Cloud-based HPC Simulations on Discoverer with Nimbix

NCC BULGARIA

The following scientific partners involved:

  • Discoverer Petascale Supercomputer
  • Sofia Tech Park

Technical/scientific Challenge:

Running HPC simulations traditionally requires a bit of technical expertise. The users need to establish secure connections to the supercomputer, work in a Linux command-line terminal, upload and download data and results, prepare job scripts, work with the scheduling software, know which storage partitions to use and keep track of their resource quotas. Often, however, users are from fields other than computer science and are not necessarily skilled in this way of working. For many, this is the only interaction with both Linux and a command-line terminal. Moreover, if users need to migrate from one supercomputer to another, they have to become familiar with the ecosystem of the second supercomputer, repeat the entire setup process and transfer all of their data and code.

Solution:

One way of addressing these challenges is to provide a cloud-based environment for working. As part of this collaboration, the Jarvice XE environment by Nimbix and Eviden was deployed on Discoverer. An example simulation showcasing the approach was performed with the blood-flow simulation software HemeLB.

This way of working provides the users with a comfortable graphical user interface, where they can connect, select a simulation code out of a large Application Marketplace of programs, run their simulations and analyze their results.

The cloud-based setting allows an easy transfer from one supercomputer to another, in case the computing resources of one happen to be all allocated or unavailable for some reason. Transferring even to traditional cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud is possible.

Last, but not least, the cost of any used resource is automatically calculated and displayed at every step, allowing the users to be informed and aware of the costs of their consumption.

Buisnes impact:  

Difficulty of use of supercomputing resources in comparison to cloud resources has been cited as one of the hurdles to a broader adoption of supercomputing by business. Through the established Nimbix integration, both ease of use and availability are greatly improved, paving the way for an increasing adoption of business users from all industries.

Benefits: 

  • Easier connection to supercomputing resources
  • Greatly simplified preparation, submission, running and analysis of simulations
  • Easy and transparent calculation of costs
  • Easy access or migration to alternative supercomputers or even traditional clouds

Success story # Highlights:

  • Keywords: Discoverer, HPC, Supercomputing, Jarvice, Nimbix
  • Industry sector: all
  • Technology: Discoverer, HPC, Supercomputing, Jarvice, Nimbix

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101101903. The JU receives support from the Digital Europe Programme and Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Norway, Türkiye, Republic of North Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia