CometCloud: Using a Federated HPC-Cloud to Understand Fluid Flow in Microchannels

May 22, 2013 | The ever-growing complexity of scientific and engineering problems continues to pose new computational challenges. Thus, we present a novel federation model that enables end-users with the ability to aggregate heterogeneous resource scale problems. The feasibility of this federation model has been proven, in the context of the UberCloud HPC Experiment, by gathering the most comprehensive information to date on the effects of pillars on microfluid channel flow.
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CERN, Google, and the Future of Global Science Initiatives

May 21, 2013 | Large-scale, worldwide scientific initiatives rely on some cloud-based system to both coordinate efforts and manage computational efforts at peak times that cannot be contained within the combined in-house HPC resources. Last week at Google I/O, Brookhaven National Lab’s Sergey Panitkin discussed the role of the Google Compute Engine in providing computational support to ATLAS, a detector of high-energy particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
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Avoiding Scientific Computing Bottlenecks in the Cloud

May 17, 2013 | Frank Ding, engineering analysis & technical computing manager at Simpson Strong-Tie, discussed the advantages of utilizing the cloud for occasional scientific computing, identified the obstacles to doing so, and proposed workarounds to some of those obstacles.
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Overcoming the Cloud Security Barrier for Financial Services

May 10, 2013 | The private industry least likely to adopt public cloud services for data storage are financial institutions. Holding the most sensitive and heavily-regulated of data types, personal financial information, banks and similar institutions are mostly moving towards private cloud services – and doing so at great cost.
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Research Roundup: Toward a More Efficient Cloud

May 10, 2013 | In this week's hand-picked assortment, researchers explore the path to more energy-efficient cloud datacenters, investigate new frameworks and runtime environments that are compatible with Windows Azure, and design a unified programming model for diverse data-intensive cloud computing paradigms.
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The Evolution of the Virtual Platform

May 01, 2013 | At the 2013 Open Fabrics International Developer Workshop, in Monterey, California, VMware's in-house HPC expert Josh Simons delivered a presentation on the Software-Defined Datacenter. At its essence, a software-defined datacenter is a prescriptive model for bringing the benefits of virtualization to rest of the datacenter.
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On the Verge of Cloud 2.0

Apr 26, 2013 | Last week Mellanox debuted a new network adapter, ConnectX-3 Pro, the first interconnect solution to feature cloud offload engines for overlay networks. Like its predecessor, ConnectX-3, it supports both 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet as well as 56Gb/s InfiniBand, but it's the overlay offloading engine that is poised to unlock cloud's potential.
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Research Roundup: Prepping Clouds for Data Influx

Apr 26, 2013 | In this week's hand-picked assortment, researchers explore the path to data-intensive cloud computing, investigate extreme heterogenous architectures for a truly multi-purpose cloud, and set out to create a more predictable cloud programming model...
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Middleware Is Cool

Apr 16, 2013 | Despite the important advances that middleware enables in both the HPC and enterprise spheres, it generally fails to elicit the same excitement as, say, brand-new leadership class hardware. But middleware, such as Adaptive Computing's intelligent management engine, Moab, is cool and you don't have to take Adaptive's word for it. During the company's annual user event last week, Gartner gave Adaptive its "Cool Vendor" stamp of approval.
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Five Steps to a Private Cloud

Apr 12, 2013 | One of the sessions at this week's MoabCon event focused on best practices for private cloud. There are five steps that Adaptive recommends for companies seeking to transition into the next-generation of IT: Focus on ROI, Facilitating Self-Service, Use Chargeback, Continuously Optimize, and lastly, Go Vertical – Not Horizontal...
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HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Apr 12, 2013 | The top research stories of the week have been hand-selected from leading scientific centers, prominent journals and relevant conference proceedings. In this week's assortment, researchers tackle the distinctions between HPC and science clouds, present a way to use fuzzy logic to make clouds more efficient, and provide a review of grid security best practices.
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Data Protection: One Size Does Not Fit All

Apr 10, 2013 | In object storage applications, cluster sizes run the gamut from just a few nodes built into a medical imaging modality to thousands of nodes spanning multiple datacenters. Fulfilling the economic and manageability promises of a unified storage approach means using the best protection scheme for each particular use case. The proposed solution leverages both replication and erasure coding to ensure scalability, while optimizing footprint efficiency.
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HTC, Big Data and the God Particle

