For your information, more on virtualization ;-) BiG Grids HPC Cloud service goes in beta...

Regards, Floris

Dear reader,

SARA is developing a High Performance Compute Cloud for the scientific community, funded by BiG Grid. Currently this HPC Cloud is offered in beta to a selected group of scientific users for evaluation purposes. We would like to invite members of the dutch scientific community to apply for evaluation use of the HPC Cloud.

With this newly developed High Performance Computing (HPC) Cloud environment researchers are provided with access to their own Virtual Private HPC Cluster. It is a virtualized HPC Cluster that can be configured to exactly match their needs, without interfering with the needs of other users. It is flexible, offers self service and is dynamically scalable. Users can start from existing templates (images), or built their own cluster from scratch. It is even possible to make a copy from their current software environment (for example their laptop or desktop pc) and turn that into a HPC cluster in the Cloud. In that way, there will hardly be any difference between their development environment and their production environment. There is no need for an (expensive) rewrite of their software, and scientific challenges can be scaled up very easily from desktop scale to High Performance Compute cluster scale.

When you wish to participate in this beta phase and want to make use of the developed service you are welcomed to submit a short proposal to claudia-support@sara.nlmailto:claudia-support@sara.nl before midnight the 12th of May 2010. Procedures and details are specified below.

== Proposals (250-500 words) should consist of: ==

* a short description of your project objectives

* a project planning in weeks

* estimate of your desired compute hours

* estimate of the storage requirements

== What can be applied for? ==

* applicants will obtain access to the HPC Cloud

* the ability to submit and start your own virtual machines

* manage and configure your own submitted virtual machines

** Use existing templates, upload your own or configure from scratch with free choice of Operating System and applications

** Access to the virtual machines can be through console, ssh and over public_ip

== What is expected of successful applicants? ==

* an entrepreneurial spirit and open mindedness, because of the beta status of this service

* a written evaluation report on your experiences (1-2 pages)

* participation in a planned workshop in September

These and additional details can be found here:

https://grid.sara.nl/wiki/index.php/Using_the_HPC_Cloud/betaevaluation

The SARA support team will actively support the implementation of your planned activities. We are especially interested in applications which are difficult or near impossible to run on the existing HPC platforms (Huygens, Lisa, Grid), but do run in your local environment.

In this beta phase we strive to offer a full production grade environment, we are however continuously improving the technical environment as well as the ways of working. This may have consequences on stability and availability.

Please don't hesitate to inform others interested, apologies for any double postings.

On behalf of the SARA HPC Cloud support team,

Floris Sluiter &

Tom Visser

Mail: claudia-support@sara.nlmailto:claudia-support@sara.nl

Phone: +316.533.919.31

SARA Computing & Networking Services

High Performance Computing and Visualization http://www.sara.nl