1. Virtual Supercomputer –
HPC cloud at you fingertips
Massive
Solutions
HP-CAST — 2014
20-21 June, Leipzig, Germany

2. Massive
Solutions
2
Motivation
o Competition drives product development cycle down
o Small and medium sized companies are looking into ways
to increase its productivity
o Commercial simulation software can now run huge
models on hundreds and thousands of computing cores
o On the one hand there are a lot of spare HPC computing
cycles at a given moment in time
o On the other hand there are millions of desktop users who
is willing to utilize these cycles

3. Massive
Solutions
3
Clusters and clouds
o Cloud technologies have already solved these problems
o Resources are consumed in on­demand fashion
o Additional resources can be easily delivered
(elasticity)
o We can build our own cluster, but
o Problem #1 – can we fully utilize it?
o Problem #2 – what are we going to do if
our new task doesn't fit into it?

4. What do we want from a cluster …?Massive
Solutions
Uniform environment
to easily switch from one cluster to another with a speed of light.
Ability to save the environment for future re­use (not necessary on the same cluster)
to save our working environment and re­use it on the other cluster.
Low latency network
to make our simulation as fast as possible
4

5. … and from a cloud?
Cluster on demand
to use resources only when we need them
Simulation software on demand
to make simulation only when we need it
Access to a new hardware on demand (GPU, Xeon Phi,
FPGA...)
to use special purpose hardware only when we need it
Security
to be sure that my data is protected
Massive
Solutions
5

6. Massive
Solutions
6
Virtual supercomputer platform
o Virtual SuperComputer (VSC) is a middle­ware which can build HPC cloud
on the existing hardware infrastructure
o VSC is a platform to host SaaS services
o Unlimited number of clusters can be connected to VSC platform
o VSC does not require changes within system environment of the existing,
up­and­running, cluster
o VSC is a container with full isolation of all virtual resources
o VSC user is an owner of the virtual cluster with admin privileges

7. Public cloud
Clusters
Hardware resource payment
On-demand payment
Output data
VSC Core
PaaS
SaaS
Input data
No limitations to access
available HPC services
Access granted as a public
Cloud services
License payment
Data management
License
User can access any
resource available in
the system
Storage
Users
Massive
Solutions
VSC as a public HPC cloud
7
Public VSC cloud is supercluster
with different hardware and
software resources.
A VCS user can use raw
computing cycles in PaaS model
or simulation software in SaaS
model.
Application
software

8. Massive
Solutions
VSC architecture
8
PaaS SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
DHCP
opensmd
RM
Storage
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
Virtual
cluster
DHCP
opensmd
RM
Storage
Virtual
cluster
Virtual
cluster
Virtual
cluster
SSH
HTTPS
RDP
VSC
Core
License
Gate
Core Gate
PaaSSaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
DHCP
opensmd
RM
Storage
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
PaaS
PaaS
SaaS
SaaS
Virtual
cluster
DHCP
opensmd
RM
Storage
Virtual
cluster
Virtual
cluster
Virtual
cluster
VSC.ApplianceVSC.Appliance
HPC Cluster (IHV) HPC Cluster(IHV)
SSH
VNC
RDP

9. Massive
Solutions
HPC on demand limitations
9
●
Security issues are limiting factor in wider HPC­as­a­service adoption — VSC containerization
technology is a huge step forward to overcome this problem
●
High cost of migration from one service provider to another one – VSC has no specific API,
everything you do on the supercomputer today you can do on a virtual supercomputer without any
code change
●
Still very difficult to customize system software configuration to the user's needs, have to
negotiate with service provider – VSC root access gives “do­what­you­want” capabilities
●
Most cloud services are bad suited for latency sensitive applications – VSC utilizes InfiniBand
clusters

10. Massive
Solutions
10
VSC SaaS example
New cloud based licensing
Integration with VSC platform allows ISV
to enable new cloud based license model
No need for ISV to spend
resources on system
development
All system level functionality like
integration with hardware provider,
containerization, virtualization are
handled by VSC platform
Billing is a part of VSC
Billing is an integrated part of VSC
platform

11. ●
Full isolation of virtual resources
●
User has root priviliges
●
Virtual environment can be tuned by the user and
saved for future re­use
●
Flexible management of virtual resources
●
All virtual resources can be encrypted
●
Access to different hardware resources in a uniform
way
●
Dynamic cluster partitioning on a fly
Massive
Solutions
11
Virtual cluster summary

12. Massive
Solutions
12
Thank you!
Contacts:
Dmitry Tkachev, Chief Product Officer
e­mail: tkachev@massivesolutions.eu
skype: dmitry.tkachev