Mar 29, 2013 | Contributor Miha Ahronovitz traces the history of high throughput computing (HTC), noting the particularly enthusiastic response from the high energy physics world and the role of HTC in such important discoveries as the Higgs boson. As one of the biggest generators of data, this community has been dealing with the "big data" deluge long before "big data" assumed its position as the buzzword du jour.
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HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Mar 29, 2013 | Our top HPC cloud research story this week lays out a lightweight approach to implementing virtual machine monitors. Other items explore an innovative parallel cloud storage system, HPC-to-cloud migration, anywhere-anytime cluster monitoring, and a framework for cloud storage.
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Why Cloud Computing Hasn't Taken Off in the EU

Mar 22, 2013 | Cloud computing has been very slow to catch in the EU, not because they didn't know about it or didn't have the resources to make use of it, but because most Europeans are considerably more paranoid about the security of their data.
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HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Mar 15, 2013 | The top HPC cloud research story this week addresses the question: What if it were possible to cheaply and easily test the suitability of moving to a cloud platform – a virtual "try it before you buy it"? In other items, researchers explore the reliability of HPC cloud, take another pass at GPU virtualization, and evaluate I/O performance in Amazon's EC2 cloud.
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HPC Bolsters Life Sciences

Mar 14, 2013 | HPC, cloud and big data are experiencing this rich synergy, and it seems nowhere is this more evident than in life sciences. The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a new state-of-the-art facility in Western Mass., just received more than $4.5 million in funding for a cloud-based system for computational biology that will tap into this union.
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UberCloud HPC Experiment Readies for Round Three

Mar 05, 2013 | The UberCloud Experiment is issuing an open invitation to members of the HPC, CAE, life sciences, and big data communities to join round three. Teams will be involved in applying the cloud computing services model to compute and data-intensive workloads on remote cluster computing resources. The idea behind the experiment is to explore the end-to-end process of using remote computing resources as a service, and learning to tackle the many roadblocks.
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Utility Supercomputing Heats Up

Feb 28, 2013 | The HPC in the cloud space continues to evolve and one of the companies leading that charge is Cycle Computing. The utility supercomputing vendor recently reported a record-breaking 2012, punctuated by several impressive big science endeavors.
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HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Mar 01, 2013 | The HPC cloud top research stories of the week have been hand-selected from prominent journals and leading conference proceedings. Items this week include an evaluation of a cloud storage service, an HPC cloud proof-of-concept, and a survey of cloud-based workflows.
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Warning to Cloud Adopters: Check the Fine Print

Feb 25, 2013 | Central to the attraction of cloud computing is the "pay for only what you use" claim made by almost all service providers. But look a little deeper within the contracts and you will often find that they are not quite as attractive as first appears.
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Yottamine Serves Up Predictive Analytics On-Demand

Feb 15, 2013 | Startup Yottamine Analytics is riding the twin waves of cloud and big data. Its cloud-based predictive modeling solution combines the benefits of EC2 spin-up automation and large-scale program parallelism to provide predictive power by the hour for pennies a minute.
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UK Creates Massive 200,000-Core 'HPC Service'

Feb 07, 2013 | The United Kingdom is rapidly ramping up its HPC capabilities. The nation just launched its third HPC service in the last 12 months, a 200,000-core powerhouse, called "Accelerator," designed to accommodate a wide range of academic and industry workloads.
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The Open Cloud: Management Standards Achieve Interoperability

Feb 01, 2013 | IT managers around the globe are adopting cloud computing technologies to deliver higher quality services while lowering costs and improving efficiencies. While there have been significant gains, developing cloud standards that promote interoperability is a crucial next step. This article details the benefits of such standards and looks at how they are being enabled.
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China's Cloud Positioning and the Prospect of Foreign Outsourcing

Jan 18, 2013 | China has borne less of the brunt of economic recession than we have felt here in the States. In a position to invest capital into the future of their country, one of the major arenas they intend to dominate is cloud computing. This should come as little surprise as spending on transition to cloud computing continues to rise in the most technologically advanced countries.
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Student Projects Highlight Cloud's Potential

Jan 04, 2013 | If ideas are what will help students to survive outside the classroom, creative use of technologies like cloud computing will help them to change the world. Dr. Jose Luis Vazquez-Poletti shares current student Master's Thesis projects that leverage cloud computing and open source tools in order to carry out high-value research, despite budgetary constraints.
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Top 10 Cloud Stories of 2012

Dec 11, 2012 | As 2012 winds down, it's time to reflect on the major cloud computing themes and stories of last 12 months. With the "What is cloud?" question finally laid to rest, thanks in large part to the official NIST Cloud Computing Definition, everyone was free to move on with the business of actually building, implementing and managing cloud platforms.
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HPC as a Service: Lessons Learned

