HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING


Cloud coverage increases


ROBERT ROE LOOKS AT THE CHANGING WAYS THAT THE HPC INDUSTRY USES CLOUD COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY


been deployed on cloud resources, many HPC applications require a specific level of performance that requires HPC specific technologies such as high bandwidth networking, fast storage and large memory nodes. It has taken time for these services to become more widely available and this has helped to bring costs down, which opens up new possibilities for HPC services.


The signs point to increasing use of


Cloud usage models are changing as the price of cloud is lowered and specialist services are


developed for HPC users. This is taking the form of cloud-based disaster recovery services, testbed services and bare metal HPC and AI infrastructure, which is now being developed to support HPC users. Mahesh Pancholi, business


development manager at OCF, commented that the cost of cloud is falling and this is making users more aware of the potential for cloud in HPC. ‘There is definitely a change in attitude towards cloud. I think there is also increasing variety of use cases because public cloud providers have gone beyond just selling their spare cycles. ‘They have realised just how much of a business opportunity there is and so they are starting to offer more niche and specialised services and these are the kind of things that cover the needs of HPC or research computing users.’ Launch of cloud-based HPC services


from companies such as vScaler, Oracle, IBM, Xtreme-D and many others combined with increasingly HPC-friendly hardware installed in main cloud providers is creating a more favourable environment for HPC users. While some workloads have already


4 Scientific Computing World December 2018/January 2019


cloud by HPC users over the coming years. As the number of possible use cases grows, and the cost of using cloud falls, it is likely that HPC users will increasingly make use of cloud technologies. Naoki Shibata, founder and CEO at Xtreme-D, a HPC and AI cloud computing provider based in Tokyo, Japan, noted that Hyperion’s recent research into the cloud computing points to considerable growth in the market. ‘Judging by the trending of HPC in the cloud, we see continued fast growth of the cloud HPC market. Hyperion finds that whereas in 2011, 13 per cent of HPC sites used cloud, in 2018, this figure is at 64 per cent. This still allows for accelerated growth because so far just seven to eight per cent of the work is being done using cloud. With greater availability, flexibility, and ease of access, we conclude that a much greater portion of HPC work will be migrated to the cloud in the coming months and years,’ stated Shibata.


New ways to use the cloud Disaster recovery technology in HPC can be incredibly expensive as it requires that hardware is kept in reserve in case of emergency. OCF initially set out to create a cloud based service that could be used for disaster recovery which could reduce the cost of reserving additional hardware. The


“Hyperion finds that whereas in 2011, 13 per cent of HPC sites used cloud, in 2018, this figure is at 64 per cent”


system keeps the infrastructure to procure nodes running so that users can quickly setup a cluster if disaster strikes. ‘Generally with a cluster you have


some management nodes that make sure everything is running; you have a scheduler available and it can be used to deploy new hardware as it comes in. We are taking that approach and putting that into the cloud. You will have your management software running and then as you need you can spin up additional nodes’ said Pancholi. This provides users with the safety


of having cloud resources available to them quickly without having to pay for the majority of the resource unless it is needed. Pancholi stressed that this


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