What does HPC in the cloud look like in 2017, and how did we get there? In this talk for Red Oak's HPC Seminar, I look at the origins of cloud HPC, and how it has become mainstream through technologies like Amazon Web Services and OpenStack. I also offer a sneak preview of the 2017 UK national e-Infrastructure survey results, and some thoughts about what's next in cloud HPC, from hyperscale providers to the momentum behind container technologies from Docker and the Open Container Initiative.

1. HPC in the cloud comes of age
Martin Hamilton
1HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017

2. HPC in the cloud comes of age
1. The journey to cloud HPC
2. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
› 2017 survey results sneak preview
3. What’s next?
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3. About Jisc
» Not-for-profit company serving the HE, FE and skills
community:
› 18 million users of shared services like Janet, eduroam,
JiscMail, shared data centres
› Devising national deals with IT vendors and publishers,
e.g. routers and switches framework, AWS
› Providing advice & guidance to the sector on digital
technologies in research and education
» My role:
› Leading a small group exploring emerging technologies
like Augmented Reality and brain computer interfaces
› Helping institutions devise/implement digital strategies
and building evidence base around new technologies
› Working with e-Infrastructure community via Project
Directors Group (formerly ran HPC Midlands for EPSRC)
3HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017

4. » Not-for-profit company serving the HE, FE and skills
community:
› 18 million users of shared services like Janet, eduroam,
JiscMail, shared data centres
› Devising national deals with IT vendors and publishers,
e.g. routers and switches framework
› Providing advice & guidance to the sector on digital
technologies in research and education
» My role:
› Leading a small group exploring emerging technologies
like Augmented Reality and brain computer interfaces
› Helping institutions devise/implement digital strategies
and building evidence base around new technologies
› Working with e-Infrastructure community via Project
Directors Group (formerly ran HPC Midlands for EPSRC)
About Jisc
4HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017

5. » Not-for-profit company serving the HE, FE and skills
community:
› 18 million users of shared services like Janet, eduroam,
JiscMail, shared data centres
› Devising national deals with IT vendors and publishers,
e.g. routers and switches framework
› Providing advice & guidance to the sector on digital
technologies in research and education
» My role:
› Leading a small group exploring emerging technologies
like Augmented Reality and brain computer interfaces
› Helping institutions devise/implement digital strategies
and building evidence base around new technologies
› Working with e-Infrastructure community via Project
Directors Group (formerly ran HPC Midlands for EPSRC)
About Jisc
5HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017

6. 1.The journey to cloud HPC
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7. The journey to cloud HPC
How we got here, part 1:
» Historically software was typically
written using high performance
languages like Fortran and C
» …but workflows would often combine
several of these tools using scripting
languages like Python
» The results were often quite brittle and
difficult to transport from one machine
to another - e.g. version dependencies
» Meanwhile virtualisation techniques had been making a resurgence in enterprise IT
and quickly became standard operating procedure for devops
» Computer Science community initiatives like Research Object spring up…
7HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
http://www.researchobject.org

8. The journey to cloud HPC
How we got here, part 2:
» The virtual machine image became the
common unit of currency for enterprise
private clouds (e.g.VMWare) and public
clouds (Azure, AWS, etc)
» VM catalogues available from public
cloud providers like AWS Marketplace
+ community initiatives like Bio-Linux
» Growing popularity of orchestration tools
likeAnsible,Vagrant and Puppet
» But HPC sysadmins reluctant to provide
VM environment on their machines
› Performance impact? For everyone?
8HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
http://environmentalomics.org/

9. The journey to cloud HPC
How we got here, part 3:
» But not all jobs are pedal-to-the-metal,
requiring maximum machine performance
» Lots of HPC (and HTC, and…) users simply
want to run a particular app, and are ecstatic
if it’s faster than on their laptop
» HPC providers initially dubious that a cloud
environment could be superimposed,
but then…
› Growing popularity of OpenStack as
an underpinning in-house platform
› Creation ofVM oriented private clouds
› Growing acceptability of public clouds
9HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
http://www.jasmin.ac.uk/

10. 2. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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11. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
11HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
2017 survey report
being developed
Previous survey
reports available from
www.hpc-sig.org

12. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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Aberystwyth University
Cardiff University
DiRAC HPC Facility
Diamond Light Source Ltd
Durham University
EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute
Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC)
eMedLab
Francis Crick Institute
GridPP
HPC Midlands+
Hartree Centre
Institute of Cancer Research
King's College London
Lancaster University
Loughborough University
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
N8HPC
Newcastle University
Norwich BioScience Institutes (NBI)
Queens University of Belfast
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Supercomputing Wales
Swansea University
University College London
University of Bath
University of Birmingham
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
University of Dundee
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
University of Hull
University of Leeds
University of Leicester
University of Liverpool
University of Manchester
University of Nottingham
University of Oxford
University of Portsmouth
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University of St Andrews
University of Strathclyde
University of Sussex
University of Warwick
University of York
Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
2017 survey
respondents

13. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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Word cloud of NeI service descriptions

14. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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Relationship with REF Units of Assessment

15. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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16. 16HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
UK national e-Infrastructure survey

17. 17HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
UK national e-Infrastructure survey

18. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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19. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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20. UK national e-Infrastructure survey
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21. 3. What’s next?
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22. What’s next?
» Hyperscale cloud providers offering:
› Performant interconnects, e.g.Azure RDMA
› Latest hardware, e.g. Azure FPGAs
+ “very fat nodes”
› Azure ExpressRoute + AWS Direct Connect
peerings (Jisc facilitating)
» Some consolidation of private clouds into
domain / community facilities, e.g. CLIMB
› Authorisation / access challenges
(JiscAssent + Safe Share)
» Containers gradually take over fromVM images
- cf. Open Containers Initiative
› Do we need a clearinghouse, or willGitHub do? (for open source)
22HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017
https://www.opencontainers.org

23. Continue the conversation…
23
Except where otherwise noted, this
work is licensed under CC-BY
Martin Hamilton
Futurist, Jisc
@martin_hamilton
martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
HPC in the cloud comes of age - Red Oak Seminar - September 201713/09/2017