Dec 10, 2012 | After a fast-paced three months, round 1 of the HPC Experiment (also known as the Uber-Cloud Experiment) concluded last month, with more than 160 participating organizations and individuals from 25 countries, working together in 25 international teams. In this article we present their main findings, challenges, and their lessons learned.
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Redshift, New Instance Types, Price Cuts and More at AWS Re: Invent

Dec 04, 2012 | AWS used its first ever customer and partner conference, AWS re: Invent, held last week in Las Vegas, as a launch pad for some major company news. During their respective keynotes, AWS Senior Vice President Andrew Jassy revealed a brand new data warehouse service, AWS Redshift, and another price cut for the S3 storage service, while Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels announced two super-sized EC2 Instance Types, and another new service, the AWS Data Pipeline.
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Adaptive Revs Moab, Debuts Remote Virtualization Edition

Nov 27, 2012 | At SC12, Adaptive announced its Moab HPC Suite 7.2 release, which includes several productivity enhancements and introduces support for Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. The workload management vendor also launched two new products as part of its Moab HPC Suite: Application Portal Edition and Remote Visualization Edition.
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Grid Software Creates Virtual Windows Supercomputer

Nov 20, 2012 | What if you could combine the benefits of virtualization, grid and cloud computing to accelerate Windows-based applications? An Israeli company, Xoreax, is doing just that. We spoke with Xoreax at SC12 in Salt Lake City, Utah, last week to learn more about their offering.
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Microsoft Outfits Azure Cloud for Big Compute

Nov 13, 2012 | Microsoft has unveiled a set of "big compute" capabilities for its Windows Azure offering. The company is courting the HPC space with more powerful hardware, new instance configurations, and the updated Microsoft HPC Pack 2012.
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SC12: Supercomputing with a Helping of Cloud

Nov 12, 2012 | The SC12 technical forum schedule is impressive for the quality and depth of content and the sheer scope of subjects covered, however this same depth and scope can make it daunting to wade through. For that reason, HPC in the Cloud has pared the list down to the sessions that promise the most relevance to the HPC cloud and grid computing community.
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AMD Unveils 64-Bit ARM Strategy

Nov 01, 2012 | On Monday, AMD announced it is adding ARM-based Opterons to its portfolio, the first non-x86 server chips in the company's history. The new processors, due out in 2014, will use 64-bit ARM SoCs on top of its SeaMicro Freedom Fabric technology, and will be aimed at the datacenter and cloud space.
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Cloud Lends Power to Next Generation Martian Missions

Oct 29, 2012 | Martian rover Curiosity successfully performed an on-site validation of an application essential to the next generation of Martian missions. Cloud computing, specifically Amazon Web Services, played an important role.
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Promoting Hemispheric Advancement Through Collaborative Research

Oct 23, 2012 | The Organization of American States (OAS) has been called the UN of the Americas and it is involved in everything from food security to supercomputing. It is the prime political forum of the western hemisphere and the world's oldest regional organization.
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The Future of Workload Management

Oct 12, 2012 | In this era of heterogeneous architectures and hybrid infrastructures, workload managers are necessarily becoming more and more sophisticated. Looking toward the future of workload management, there are three major trends: application insight, big data awareness, and HPC clouds. While inter-related, each has something important to contribute to the advancement of HPC.
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Digital Gold Rush Powered by GPUs

Oct 09, 2012 | Coinlab, a Seattle-based startup that offers a unique monetization service, is considering a move into high performance computing. Today the company mines Bitcoins, digital currency to help online gamers make money. But they believe the same infrastructure that powers their operation can be parlayed into an HPC service business.
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Ahead by a Century: Utility Supercomputing Advances Stem Cell Research

Oct 08, 2012 | What if researchers could access virtually unlimited computing resources? That question was at the heart of Cycle Computing's BigScience Challenge. Now winner Victor Ruotti of the Morgridge Institute for Research has completed his utility supercomputing run, logging over a compute century on the Amazon cloud. The results will be used to build an indexing system for stem cells and their derivatives.
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Government Computing: The Case for Private Cloud

Oct 05, 2012 | Federal IT departments are faced with some tough challenges these days. Not only are budgets constrained, but mandates are starting to stack up like the tax code. One of the most talked about is the cloud-first mandate, but what kind of cloud will it be?
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HPC, Clouds & Big Data Converge at ISC Cloud 2012 - Part Two

