Where OpenNebula is typically used by system administrators to manage data centers, SURFsara’s HPC Cloud exposes OpenNebula’s web interface crudely to end users. SURFsara’s end users are researchers. They all have diverse needs and most of them are no system experts. It turns out that OpenNebula’s interface is easy enough to use, enabling researchers to build complex compute infrastructures for their analysis workflows. This presentation discusses the features our researchers and we appreciate in OpenNebula, it pictures a selection of succesful projects and it also explains caveats we have come across while keeping the service in the air.

1. — IaaS in the real world
OpenNebula out in the Open
Ander Astudillo <ander.astudillo@surfsara.nl>
Ede (The Netherlands), 19th September 2017
OpenNebula Tech Day

2. Ander Astudillo <ander.astudillo@surfsara.nl>
Science Park, Amsterdam
The SURF cooperative

3. What do we (SURFsara) want to offer?
3
Services for scientists
…scientists systems gurus
… complex users’ problems
• Data: big, dirty, non-structured…
• Computation: complex (e.g.: modeling, simulation)
• Libraries nightmare
• 3rd party, incompatibility, maintenance…
… flexibility
… trial and error
… test
… cooperate
… share
… show
… scratch … privacy

4. Where does the HPC Cloud fit?
4

5. Agenda
1.- SURFsara & HPC Cloud
2.- The real world
Appendix.- SURFsara’s implementation

6. HPC Cloud IaaS ≡ Your craft
61.- SURFsara & HPC Cloud
Your application
may need more…
Scale up Scale outvs.

7. The prelude
71.- SURFsara & HPC Cloud
Claudia: Exploring the concept
• Couple of borrowed nodes
• 16 cores
• 1Gbps network
• Local storage
• Self-built UI
• vs. OpenNebula 1.x !

8. Calligo
81.- SURFsara & HPC Cloud
HPC
• Big nodes (19×)
• 32 cores, 256GB RAM
• Fast interconnect
• Low-latency 40 Gbps
• NFS storage • Web interface
• Groups
Cloud
• Multi-purpose versatility
• Shape elasticity
• Self-service on-demand
• Project-based
• Private network
Service
!
3.x

9. The real world

10. Rounding the system off
102.- The real world
• Documentation
• System load
• Support
• Accounting
Cloud light
• Smaller nodes
• CPU overcommit
• (Interactive) services
…scientists sysadmins
• Image upload
• Network filters
• DHCP
• Dynamic DNS
• Wizard
tweaks

11. Storage
112.- The real world
• Fast I/O
• More nodes
Local SSD
VirDir
• Per-project NFS share
• Image upload & download
• Backups
MySQL aaS
Archive
Data Ingest (DIS)

12. Incidents & eventualities
122.- The real world
Datacenter power outage
• Storage collapsed
• Helped discover power
redundancy was faulty
Enthusiastic users
• Component down
• Uncovered lenient quotas
‘s glory
Delete images
• Deleted users’ data
• Uncovered bug
VNC ports
• Ran out of ports
• Uncovered limitation
Too many tweaks
• Could not upgrade
• Uncovered our optimism

13. The present
132.- The real world
• Latest release of OpenNebula (v.5.2)
• Accounting
• Ceph storage; expansion
• Distributed object store and file system
• Cope with increasing load
• GPU processing
• Highly parallel structure
• Program specifically to use it
Oort: Consolidating
the concept

14. 14
The present… eventualities
2.- The real world
SSD disks
• Consumer grade
• Helped sharpen our tenders
‘s upgrade glory
Inter-version UI changes
• Users’ VM’s logs
• Terminate vs. Delete
• ACL!
Resources bookkeeping
• Double VNC ports assignment
• Double GPU’s assignment
Datacenter move
• Remember cables!
• Cloud-init?

15. User applications
152.- The real world
• Flexible software mix
• Big VMs
• Elasticity
• Provide their own service to
their own users
• Software that requires licenses
• Set up, test and deploy workflows
• Deliver training; courses
• Intensive computing
•
…from diverse fields:
• Biology
• Genetics
• Informatics
• Chemistry
• Ecology
• Linguistics
• Robotics
• Business
• Social sciences
• Engineering
• Humanities
• Water management
• …
Users like& leverage…
‘s glory

16. 162.- The real world

17. SURFsara’s HPC Cloud
implementation
ppendix

18. Hardware
183.- Implementation

19. Ander Astudillo
<ander.astudillo@surfsara.nl>
Credits
Images: Wikipedia, Science Park, RRZE icons,
NIST, nVidia, Ceph, Pixabay
Slides: SURFsara colleagues