Nectar Research Cloud at University of Auckland Sean Matheny - - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Nectar Research Cloud at University of Auckland

Sean Matheny - Centre for eResearch, UoA

s.matheny@auckland.ac.nz

• NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources) founded

at UniMelb in 2011

• Provides researchers with computing infrastructure (IaaS), software,

workflows, and other services.

• Fits in between your laptop/desktop and HPC in scale, interactive use cases
• Gives you the freedom to manage your own resources - more self service,

but a little less support (but we’ll always help!)

• Very few barriers-- an open playground for research
• Reproducible and collaborative- helps solve the “science crisis”
• Private cloud - all data is stored in UoA data centres unless you share it

What is it?

Participating Member Nodes

• First New Zealand Nectar Node at University of Auckland (pilot / provisional member)
• Launched November 2017

...and University of Auckland!

Image credit: Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand

• Who can use: Any UoA postgraduate or staff researcher
• Trial: 3-month trial limited to 2 cores and 10GB storage to evaluate
• Where: log in with Tuakiri at https://dashboard.rc.nectar.org.au
• Request Project: Submit a request from the allocations Tab in dashboard

– Need research abstract for “research use case” field – Projects renewable, 12 month max terms

How it works: getting on board

• Compute - VMs, GPU flavors

– Nectar provided vanila operating system images – Windows images available upon request – Community provided speciality images

• Storage - Volume storage, Object storage
• Access to virtual labs such as GVL, Marine VL, Characterisation VL (see next)
• Higher level services:

– Application catalog for non-technical deployment of RStudio/Shiny, Jupyter, Docker, etc – DNS (@ *.nectar.auckland.ac.nz, *.cloud.org.au, BYO). Self service. – Docker/Kubernetes Container launching (individual and orchestration) – Self service networking (private networking with floating public addresses) – Data processing platform (Hadoop and Spark)

Cloud Services Available to UoA Researchers

• Current local capacity is:

– 2016 CPU cores – ~1 PB raw storage, ½ to ⅓ available for your use (2-3 local copies, but no automatic backups) – ~14TB RAM – 3-site object storage available for backup, or files to share

• GPUs (next)

Local Capacity at UoA

• 6 x NVIDIA Tesla Pascal (P40) GPUs
• 5 x NVIDIA Tesla Kepler (K40) GPUs
• 10 x NVIDIA Tesla Kepler (K20) GPUs
• High demand resource - 3 month allocations, renew possible
• You choose your OS and environment, or use pre-built image
• Potentially Host your org’s GPUs in Nectar, if long term and/or exclusive

access required!

• We’re looking for ideas for shared environments - let us know your

thoughts!

Local Capacity at UoA - GPUs

• Limited access to university services (no Unifiles)
• No standard UoA authentication in VMs, but can be integrated
• No Incremental / automatic backups for now (but you can automate!)
• Limited access to Windows licensing (individual use)

+ Freedom! You build whatever you’d like- you’re in charge. + Now have access to run MATLAB, Ansys, CST Studio, Abaqus + Access to UoA Dropbox, Google Drive, VPN; CloudStor integrated + Each instance gets public ip, DNS name available (several options) + Very easy to share application or VM with colleagues or the world

Not within UoA firewall - pros and cons

• Nectar is a IaaS self-service model: requires willingness to learn!
• Applications and OS: Are largely your responsibility (although we will be helpful!)
• Support is available for the infrastructure:

– e.g. launching and accessing instances – Create support ticket from in top of dashboard – Or email: nectarsupport@auckland.ac.nz – Then just reply to emails (you won’t be able to log into the helpdesk links in AAF)

• Lots of excellent documentation, walkthroughs:

– https://support.ehelp.edu.au/support/solutions

• Self-paced training:

– http://training.nectar.org.au

How it works: support

• Two Definitions:

– The Virtual Laboratory is an interactive environment for creating and conducting simulated experiments: a playground for experimentation. ”. (The Virtual Laboratory Environment @ Algorithmic Botany retrieved 11:48, 30 June 2006 (MEST) ) – “ A Virtual Laboratory is a heterogeneous distributed problem solving environment that enables a group of researchers located around the world to work together on a common set of projects.” ( LESTER, retrieved 12:52, 30 June 2006 (MEST))

• VLs in Nectar are separately funded, supported, and run on top of Nectar infrastructure
• In most cases, arose organically from successful research groups (not from IT etc)
• VLs and Science Clouds are fairly synonymous: Science Clouds are more organized and try to share

more common infrastructure and models.

What is a Virtual Lab (a.k.a. VL)?

What is GVL?

• Is a web portal that provides access to a growing suite of genomics tools

that biologists can start working with immediately.

• Development led by Melbourne Bioinformatics at UniMelb in collaboration

with the Research Computing Centre at the University of Queensland

• Provides a workbench for reproducible results
• Tutorials to help Biologists learn analysis tools

One Example: Genomics Virtual Lab

GVL in Use

• Contact individual VL for access and onboarding info
• Support is through the same methods described earlier (helpdesk)
• We’re happy to have a chat and support you if you’d like to create your own

VL! https://nectar.org.au/labs-and-tools/

Other Virtual Labs and Science Clouds

RStudio Example - All You Need to Deploy

RStudio and Shiny in Browser

...Plus a Desktop in Your Web Browser

Sean Matheny Centre for eResearch University of Auckland s.matheny@auckland.ac.nz http://nectar.org.au Dashboard: https://dashboard.rc.nectar.org.au/

Questions?