Oct 02, 2012 | The HPC cloud space is still a work in progress, but judging from a set of European conferences that took place this September, there is also actual progress to speak of. With GlobusEUROPE and the EGI Technical Forum in Prague from Sept. 17-21, and ISC Cloud in Mannheim, Germany, Sept. 24-25, there was an abundance of topics to cover.
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ISC Cloud 2012 BOFs: Applications/Software, Reference Architectures and Data Transfer

Oct 02, 2012 | At ISC Cloud 2012, talking points for the Birds of a Feather sessions were hand-picked by the participants. While the importance of security was a key theme throughout the two-day event, other salient topics emerged during the voting process. The finalized BoF roster included "Applications and software in the cloud," "HPC Cloud Reference Architectures" and "Data Transfer in/out of Clouds."
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HPC, Clouds & Big Data Converge at ISC Cloud 2012 - Part One

Sep 25, 2012 | The last week of September, ISC Cloud had its third annual event in Mannheim, Germany, organized by Uber Cloud Experiment leader Wolfgang Gentzsch. The broad-ranging yet ambitiously-dense program attracted a nice balance of users and technology enablers from research and industry.
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Internet Freedom Fighters: Amazon, Facebook, Rackspace and 54 More to Lobby Gov't

Sep 25, 2012 | This week, not one but two groups of IT heavyweights launched with plans to expand the scope of the Internet while protecting the free flow of ideas it provides. The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) counts already 42 founding members, including infrastructure providers Rackspace, Softlayer, ProfitBricks and Tucows, while the Internet Association's 14-strong roster claims Web giants Google, Yahoo, Facebook, eBay and Amazon.
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Grid Community Gathers in Prague

Sep 18, 2012 | This week, over 400 participants from the European research-computing community - and some of their American partners - came together in one of Europe's most beloved cities, Prague. On Monday, GlobusEUROPE took over the third floor of the Hotel Clarion Congress, located in Vysocany, a modern section of the city, just 15 minutes away from the historic center of Prague and the famous Prague Castle. The remainder of the week, Tuesday through Friday, is dedicated to the European Grid Infrastructure Technical Forum.
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Globus and Grid: Blazing Trails for Future Discovery

Sep 13, 2012 | As participants from around the world make their way to Prague for the EGI Technical Forum, grid-enabled tools continue to facilitate global collaboration. Grid computing provides the backbone for a wide range of research, all the way from basic science to once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs, like the recent achievements surrounding the elusive Higgs boson particle.
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Public Cloud Market to Exceed $100 Billion by Next Prez Race

Sep 17, 2012 | Between the ubiquity of Internet-connected devices and businesses looking to expand their reach through digital means, it's becoming nearly impossible to talk about technology without mentioning "the cloud." In the last week, two big name analysts have released reports, each predicting a public cloud services market that reaches northward of $100 billion by the next presidential election.
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The State of HPC Cloud

Sep 11, 2012 | While HPC cloud is still in the early stages of adoption, it is becoming more commonplace. Various hurdles must be overcome and users must become comfortable with new usage models, but as technology ramps up to meet these challenges, the benefits of a cloud model will attract more and more HPC users.
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China Cashes in on Cloud

Sep 11, 2012 | From 2001-2011, China's GDP grew an astounding 550 percent. During the same time period, the US economy increased by just 50 percent. Given China's dramatic growth, the country appears to be focused on catching up with the United States in a variety of aspects including defense, technology and even Olympic medals. A recent flurry of announcements indicate that China is betting on cloud technologies, even besting some US providers at their own game.
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Cloud APIs: Agent for Vendor Lock-in or the Anti Vendor Lock-in?

Sep 04, 2012 | The combined LinuxCon/CloudOpen conference, which took place in San Diego last week, provided a forum for valuable keynotes on the state of Linux and cloud, many informative booths, and a wide array of interesting activities and sessions. On the first day of the three-day event, a panel on Cloud APIs had everyone talking about what it means to be open or closed in this increasingly connected world.
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Why Are CAE Software Vendors Moving to the HPC Cloud?

