e-Science Central is a cloud platform developed at Newcastle University to help researchers and students access cloud computing resources through a web browser without needing specialized IT skills. It provides data storage, analysis services, workflow tools, and other features to support multidisciplinary research projects and teaching. The platform handles scalability, security, and other complex aspects of cloud computing so users can focus on their work instead of infrastructure management. It aims to make cloud advantages available to more domains by providing an easy-to-use interface and insulating users from vendor lock-in.
e-Science Central Cloud Platform for Research and Teaching
1. e-Science Central: A Cloud Platform for Research and Teaching Paul Watson School of Computing Science Director, Informatics Institute Newcastle University, UK Paul.Watson@ncl.ac.uk With thanks to: - The team: Hugo Hiden, Simon Woodman, David Leahy, Jacek Cala, Joanna Berry - Funders: RCUK Digital Economy, EPSRC, OneNE, Microsoft External Research, Newcastle Science City
2. Motivation Background in multidisciplinary research 30 projects (£30M in research funding) NE Regional e-Science Centre & SiDE Digital Economy Hub collaborative (universities and industry) Often working with researchers with little access to IT skills & resources Can Clouds help?
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4. Approximate costs for a small size center (1000 servers) and a larger, 100K server center.Each data center is 11.5 times the size of a football field
5. Typical Prices CPU $0.10 /hour Storage $0.10 /GB month External Data Transfer $0.10 /GB
6. The Promise of Clouds Reduce IT capital expenditure “CapExOpEx” Sustainability Scalability….
7. Good Workload Patterns for Clouds(with acknowledgements to Dianne O’Brien) Compute Compute Time Time Bursting Fast Growth Research new data to be processed new algorithm to run Teaching term-based usage application/data with growing popularity
12. e-Science Central Approach App 1 App n .... Cloud Platform App 1 App n .... Cloud Infrastructure: Storage & Compute Cloud Infrastructure: Storage & Compute
13. Key Requirements All through Web Browser Data(experimental data, instruments, sensors...)
14. .... App App Analysis Services e-Science Central App API Security Provenance/ Audit Social Networking Cloud Platform Workflow Enactment Metadata Processing Cloud Infrastructure Storage
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20. Supporting Teaching Students just need Web Browser anytime, anywhere, any device” learning Teachers can set up exercises data, services, workflows and remotely review students work….
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22. Supporting Tech Transfer supports industry collaboration can restrict access to specific content until IP deal agreed e.g. SimMarTec predicts how weather patterns will affect a ship’s progress
25. insulates users from cloud vendor lock-incan deploy on intranet as well as public cloud
Editor's Notes
MotivationBackground in R&D projects at Ncl: NEReSC and DE project £30M+Mostly in collab with industryWork for OneNENeed systems that allow them to deploy software that can be used within their org to do their work faster/better/cheaper, or to provide a service to external customers.Lack of of IT knowledge and resources holding back: researchers, people in existing SMEs, and people wanting to start companies.Can cloud help?Provide resources : avoid need to purchase, configure & manage IT resources “do more for less”Problem is getting their software running in the cloud.Can see how others are using sw that’s out there, but don’t have the skills to deploy, integrate and manage it.Have some software running on someone’s desktop PC,-- Soln: read about AWS and put your sw in a vm and that’s it beyond many, but for it to be useful, it needs to be deployed in the cloud such that it can be used internally or externally – scalability, dependability, securityClouds don’t make it easier to build scalable, dependable, secure appsSo still a barrier
Design-- note addition of services for metadata and provenance/audit-- add storage files + databasesTwo interfaces-- running for a couple of years: over 200 reg users, and a commercial version used by some companiesCan run on own/organisations own servers (private cloud) or public cloud (Amazon/Azure). - Another advantage of cloud platform: insulates user from differences in clouds: lack of stdapi.. Real danger of lock-in.