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Elastic HPCExtending the Cluster into the Cloud
Ruth Lynch, Research IT Service
13th November 2009
HPC in UCD
Research IT Service 2005
HPC is Core Service Phaeton Cluster -
Community & Shared Services
11% ICHEC Stokes Cluster 2008
What's the problem?
Physical HPC Cluster is inelastic Users sometimes need more resources than are
available Adding resources can be a slow process Capital intensive process
Possible Solutions
"Pre-order" hardware Buy compute time on other
facilities Investigate "The Cloud"
Which Cloud?
Cloud options Locations Different definitions
"a style of computing where massively scalable IT enabled capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet technologies" - Gartner Inc.
Getting on the Cloud
Amazon Web Services No technical issues How to pay for the services?
Credit Card? Prepaid credit card? Prepay for Amazon credit? Get billed by Amazon? .......
“All Aboard” the Cloud
Contacted Amazon Applied for a research grant with Amazon Got a small grant
Started building...
Technical Specifications
Compute Nodes Up to 20 x Large Instances AMD Opteron 2218 HE 4 vCPU Cores 7GB of RAM CentOS 5.2 On Demand
Security
Users authenticate through Phaeton Login Node LDAP Authentication
Encrypted Communications 128 bit AES encryption for the data link 160 bit SHA1 checksum for both the data and
control channels
Management
Cloud Nodes are managed by Phaeton Head Node MOAB from Adaptive Computing / Torque Specific queue for cloud based resources
Data Concerns
Data Protection Laws Data Transfer Rules Intellectual Property Laws Data Privacy
Data Concerns
Amazon gives choice of location EU-WEST-1A & EU-WEST-1B
Data not "stored" in the cloud Computation only in the cloud
UCD CampusAWS
Computational Results
Real users with real jobs Results dependent on job and user type
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 90
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Average Time per Step
Amazon Cloud
Phaeton
Job Number
Tim
e (
se
c)
What else?
AMD vs INTEL Licensing Tuning
Cost comparison Currently appears more expensive than local
resources Approx. €9,500 per month for AWS Costs have recently fallen
The Benefits
Immediately available resources "Once off" usage charge for resources Relatively quick to set up Easy to maintain Viable option for occasional large scale single
jobs
Future Plans
UCD “Cloud” Incorporating existing local resources Access to multiple public cloud resources Seamless service provision Automated “cloud bursting”
Thanks to ...
Amazon Kurt Messersmith Iain Galvin
UCD Research IT Team Research Community Lukasz Szmit
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