Sep 04, 2012 | When it comes to running HPC workloads in the cloud, traditional software licensing models have presented a significant barrier to adoption. But as cloud becomes ever more entrenched, this is starting to change. More and more ISVs have started to experiment with cloud computing and are adjusting their licensing models accordingly.
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VMware to Join OpenStack Camp

Aug 28, 2012 | As cloud heats up, it's making for some strange bedfellows. VMware is seeking to become a member of the foundation that governs OpenStack, the popular cloud-building framework. Intel and NEC are also applying. The news, which broke the day before the annual VMworld gala, caught the cloud community by surprise and sparked speculation as to VMware's motives.
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Amazon Launches Glacier, Puts Data on Ice

Aug 28, 2012 | Amazon has just announced a new storage service called Glacier. The cloud giant describes its new offering as a secure, extremely low-cost storage technology for data archiving and backup. Like the name implies, the service is slow, cold and remote.
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OpenStack, VMware, Red Hat - Will the Real 'Linux of the Cloud' Please Stand Up?

Aug 21, 2012 | A search for "Linux of the Cloud" will turn up several candidates with claims staked to this honorific, among them OpenStack, VMware and Red Hat. In the race to open source cloud dominance, achieving a kind of Linux parity is the ultimate stamp of approval, but are any of these plays worthy of the bestowal?
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Red Hat Debuts Enterprise OpenStack Preview

Aug 14, 2012 | Red Hat on Monday announced its intention to provide an enterprise-grade version of the popular open source cloud framework, OpenStack. The company rolled out a preview release of its OpenStack distribution, which runs on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and allows companies or service providers to create Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds.
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Legal Aspects of Cloud Computing

Aug 13, 2012 | HPC and grid/cloud expert Wolfgang Gentzsch conducts an interview with Paolo Balboni, scientific director of the European Privacy Association and founding partner at ICT Legal Consulting in Milan. Dr. Balboni will be featured speaker at ISC Cloud in Mannheim, Germany, Sept. 26-27, 2012, where he will be discussing the legal aspects of cloud computing.
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It's Official - Rackspace Moves to OpenStack

Aug 07, 2012 | Rackspace is now the largest OpenStack-based public cloud in the world. After a four-month beta period, Rackspace began using the open source cloud management platform OpenStack, which it cofounded with NASA, to power its extensive public cloud infrastructure. The move occurs just weeks after OpenStack celebrated its second birthday.
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Implementing Disaster Recovery Within the Education Sector

Aug 06, 2012 | Current financial pressures have led educational institutions to look for a more sustainable and innovative way of managing their services, this includes the IT infrastructure that underpins the teaching and learning. The author proposes a cloud-based solution for implementing disaster recovery and business continuity at the college level.
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When Time Is of the Egress: Optimizing Your Transfers

Jul 31, 2012 | Traditionally running scientific workloads in AWS provides a diverse toolkit that allows researchers to easily sling data around different time zones, regions, or even globally once the data is inside of the infrastructure sandbox. However, getting data in and out of AWS has historically been more of a challenge. Cycle Computing's Andrew Kaczorek and Dan Harris offer some helpful tips on optimizing ingress and egress transfers.
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OpenNebula Project Director Discusses High-Profile Deployments

Jul 24, 2012 | They say they don't invest in marketing, but OpenNebula has not gone unnoticed. While the open source cloud management platform, based in Spain, has a low-key US profile, their European and Asian presence is strong. In addition to participating in the Helix Nebula project, OpenNebula is also the core component in China Mobile's Big Cloud infrastructure, which will soon be used to provide services to more than 600 million customers. HPC in the Cloud reached out to OpenNebula Project Director Ignacio M. Llorente to get the details on these and other developments.
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CAE in the Cloud – New Business Opportunities for Manufacturers and ISVs

Jul 19, 2012 | Most manufacturers, especially small and medium businesses (SMBs), mainly use desktop workstations for their daily R&D work. Often they do prep work during the day and production runs over-night, resulting in one simulation job per day. In this article, we will investigate how breaking the CAE jobs free from the restrictions of the workstation environment and moving them to the cloud could benefit the CAE engineers as well as the CAE software vendors.
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Helix Nebula: from Grid to Cloud and Lessons Learned So Far

Jul 17, 2012 | European cloud computing is taking off as can be seen in the progress of Helix Nebula. The major pan-European cloud project announced last week that they were moving from the initial proof of concept phase to the start of the two-year pilot phase, which involves expanded proofs of concept and perhaps some additional demand side partners. Just a few months into the project, the participants discuss the challenges of migrating science into the cloud.
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Department of Defense Lays Out Cloud Strategy

Jul 17, 2012 | The Department of Defense has announced a cloud computing strategy that aligns the agency with Federal efficiency standards. It details the transition from traditional IT services, including methods to promote adoption, establish an enterprise cloud infrastructure and consolidate datacenter resources. Beyond technical details, the program also aims to overcome any cultural challenges associated with migration to cloud technology.
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Madrid Workshop Explores the Business Case for Clouds

Jul 16, 2012 | Cloud, as an abstraction, represents a flexible, ubiquitous and consistent platform accessible from anywhere at any time. Last week, the International Workshop on Clouds for Business and Business for Clouds provided the perfect meeting point for both industry and academia to explore the truth of this statement and further discuss how organizations can benefit from the myriad of available cloud models.
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Cloud APIs – Is Amazon the de Facto Standard?

