Digital Research Alliance of Canada: Resource Allocation Competition
Sponsor’s Website
Visit the Digital Research Alliance of Canada website for more information on the Resource Allocation Competition.
Internal Contact
Andrew Schoenrock: Andrew.Schoenrock@carleton.ca
Deadlines
| Deadline | Date |
|---|---|
| Faculty deadline | Consult your Faculty Research Facilitator |
| Internal cuResearch Approval Form | October 27, 2026 |
| Submission of full application | November 3, 2026 by 11:59 p.m. |
Overview
The Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) enables faculty members and their research groups to access compute, storage and cloud resources beyond what can be obtained via the Rapid Access Service (RAS).
Value
All resources made available through the RAC are provided FREE OF CHARGE.
Estimated financial values can be used for general reference, giving users an idea of how much it costs the Digital Research Alliance of Canada to operate them. These values represent an average across the national sites and include total capital and operational costs incurred to deliver the resources and associated services (these are not commercial or market values).
The email sent to successful candidates with the results of their application will include a monetary value of the awarded resources based on updated values for each competition round — this information is provided so that it can be referenced as an in-kind contribution and communicated to institutions, granting agencies and other interested parties as needed.
For RAC 2026, the value of the resources allocated was calculated using the rates below (these values are updated every year and included in the annual published RAC report).
| Type | Resource | Financial value |
|---|---|---|
| HPC | 1 core-year (CPU) | $36.03 |
| HPC | 1 RGU-year (GPU) | $1,032.05 |
| HPC | 1 TB of project storage | $25.55 |
| HPC | 1 TB of dCache storage | $25.55 |
| HPC | 1 TB of nearline storage | $22.16 |
| Cloud | 1 vCPU-year | $24.80 |
| Cloud | 1 RGU-year (vGPU) | $980.62 |
| Cloud | 1 TB of cloud storage (Ceph) | $33.73 |
| Cloud | 1 TB of object storage | $33.73 |
| Cloud | 1 TB of shared file system storage | $33.73 |
Eligibility
RAC applicants must be a faculty member at a Canadian academic institution and have an active CCDB account with an academic Principal Investigator (PI) role (faculty, adjunct faculty or librarian). Users with research institute PI or non-academic PI roles are not eligible to apply.
First-time applicants may submit an application to the RAC after having used resources available through the RAS or by other means (e.g., in another country or at your institution) and determining, after consulting with technical support staff, that these resources are no longer sufficient to meet their computational needs.
Special Considerations
PIs must apply with their primary, most up-to-date position. If a PI recently moved to a different institution but has not yet applied for a new faculty role on the CCDB portal, please do so before submitting your RAC application. PIs with more than one active faculty role in the CCDB portal must ensure that the most up-to-date position is set as primary. To do so, go to the homepage and click on the “make this role primary” button next to the role that you want to set as primary. Failing to do this could cause problems if your application is successful.
Information Sessions
The Digital Research Alliance of Canada held a series of information sessions related to the Resource Allocation Competition, including a general overview session, a GPU requests info session and a cloud requests info session. View the recordings and slides.
Submitting Your Application
- Submit an internal Approval Form through our central awards management database cuResearch. Consult the user’s manual for guidance.
- Submit an external application to Digital Research Alliance of Canada by following their submission guidelines.