Glimpses of the Brave New World for Cloud Security

Feb 22, 2011 | Yanpei Chen and Randy H. Katz, both from UC Berkeley, discuss the range of threats to cloud security from multiple perspectives--academia, industry, government and the "black hat" community, arguing that history teaches us that developing security architectures early in the process can pay off greatly as systems evolve and accrue more disparate security requirements. The challenge is to achieve some measure of adequate and affordable security without undermining the economic advantages of cloud computing.
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Azure Use Case Highlights Challenges for HPC Applications in the Cloud

Feb 21, 2011 | Although there are a number of use cases for HPC applications in the cloud, there are still platform and other challenges that must be met. Vedaprakash Subramanian and his colleagues recently had the experience of porting an HPC application, Numerical Generation of Synthetic Seismograms, onto Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud and have generated some opinions to share about some of the challenges ahead for HPC in the cloud based on their experiences.
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Big Data, Big Demand: Navigating the Cloud Storage Landscape

Feb 17, 2011 | To clear the haze that muddles the much-needed "big picture" view of the cloud storage landscape for big data, we asked a number of storage experts about how users with high performance computing or big data needs should evaluate cloud storage options. We also take a look at what the future of cloud storage looks like as data volumes continue to grow.
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CTO Panel: Are Public Clouds Ripe for Mission Critical Applications?

Feb 15, 2011 | This week we gathered the opinions of five technical leaders from cloud service companies to gauge their views on customer reception of the idea of placing mission-critical applications on public resources. Just as important as the initial question about the viability of public clouds for core apps is a secondary query—for those that did decide to send mission-critical apps to the public cloud, what was the driving factor?
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The Cloud-Enabled Space Weather Platform

Feb 14, 2011 | Everett Toews describes the Cloud-Enabled Space Weather Platform, which uses a cloud-based solution to lower the barriers for physicists who are running complex space weather models and simulations. In addition to providing a scalable platform for space weather and magnetosphere research, the resource provides an opportunity for scientific collaboration at the cloud scale.
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Grid Perspectives on the Cloud Phenomenon

Feb 10, 2011 | Dr. Junlei Jiang discusses the nature of adotion of grid computing versus cloud computing, noting differences in the founding and subsequent evolution of both paradigms. While both share the same vision, the processes behind them vary--as do the adoption curves. Dr. Jiang presents an overivew of the main differences, pointing out the process of computing model natural selection that he sees happening.
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DRC Energizes Smith-Waterman, Opens Door to On-Demand Service

Feb 09, 2011 | Users of the compute-intensive Smith-Waterman algorithm, which provides fine-tuned yields from genetic sequence analysis projects, have often paid the price of expensive runs. Acceleration that can be plugged into standard servers that can run in the cloud could provide new opportunities to a broader set of researchers.
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Mapping the SLA Landscape for High Performance Clouds

Feb 07, 2011 | This in-depth article by Dr. Ivona Brandic notes that while a wealth of work has been accomplished to suit the technological development of clouds, there has yet been very little work done in the area of the market mechanisms that support them. Service Level Agreement (SLA) mapping is a relatively new concept designed to standardize the way users find and use cloud service providers--and create the necessary environment for dynamic and open cloud markets.
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More In the Spotlight Testing

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Mars as a Service: Cloud Computing for the Red Planet Exploration Era

Feb 03, 2011 | The MetNet project aims to go where no other Mars missions have gone before, at least in terms of the way it will gather and then process data. This mission to Mars will be based on the power of a new type of dandelion seed-shaped landing vehicle called the MetNet Lander. Dr. Jose Luis Vazquez-Poletti describes the project's goals, methods, and how cloud computing is set to provide the resources for this data-intensive mission.
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Looking Back at Microsoft’s First Year in the Cloud

Feb 02, 2011 | Just one year after its formal, public entry into the cloud computing arms race, Microsoft has carved out a sizable user base for its Azure offering. While there are still gaps in terms of use cases relevant to high-performance computing, a range of features signaling its maturation provides some glimmers of hope for what it can provide to HPC cloud users in its second year.
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Remote Interactive 3D Visualization and the Key to HPC Cloud Acceptance

Jan 31, 2011 | Earl Dodd argues that for the HPC cloud to gain practical acceptance as a viable decision-support tool in a wide variety of businesses and industries, it must include Remote Interactive 3D Visualization as a fundamental component of its architecture. Without this vital functionality, the HPC cloud runs the risk of being considered a technological novelty with limited commercial success. However, there are some persistent non-technical barriers that are preventing the full emergence of a broad new user group in the high-performance computing in the cloud space.
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Lessons from the Grid: An Interview with Argonne’s Kate Keahey