Jul 10, 2012 | The availability of cloud management platforms means that pretty much anyone can create cloud infrastructure. Service providers can use these IaaS-building frameworks to make public clouds and enterprises can use them to construct their very own private clouds. On the proprietary side, the most popular such cloud OS is VMware's vCloud product – but the real action lately is on the open source side. And as the space heats up, we're seeing a resurrection of the incendiary API debate.
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In the Wake of the Higgs Boson: Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud

Jul 09, 2012 | Announced earlier this year, the pan-European cloud computing project, Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud, brings together select IT service providers with leading research institutions, CERN, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Representatives from all three centers will take part in a joint keynote session at the ISC Cloud conference, taking place this September in Mannheim, Germany. In this brief Q&A, they share their perspectives on the initiative and provide an outline of what's to come.
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Google Enters IaaS Cloud Race

Jul 03, 2012 | Google is officially in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) business. Last week at the Google I/O Developers Conference in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled Google Compute Engine, a utility computing service that lets users run their workloads inside the company's vast datacenters. While the public cloud can be used for a range of workloads, Google has suggested several primary use cases, including video rendering, data analysis and high performance computing.
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Highlights from HPC 2012: Twenty Years of HPC at Cetraro

Jul 02, 2012 | The International Advanced Workshop on High Performance Computing, Grids and Clouds (HPC 2012) took place in Cetraro, Italy, serving again as a meeting point for ideas pertaining to HPC, distributed computing, and beyond. This year's event, held from June 25-29, was particularly significant because HPC 2012 was celebrating its 20th anniversary.
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Latency in the Cloud - How Low Can We Go?

Jun 26, 2012 | At the HPC Advisory Council European Conference 2012 in Hamburg, in conjunction with the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC'12), VMware's HPC guru Josh Simons delivered a presentation of particular interest to followers of the HPC cloud space. The session tackled the million dollar HPC cloud question: "Are cloud computing and virtualization only useful for running throughput workloads or can latency-sensitive applications be run as well?"
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Pocket Sized Shots of Techila

Jun 26, 2012 | Cloud computing offers highly flexible and available compute capacity for a variety of applications. However, the act of provisioning those resources can be rather complicated, requiring a certain level of expertise and consequently reducing cloud adoption. In 2005, Techila was created to simplify the act of using the cloud, developing middleware to bridge applications to external compute resources.
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NASA CIO Talks Cloud Strategy

Jun 26, 2012 | Earlier this month NASA CIO Linda Cureton detailed several changes to the agency's cloud strategy. The organization migrated a number of enterprise applications to Amazon Web Services as well as deploying their "Be a Martian Project" on Windows Azure in what seemed to be a departure from OpenStack. HPC in the Cloud spoke with Cureton about the new direction and NASA’s standing with the cloud platform they co-founded.
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Introducing Software Engineering-as-a-Service

Jun 19, 2012 | The software application lifecycle broadly consists of two key phases, application development and application deployment. The various cloud models support application deployment, but application engineering and maintenance activities continue to take place on traditional dedicated infrastructure. That's where the proposed Engineering-as-a-Service (EaaS) platform comes in – to support the entire spectrum of software development lifecycle activities in the cloud.
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NYC Gets Its Cloud On

Jun 12, 2012 | One of the largest cloud events in the world, Cloud Expo is taking place this week in New York City. The four-day affair marks the 10th iteration of the bi-coastal conference, which just expanded its agenda to include the wildly-popular big data topic. With this dual- and often overlapping focus, there really is something for everyone. Partner events include the ODCA Forecast 2012, Deploycon 2012, and the RightScale conference, among others.
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Lockheed Martin Helps Define Cloud Usage Models

Jun 12, 2012 | In an interview at ODCA's Forecast 2012 in New York City, Curt Aubley, the VP & CTO of Cyber Security & NexGen Innovation at Lockheed Martin, as well as the Open Data Center Alliance president, explained that moving the market forward with open solutions enables Lockheed to have more options, avoid lock-in and get the benefits of new technologies so that they can move faster in a more affordable fashion.
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Mirantis, iSuperGrid Partner on HPC Cloud Network

