HPC in the Cloud: Has Simplicity in HPC Cloud Been Achieved?

Dedicated to covering high-end cloud computing
in science, industry and the datacenter

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

November 07, 2011

Has Simplicity in HPC Cloud Been Achieved?

Sponsored Content by Univa

For many organizations the complexity associated with creating and managing servers in the cloud is a significant barrier to adoption – creating HPC clusters only makes things more complex. RightScale solves the complexity of managing infrastructure in the cloud and is now doing the same for HPC. Univa's Rob Secontine speaks with Josh Fraser of RightScale.

Univa: Rob Secontine, VP Sales & Marketing, Univa Corporation

RightScale: Josh Fraser, VP Business Development, RightScale, inc.

Q: Could you quickly introduce RightScale to our audience?

A: RightScale is the world's leading multi-cloud management platform. We have launched and managed over 3.3 million servers to date, and are behind the largest hybrid cloud deployments in the world. The RightScale cloud management platform enables organizations to easily deploy and manage mission critical applications across multiple clouds with complete control and portability.

Q: A lot of people may not know that RightScale offers a solution for HPC. Can you describe what RightScale does provide?

A: RightScale and Univa have partnered together to provide a simple, elegant way of launching Grid Engine in the Cloud. Through our partnership and integration, users can launch a fully configured Grid Engine cluster in a matter of minutes. By stepping through an intuitive, wizard-like experience, customers can specify the parameters of their HPC clusters (such as hardware configurations and security settings), click ‘launch', and RightScale orchestrates the creation of the servers within Amazon Web Services. Once the servers come online, RightScale automatically provisions the Univa Grid Engine software on these servers, and within minutes, users can have a fully functioning cluster in the cloud. These clusters consist of a Grid Engine ‘queue master' node and a user-specified number of Grid Engine ‘execution hosts', and customers can begin submitting workloads immediately.

Q: What is One-Click HPC and why is it valuable to end users?

A: The RightScale cloud management platform enables organizations to easily deploy and manage cloud servers. The integration with Univa extends the RightScale platform by automating Grid Engine cluster configuration with the simplicity of a ServerTemplate™, RightScale's dynamic and configurable alternative to a standard machine image. With the "push of a button" a fully functioning Grid Engine cluster can be brought online – hosted at Amazon Web Services – within 10 minutes. One can literally sign up and be running science workloads within minutes. That, today, is unique.

Q: What does RightScale bring to Grid Engine users?

A: RightScale brings tremendous efficiency and simplicity to Grid Engine users. In a traditional IT environment (i.e., one running outside the cloud), it can take weeks or even months to provision the hardware and equipment required for creating an HPC cluster. With cloud computing and infrastructure resources from Amazon, that process is narrowed down to minutes.

But in addition to provisioning the hardware, scientists, engineers, and researchers are still tasked with having to configure the application stacks in order to begin performing useful work. This is where RightScale comes in. With the click of a button, RightScale not only provisions all of the hardware within Amazon's cloud –we also layer all of the Univa Grid Engine software on top. So users can focus on what matters: running the workloads that are core to their business. RightScale and Univa manage all the provisioning and configuration. All users need to do is load their application and data, and begin their work.

Q: Is the solution only for end customers

A: The solution is pre-packaged for end customers but can be readily customized for use within a validated technical computing SaaS solution. For example, an ISV can leverage the Univa HPC solution in their own ServerTemplate within the RightScale MultiCloud Marketplace to build a fully customized HPC offering. This enables them to bring a complete solution to market quickly without having to build or manage the back-end, metering, or billing.

Q: How does one evaluate the solution?

A: We have partnered with Univa and Amazon to offer a free trial (including AWS credits) available now to qualified users. It's the fastest way to get started with One-Click HPC, and completely free. Within minutes of completing registration, users can walk through the SaaS-based wizard to provision their Grid Engine HPC cluster.

Q: Will RightScale be at SuperComputing 11?

A: Yes. We will be at the Univa booth #5501. Come by and ask us about our joint HPC cloud solution and the free trial offer.

For more information or to sign up for the Free Trial including Amazon Web Services credits, please visit http://www.univa.com/resources/one-click-free-trial-registration.

Share Options

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPC in the Cloud

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in join the Discussion

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

May 18, 2012

MicroTech Unveils Advanced Virtual Environment for Private Cloud Computing

May 17, 2012

May 16, 2012

May 15, 2012

May 14, 2012

May 11, 2012

AWS, SAP Announce Certification of AWS Infrastructure for SAP Business All-in-One Solutions

May 10, 2012

May 09, 2012

Feature Articles

Cloud Services Satisfy a Higher Calling

Higher education involves many collaborative projects that lend themselves to cloud services, however often those services are not tailored to the uniqueness of an academic environment. That's where the Internet2 NET+ project comes in. By partnering with 16 major cloud providers, the networking consortium is seeking to expedite the delivery of cloud services and by doing so advance research and innovation in the United States.
Read more...

Read more HPC in the Cloud features...

Around the Web

NVIDIA Raises Its Game to the Cloud

May 17, 2012 | NVIDIA GeForce GRID, a cloud gaming platform announced at the 2012 GPU Technology Conference (GTC), seeks to reduce the the latency associated with cloud gaming.
Read more...

Breaking the Cloud Barrier

May 15, 2012 | New Microsoft report shows that beyond the expected financial benefits, cloud services may offer more comprehensive security features compared to in-house IT operations.
Read more...

Vendors Demo Next-Gen Sequencing Platforms for Pharma

May 14, 2012 | During the second annual Pistoia Alliance conference, three teams demonstrated their newly-implemented cloud-based next-generation sequencing platforms.
Read more...

Zunicore Offers Bare Metal by the Hour

May 10, 2012 | PEER1's cloud division, Zunicore, will soon be offering GPU-equipped servers on-demand.
Read more...

US Cloud Providers Struggle With Data Privacy Laws

May 08, 2012 | The Patriot Act leads foreign governments to question the security of US cloud services.
Read more...

Read more headlines...

Appro White Paper: Enabling Performance-per-Watt Gains in HPC

04/05/2012 | Appro | Designed to meet the growing global demand for HPC solutions, Appro's Xtreme-X™ Supercomputer delivers superior performance-per-watt and reduced I/O latency while bringing significant flexibility to HPC workload configurations including capacity, hybrid, data intensive and capability computing.

Exploring the Potential of Heterogeneous Computing

04/02/2012 | AMD | Developers today are just beginning to explore the potential of heterogeneous computing, but the potential for this new paradigm is huge. This brief article reviews how the technology might impact a range of application development areas, including client experiences and cloud-based data management. As platforms like OpenCL continue to evolve, the benefits of heterogeneous computing will become even more accessible. Use this quick article to jump-start your own thinking on heterogeneous computing.