Jan 25, 2011 | In this interview with Kate Keahey from Argonne National Lab, we discuss her background with distributed computing, limitations of the grid, challenges and benefits of cloud computing for HPC and her view on critical elements that the community as a whole—vendor, users, and scientists alike—will need to address as the space matures.
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Cisco’s Cloud CTO Clarifies Strategy, Describes Datacenters of the Future

Jan 24, 2011 | Cisco's CTO of Cloud Computing, Lew Tucker, came clean on the company's cloud strategy this week in a video interview. In addition to revealing a rough path for the coming months, Tucker also revealed his insights about the "many clouds" theory, the role of the network in cloud computing, and innovations that could change datacenter design.
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Managing CERN: OpenNebula Team Tames the Cloud

Jan 21, 2011 | This week, Rubén S. Montero, one of the members of the team behind helping researchers manage the complex infrastructure at the world’s largest particle physics laboratories in the world, shares insights about managing CERN’s infrastructure. At the heart of the IaaS cloud CERN has implemented is OpenNebula, which now serves as the management layer in production following extensive prototyping and testing. Montero describes the project’s evolution and current status as CERN considers offering a public cloud interface.
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Grid Engine Finds Safe Harbor at Univa

Jan 18, 2011 | Author Wolfgang Gentzsch, former CEO and President of Genias Software, which originally developed the Grid Engine software, shares his view on GE's new home in Univa. He provides context and history of the software and discusses how the Grid Engine open source community can rest assured that robust development will continue.
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Canada Explores New Frontiers in Astroinformatics

Jan 17, 2011 | The number of scientific instruments available to astronomy researchers for gathering data has grown significantly in recent years, leading to unprecedented amounts of information that requires vast storage and processing capabilities. Canadian researchers are finding a way around this problem with a new solution that combines the best of grid and cloud computing, allowing them to more efficiently reach their research goals.
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Cloud to Improve Genomic Research at Spanish National Cancer Research Centre

Jan 13, 2011 | The need to analyze increasingly large amounts of genomics and proteomics data has meant that research institutions such as the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) allocate an increasing amount of to time and budget provisioning, as well as managing and maintaining their scientific computing infrastructure, areas that not their core business. A European IT company, powered by AWS is showing how cloud computing can mitigate these problems and get researchers back to their mission.
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Delivering Geospatial Information Systems to the Mainstream

Jan 11, 2011 | Despite the recession – or arguably because of the recession – the cloud is changing the way GIS services are developed and delivered. This year promises major and fast-paced changes: a lower-cost infrastructure for developing spatial applications; more robust, creative and sophisticated business, government and consumer uses; and a rapidly-expanding pool of spatial technology users.
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Bursting the Clouds: SC10 Survey Sheds Light on HPC User Experiences

Jan 10, 2011 | At this year's annual Supercomputing Conference held in New Orleans, Platform Computing conducted a survey of 100 IT professionals in academia, government and industry about their experimentation with cloud computing models. Randy Clark from Platform provides some insights into the findings, which do show overall satisfaction with clouds for HPC among those who have some experiences.
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Notable European HPC Cloud Research Projects to Gather Steam in 2011

Jan 06, 2011 | In 2010, a number of cloud computing research and development initiatives were underway in several European countries, both in academia and enterprise contexts. As the new year dawns, Jose Luis Vazquez-Poletti, PhD and Assistant Professor in Computer Architecture at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain provides an update on some specific movements in European cloud computing research projects that we will follow in 2011.
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Security in Cloud Computing Not So Different from Security in Telco

Jan 04, 2011 | During a recent “Cloud Computing in Telecom” SCOPE workshop, presenters and attendees expressed considerable interest in cloud security. Presenter Rao Vasireddy of Alcatel-Lucent, who advocated using “secure by design” principles to secure the cloud, talked to Leslie Gurth from SCOPE about his presentation.
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Enabling Digital Manufacturing: A Strategy to Develop a National Innovation Network

Jan 03, 2011 | Just as the electric power infrastructure was the key to a strong manufacturing base a century ago, a digital manufacturing infrastructure is critical to the future of American industry. Economic uncertainty and leaden growth have slowed innovation, but access to cutting edge tools such as high performance modeling and simulation provide a bold path forward, essentially transforming the way we build and thrive.
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