Jun 04, 2012 | The possibility of resource-constrained HPC workloads being able to tap into virtually limitless cloud-based resources is enticing to say the least, but in practice, they haven't been a perfect match. Where HPC workloads run best on a customer-tailored infrastructure, most clouds are general-purpose. A partnership from iSuperGrid and Mirantis aims to address this challenge by marrying the flexibility of cloud computing with the complexities of HPC.
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NIST Guide Helps Dispel Cloud Mysteries

May 31, 2012 | Cloud services have increased accessibility to high power resources that were typically available only to large enterprises and government facilities. While the financial and technological advantages may be obvious, underlying structures that form cloud services can be mystifying to the end user. The confusion has prompted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to publish a synopsis defining cloud technologies, including recommendations.
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Dell Enters Hyperscale ARM Race

May 29, 2012 | On Tuesday, Dell announced a prototype low-power server built with ARM processors, code-named "Copper," aimed at the hyperscale datacenter space. Enterprises running large Web, cloud and big data environments are looking to custom-built servers as a means of lowering the cost of computing. Dell will not be selling the ARM server outright, but will provide units to select customers and partners for application development and benchmarking.
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Decoding the True Value of XaaS

May 22, 2012 | Lately the menu of cloud-based XaaS (anything-as-a-service) offerings has expanded to include a virtual armada of new IT acronyms. Regardless of what type of XaaS you may be considering, the true benefit is being able to partially or fully outsource your IT needs to a highly skilled service provider who can help manage your vital IT functions.
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Cloud Services Satisfy a Higher Calling

May 15, 2012 | 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.
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Univa CEO Gary Tyreman on the Evolution of HPC, Big Data and Cloud

May 07, 2012 | It's been a little over a year since Univa took over stewardship of the open source workload manager and acquired the founding Sun Grid Engine team from Oracle, and the company just announced its third production release. CEO Gary Tyreman discusses the latest enhancements as well as the company's plans around cloud, big data and the enterprise.
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Bright Streamlines Cloud-Bursting with Data-Aware Scheduling

May 01, 2012 | Bright Cluster Manager 6.0 allows users to extend on-site clusters or create entirely new clusters using the Amazon EC2 cloud, but what company officials are perhaps most proud of is the addition of data-aware scheduling. This set-it-and-forget-it job submission feature adds significant value to the cloud bursting model by boosting productivity and cycle times.
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Cycle Spins Up 50,000-core Cluster in Amazon Cloud

Apr 24, 2012 | The case for utility supercomputing just got a lot bigger, literally. Cycle Computing has created a 50,000-core virtual supercomputer to assist in the development of novel drug compounds for cancer research.
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Cloud Features Prominently at Moabcon 2012

Apr 23, 2012 | During Moabcon, which took place earlier this month, Adaptive Computing highlighted its recent product refresh, laid out future plans and provided a forum for customer feedback. The well-attended event stirred lots of discussion around the relevancy of cloud computing to HPC, and contributor Steve Campbell was there to capture the proceedings.
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SoftLayer Rolls Out GPU-Powered HPC Cloud

Apr 17, 2012 | The short-list of HPC cloud providers just got a little longer. Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider SoftLayer has added high-end NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to its line of dedicated servers.
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Live from GlobusWorld 2012

Apr 10, 2012 | GlobusWorld 2012 kicked off today at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago. While the official conference starts tomorrow, day one was reserved for the pre-conference tutorials. The Globus team has a lot going on this year.
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What Mainstream Supercomputing Might Mean for the World

Apr 03, 2012 | The age of "mainstream supercomputing" has been forecast for some years. There has even arisen something of a debate as to whether such a concept is even possible — does "supercomputing," by definition, cease being "super" the moment it becomes "mainstream?" Whether mainstream supercomputing is here or ever literally can be, however, it is indisputable that more and more powerful capabilities are becoming available to more and more diverse users, and despite the naysayers, cloud computing is playing a big role in this process.
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WaaS Up? IBM Unveils Watson-as-a-Service

Mar 27, 2012 | Since its infamous Jeopardy win over a year ago, IBM's AI-darling Watson has been busy establishing real-world relationships in the financial and health care sectors. This month, IBM representatives revealed Watson's next steps in a live Twitter chat.
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Software Development Takes to the Cloud

