[Beowulf] Utility Supercomputing...

[Adam DeConinck]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

 
> again, if you have a bursty load, you want to use a shared facility,
> of which, EC2 spot instances is just one example.

When talking of using a shared facility: The advantage I've 
sometimes seen for "cloud" over the traditional "get time on a 
shared cluster" is that you get to define a lot more of the 
IT policy and configuration. You get to choose your OS, scheduler,
compute node configuration, some subset of the security policy which is
compatible with "cloud", etc. You also get your own IT folks managing
it.

Compare to a shared cluster, which already has all this in place and is
unlikely to change it. Most folks who make an effort can probably work
with an existing system (as BOFHs are not so common in HPC, in my experience), 
but there are times when it makes sense. There are also those who are just 
not willing to make the effort of working with another organization's system. 
Security policies are often cited.

I've seen interest in cloud HPC a few times with commercial entities which 
have a limited amount of "big compute" to do, but don't already have access 
to a shared HPC facility, and find the process of interacting with academic
HPC too painful for some reason. Sometimes they're also already using the 
cloud for other projects, so it's comfortable.

(Also there's the Windows HPC folks, who are unlikely to find a shared
facility in existence for them. But that's a different horror story...
;-) )

Cheers,
Adam


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (Darwin)
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=4DPK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----