High-performance computing: Use the cloud to outcompute the competition and get ahead

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1 High-performance computing: Use the cloud to outcompute the competition and get ahead High performance computing (HPC) has proved to be effective in offering highly analytical workloads the benefits of accountability, speed and accuracy but it can be expensive and complex for organisations to implement on-site. Which is why coupling HPC with cloud-based services can allow your organisations to gain a crucial edge on the market. WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS: Discover how to implement HPC in the cloud and get ahead of your competitors Be advised of the steps to take for success Understand why the cloud is ideal for your high-performance and caching strategy Learn how TelecityGroup s Cloud-IX can provide a secure and reliable connection between you and your cloud service provider

2 THE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY DEFINING HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING To outcompete your rivals in modern business, you must outcompute them. Companies in a variety of data-intensive fields can overcome the constraints of their current IT solutions by embracing highperformance computing. Written by Aditya Ayyagari,TelecityGroup Alan Weaver,Microsoft By adding more computing power on tap, companies can increase the quality of key products and services, while reducing the time to market. Using high performance computing in conjunction with cloud-based services, you can gain a crucial edge in the market. High-performance computing (HPC) involves the application of abundant computing resources to specific workloads. Workloads suitable for HPC are highly data intensive, and often involve modelling large amounts of real-world data. These include risk analysis algorithms for financial services, drug calculations for pharmaceutical firms, and stress-test simulations for engineering companies. Typically, HPC implementations use grids of computers, connected in a cluster, to run large batch jobs that are highly compute-intensive. HPC offers companies with highly analytical workloads several benefits: Accountability High-performance computing concentrates on single-batch jobs. As such, it gives teams the ability to charge people for precisely the runs that they have done, so that they can then predict their own costs and make more informed decisions about their usage. Speed HPC takes a many hands make light work approach, using large numbers of computers or boards to divide up and process a computational workload. This makes it possible to throw more computing power at a problem and decrease the overall processing time. This can be useful in industries such as 3D rendering, where rendering a frame of video can take days on a monolithic system that processes data linearly. Dividing it up between thousands of computers dramatically speeds up rendering times and makes it possible for movies to hit their release dates. Accuracy In some industries, speed is also balanced with accuracy. Financial services companies driven by regulatory requirements must make more accurate risk calculations, for example, which requires more analysis within the same time constraints. HPC can help here. Engineering companies can also improve their modelling accuracy using HPC s unique characteristics. ACCELERATING DIGITAL : USING HYBRID CLOUD RESOURCES TO DELIVER BUSINESS OUTCOMES Watch this TelecityGroup Webinar featuring Gartner for advice on how to get the most from your hybrid cloud solution. WATCH WEBINAR 2015 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

3 HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN BRIEF CHALLENGES Opportunities Accountability Speed Accuracy Challenges Data centre capacity Management complexity Uneven workloads STEPS TO SUCCESS A high performance computing environment can take specific workloads and supercharge an IT team s ability to process them for business departments. The cloud can make it possible for companies to take advantage of HPC while avoiding some of the traditional challenges associated with implementing it. Here s how: 1. Audit your existing workloads Before moving your data and workloads to the cloud, be sure that you understand exactly what is running and for what purpose. Many workloads are naturally diverse, and it is important to audit all of them, connecting them to the appropriate business processes before you begin planning your HPC strategy. 2. Develop a compliance strategy When moving HPC to the cloud, you are also moving two important assets: the data to be processed, and the algorithms that you will use to process them. Both of these are potentially sensitive, either as personally identifiable information, or as intellectual property that should be protected. Understand your security and compliance requirements around porting this valuable information to a cloud-based service provider. HPC offers many benefits, but it can be expensive and complex for organisations, due to the unique nature of HPC infrastructure. Financial and physical constraints all raise the bar for companies that are considering this innovative approach to expanding. Here are some of the issues you could face if trying to implement an HPC environment locally: Capital expenditure The capital expenditure on HPC infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive. Highly parallel processing capabilities that constitute a highly scalable system needs considerable hardware. Justifying this budget to project stakeholders can be difficult. Not all organisations can afford such investment (that are difficult to fully utilise). A cloudbased option democratises HPC for all enterprises. Uneven workloads The capital expenditure is even harder to justify given the nature of many workloads, with computing demands that spike and subside. Moreover, processor architectures, instruction sets and extensions can vary by work load. Scaling to meet demand quickly can be a challenge. Management complexity Managing a high-performance infrastructure with its complex array of highly interconnected systems is a different type of task to managing conventional non-clustered, non-grid computing systems. These management tasks may be difficult or impossible for in-house IT staff to cope with. Data movement High Performance Computing delivers benefits only when crunching large data volumes. Moving this volume of data around can present bandwidth and time challenges. 3. Assess your licensing requirements HPC represents a different model of computing to conventional batch processing systems, and it is important to ensure that your software vendors support this model. Ensure that your current licensing agreements allow you to run software in a grid-based environment with many potential processing cores involved. 4. Prioritise jobs based on payback Having audited the different workloads running on your existing systems, you will be perfectly positioned to identify and prioritise those jobs suitable for HPC. Look at the potential payback from faster processing, and those jobs that could benefit from more accurate modelling capacity. ASSESS YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY Is your cloud strategy on the right path for digital transformation? ASSESS YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY

4 HOW THE CLOUD CAN HELP USING CLOUD-IX FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING The challenges inherent in an HPC rollout can be mitigated by cloud computing. Here are some ways in which a cloud computing infrastructure can open new doors to high-performance computing. Reduces capital expenditure Instead of investing in large volumes of interconnected processing units themselves, companies working with cloud service providers can use an on-tap computing resource that they pay for as it is used, instead of before it is even switched on. Minimises management overhead A cloud service provider providing HPC as a service is responsible for the management of the underlying infrastructure, leaving you free to focus on workload prioritisation and scheduling. Copes with your workload The unique elastic properties of the cloud make it possible to access computing power on demand. Instead of investing in large amounts of computing equipment that may sit idle, companies can scale up their HPC usage as workloads demand. This alone represents a significant win for companies considering a high performance computing initiative. Creating a competitive advantage Companies that use applications relevant to an HPC environment will find they are able to apply algorithms and quantitative techniques to those parts of their product development business processes and operational capabilities that truly create a competitive advantage. Cloud-IX is an enterprise-class conduit for TelecityGroup customers to the cloud. It provides dedicated links to a variety of cloud service providers, removing the burden of setup and much of the configuration overhead. Here s how it can help to support your IT team as it transitions to a cloud-based HPC environment, as the applications it supports dictate. Guaranteed performance Cloud-IX s MPLS-based architecture provides a guaranteed quality of service for clients. This can be particularly important in an HPC scenario, as the IT department will be under pressure to serve multiple departments who will be eager to load their data into a high-performance environment for processing. Knowing how long it will take to load data can provide peace of mind. Portability High-performance computing is a complex affair with many technical nuances. One cloud provider may be able to offer a more appropriate type and level of service than another. You may need to create different HPC environments with different cloud service vendors that satisfy different parameters. Cloud-IX provides the opportunity to use multiple cloud service providers, offering increased flexibility. Security Moving large amounts of data into a cloud-based HPC environment requires a secure environment. Sensitive data and valuable algorithms must be protected. Cloud-IX provides an encrypted communication path for high-value data, preventing it from being seen by prying eyes. CONTACT AN EXPERT Request a free cloud strategy consultation with our cloud experts. CONTACT AN EXPERT

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