Mar 27, 2012 | In the years to come, cloud computing will take a substantial piece of the market from traditional deployment models. This implies growing demand for applications that can operate in a cloud environment, and for software engineers skilled in cloud computing technologies.
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Adaptive Computing Revs Up Moab

Mar 20, 2012 | Adaptive Computing recently released a new version of Moab 7.0, both the HPC Suite (basic and enterprise editions) and also the Cloud Suite. While the workload management vendor has made important enhancements to its portfolio, what's even more interesting is how these offerings fit into an increasingly cloud-based IT environment. This in-depth interview with Adaptive Computing CEO Robert Clyde and Chad Harrington, Adaptive's vice president of marketing, shows how the company has leveraged its HPC roots to strengthen its cloud offerings.
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CycleCloud BigScience Challenge Boosts Stem Cell Research

Mar 13, 2012 | Cycle Computing has proclaimed the winner of the 2011 CycleCloud BigScience Challenge. Victor Ruotti, a computational biologist at the Morgridge Institute for Research, will receive $10,000 in credit from Cycle Computing and four hours of CycleCloud engineering support, plus an additional $2,500 in credit from Amazon Web Services. The award will be used for cutting-edge stem cell research.
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Pan-European Cloud to Support Big Science

Mar 06, 2012 | Three of Europe's most prominent research centers, CERN, the European Space Agency, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory have teamed up to launch a massive cloud computing project. Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud was created to support the fast-growing IT demands of European researchers. Supply-side partners, including IaaS provider CloudSigma, are working to design a cloud computing environment that meets the specific requirements of the HPC community.
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Cloud Computing Helps Fight Pediatric Cancer

Feb 28, 2012 | As part of its Powering the Possible charitable program, Dell is providing the secure cloud-based IT infrastructure to support the world's first personalized medicine clinical trial for pediatric cancer. The research is being conducted by the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) at the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) and supported by The Translational Genomics Research Institute (Tgen).
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Cloud Connect Speakers Reflect Industry's Growth and Challenges

Feb 20, 2012 | This week's Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Calif., exhibited all the energy and diversity of topics you might expect from one of the IT industry's fastest-growing sectors.
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Cloudnumbers Expedites Cloud-Based Supercomputing

Feb 14, 2012 | Configuring a cluster on a public cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services potentially requires a lot of work. The various steps involve setting up the machines, dealing with the security keys, installing the applications, negotiating the administration, and more. Most HPC users would prefer to avoid this time-consuming process if possible. That's where German startup Cloudnumbers comes in.
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TIBCO Seeds Cloud with Silver Grid

Feb 07, 2012 | TIBCO is moving its grid computing software to the cloud, starting with its GridServer product. The company is leveraging the Amazon Web Services computing infrastructure to provide customers with an easier and less expensive way to access its sophisticated grid computing technology.
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Learning from Clouds Past: A Look Back at Magellan

Jan 31, 2012 | Despite high-hopes, community support, and a lot of good science, the Magellan cloud computing project has ended after a two-year run. Like the famous explorer, the current-day Magellan also navigated uncharted waters and documented the journey for the benefit of future generations. The results of the two-year study are now available in the form of an extensive 169-page report.
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Blue Waters to Use Globus Online File Transfer Service

Jan 24, 2012 | When Blue Waters comes online this year, scientists will be able to spend more time on actual research, thanks in part to Globus Online, a cloud-based managed file transfer service. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) selected Globus Online for its ability to move and synchronize files reliably between multiple locations without the need to install complex software.
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Hybrid Cloud Ready for Takeoff in 2012

Jan 17, 2012 | Hybrid cloud computing, which strategically combines the best of on-premise and hosted solutions, is not without challenges; however, when done right, it's a compelling business model, one that maximizes the benefits of cloud while minimizing its risks. This piece looks at how the hybrid approach may be the key to unlocking cloud's potential.
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Mastering Windows Azure Application Development

Jan 10, 2012 | In the years to come, cloud computing will take a substantial piece of the market from traditional deployment models. This implies growing demand for applications that can operate in a cloud environment, and for software engineers skilled in cloud computing technologies. Mastering application development for Windows Azure is a most valuable investment for a .NET programmer.
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2012 Cloud Forecast

Dec 15, 2011 | 2011 may have been cloud's fifth birthday, but in 2012, the six-year-old will start making a truly distinctive name for itself. Leading Platform-as-a-Service providers will keep investing billions in huge datacenters with megawatts of power capacity, while Software-as-a-Service platform development will be a main goal for software and Internet industry leaders.
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