireland access the OCRE 2024 framework through HEAnet, their National Research and Education Network (NREN). VSHN is the sole Exoscale reseller in the OCRE catalogue and ranked number one in all countries it serves. Institutions can use the cascade method (direct award) to place an order without a competition round.

Exoscale datacenter closest to Ireland: Frankfurt (de-fra-1). Guaranteed data location, no US CLOUD Act exposure. All data egress to GÉANT and connected NRENs is waived.

Get started

Contact VSHN to request a trial voucher, get a cost estimate, or start a call-off agreement for Exoscale cloud and managed services in Ireland. Your NREN cloud team at brokerage@asiera.ie (HEAnet OCRE page) can help with framework eligibility questions.

Eligible institutions (83)

4079 Eligible users of the framework in Ireland are as follows:
Atlantic Technological University
Ballyfermot CFE
CORU
Carlow College
Cavan & Monaghan ETB
Central Applications Office (CAO)
City of Dublin ETB
College of Anaesthetists of Ireland
Cork ETB
Department of Education (including the State Examinations Commission) (DES)
Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS)
Donegal ETB
Dublin & Dun Laoghaire ETB
Dublin City University
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS)
Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute
Dundalk IT
Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)
EduCampus Services Ltd
Education Shared Business Service (ESBS)
Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI)
Educational Research Centre (ERC)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Eurofound
Galway & Roscommon ETB
Grangegorman Development Agency
Health Information & Quality Authority (HIQA)
Health Research Board (HRB)
Higher Education Authority (HEA)
Houses of the Oireachtas
IADT, Dun Laoghaire
ICHEC
IE (fka IE Domain Registry)
IOB
Inland Fisheries Ireland
Institute of Public Administration (IPA)
Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP)
Irish Prison Service (IPS)
Irish Universities Association (IUA)
Kerry ETB
Kildare & Wicklow ETB
Kilkenny & Carlow ETB
Laois & Offaly ETB
Limerick & Clare ETB
Longford & Westmeath ETB
Louth & Meath ETB
Marine Institute
Marino Institute of Education
Mary Immaculate College
Maynooth University
Mayo, Sligo & Leitrim ETB
Medical Council
Met Éireann
Mountbellew Agricultural College
Munster Technological University
National Cancer Registry, Ireland (NCRI)
National College of Art and Design
National College of Ireland
National University of Ireland (NUI)
Ollscoil na Gaillimhe, University of Galway
Ordnance Survey Ireland
PDST Technology in Education (formerly NCTE)
Quality & Qualifications Ireland (QQI)
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Royal Irish Academy (RIA)
Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM)
Solas
South East Technological University (SETU)
TUS (Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest)
Teagasc
Technological University Dublin
The Honorable Society of King’s Inns
Tipperary ETB
Trinity College Dublin
University College Cork
University College Dublin
University of Limerick
Waterford and Wexford ETB
eligible can be found at https://www.gov.ie/en/service/find-a-school/ “.
members is available at https://www.heanet.ie/who-we-are/our-clients. The list of schools
“HEAnet, its subsidiaries, member institutions and customers to include schools serviced by the

Exoscale cloud services

The infrastructure you procure through OCRE, run by Exoscale in the zone you choose. All of it carries the framework discount on compute and storage, and free traffic to GÉANT and connected NRENs.

Compute Virtual servers billed per second, from 0.5 to 225 GB RAM, with AES-256-XTS encryption at rest by default. GPU servers NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000, A40, A30, A5000 and V100 for training, inference and HPC, billed per second. Available as standalone instances or as GPU node pools inside an SKS Kubernetes cluster. Block storage NVMe volumes from 1 GiB to 10 TiB, 5,000 IOPS with no IOPS charge, snapshots, and Exoscale's 99.95% SLA. Object storage S3-compatible in all 8 zones, versioning, object lock, lifecycle rules, and an Archival class on request. Managed databases Eight engines on dedicated VMs, from PostgreSQL with pgvector to Thanos for long-term metrics. Kubernetes (SKS) Scalable Kubernetes Service with a free Starter tier and a Pro control plane under Exoscale's 99.95% SLA. GPU node pools attach to a cluster, so ML pipelines schedule onto GPUs like any other workload. Networking Private networks and VPC at no charge, security groups, elastic IPs, load balancing, free IPv4 and IPv6. DNS and CDN Anycast DNS across 40+ servers and an Akamai-backed CDN in front of your object storage buckets.

VSHN managed services, delivered through Servala

These are operated by VSHN through Servala, the open-source app store for managed services, and they are a different product from Exoscale DBaaS above. Exoscale runs its database engines on its own price list and SLA; VSHN runs everything below with 24/7 support, automated backups, managed updates, and SLAs up to 99.99%, and the same catalogue runs on Cloudscale, SWITCH, and on-premises. Several databases are available both ways, so ask us which fits: Exoscale DBaaS is usually cheaper, and Servala adds operations and support around it.

Databases and messaging

Also available as Exoscale DBaaS, where Exoscale operates them directly and uses its own product names: Exoscale's in-memory engine is Valkey, the VSHN-operated one is Redis.

Managed PostgreSQL Research databases with PostGIS for geospatial data and pgvector for AI embeddings. Managed MariaDB MySQL-compatible relational database with Galera clustering for teaching and departmental systems. Managed Redis In-memory cache and message broker, operated by VSHN. Exoscale's own DBaaS equivalent is Valkey, which replaced its Managed Redis in March 2025. Managed Kafka Event streaming for sensor networks, instrument data, and pipelines that cannot lose a message.

Developer tooling

No Exoscale equivalent. VSHN operates these on Exoscale infrastructure.

Managed GitLab CLOUD Act-free source code hosting, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps platform on Swiss infrastructure. GitLab for Education pricing applies to qualifying institutions. Codey (Managed Forgejo) European code collaboration platform. Sovereign alternative to GitHub, starting at CHF 39 per month. Managed Keycloak Identity management with eduGAIN and OpenID Connect federation for single sign-on across NREN networks. Managed OpenBao Secrets management and encryption for compliance-sensitive research environments, with Swiss HSM backing. Managed Nextcloud File sync, sharing, and collaboration for research groups, with data kept in the zone you choose.

Platforms

Container platforms. Exoscale SKS is the self-managed alternative.

VSHN Managed OpenShift Dedicated Red Hat OpenShift clusters for containerized research workloads and HPC environments. APPUiO Cloud Kubernetes namespace-as-a-service, billed by effective resource usage, with no cluster to run.

Request a trial voucher

Interested in using Exoscale or VSHN-managed services in your research or education institution through OCRE 2024? Tell us about your workloads and we will follow up with more information and a trial voucher.

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