This document discusses how Microsoft Azure can provide an ideal IT infrastructure for research and education by enabling flexibility, online collaboration, and cost efficiency. It describes the needs of the HSR university for fluctuating workloads, storage, and computing power. Azure allows students to create their own virtual machines with customized software. This provides flexibility and access from anywhere. Azure also enables online collaboration through tools like Office 365 and cloud storage. Its scalable virtual machines and high-performance computing nodes can meet fluctuating demands and intensive computing needs more cost-effectively than local servers.

1. AZURE FOR
RESEARCH AND EDUCTION
Henrik Nordborg, Lukasz Miroslaw
Institute for Energy Technology
Microsoft Innovation Center
HSR Rapperswil
Microsoft Schweiz, Wallisellen

2. The October temperature is – literally – off the charts
The highest ever
measured temperature
anomaly in 1600
months

3. The October temperature is – literally – off the charts
Zu spät für +2°C?
Donnerstag 19.11.2015, 17:00
www.hsr.ch/klimawandel

4. Outline
 The need for IT in education
 About the HSR
 Microsoft Innovation Center, Rapperswil
 The ideal IT infrastructure for research and education
 Flexibility
 Intermittency
 Online collaboration
 Cost efficiency
 What Azure provides
 Real-world examples
 Azure Live Demo (Lukasz Miroslaw)
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5. The need for IT in education: Bridging the generation gap
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6. The need for IT in education – a personal view
 Everyone with a tertiary education will work with computers
 Probably doing something that has not been invented yet
 IT literacy and some programming are important
 IT can be a very good tool for education
 Visualization of concepts (mathematics, physics, chemistry)
 Aiding the learning process
 Young people are receptive to new technologies
 Who is teaching whom?
 Education need be become more efficient
 Assessing the performance of students is boring and time consuming
 There has to be a better way
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7. About the HSR
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• University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule)
• Approximately 1500 students
• 8 Bachelor Degrees
• Master’s Degree Programs
• Continuing education and training
• Applied research
• 18 institutes
• Approx. 70 professors and 200 research staff

8. About the HSR – collaboration with industry
 Three forms of collaboration
 Student theses (240 – 810 hours of work)
 CTI projects (50-50 cost distribution)
 Consulting
 Every institute partner is a profit center
 Very experienced staff
 Excellent facilities
 Computation cluster
 High-voltage laboratory
 3D scanning and printing
 Advanced measurements
 ….
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9. The Microsoft Innovation Center, Rapperswil
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Foundation of the .NET Competence Center
2003
Opening of MIC Rapperswil
2005
2008
Partnership with Microsoft Switzerland
Opening of MIC Technical Computing 2011
Microsoft Innovation Cloud
2014

10. MIC Rapperswil: People and Institutes
 INS (www.ins.hsr.ch)
 Prof. Hansjörg Huser
 Prof. Beat Stettler
 Jürg Jucker
 IFS (www.ifs.hsr.ch)
 Prof. Olaf Zimmermann
 Prof. Markus Stolze
 IET (www.iet.hsr.ch)
 Prof. Henrik Nordborg
 Dr. Ing. Lukasz Miroslaw
 Dr. Ing. Mario Mürmann
 Dipl. Ing. Roman Fuchs
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http://www.msic.ch

11. IT requirements at the HSR
 Flexibility!!!!
 A large number of software tools need to be installed
 Every student has different needs and requirements
 Students should install software themselves
 Fluctuating workloads
 Computing power required at the end of each
semester
 The computational needs depend on the projects
 A lot of storage required from simulations and
measurements
 Online collaboration
 Students work together on writing reports and theses
 Master students: collaboration between universities
 Collaboration with companies (mainly SMEs)
 Do we need the computer room?
 A virtual machine for every student
 New applications in teaching
 Huge potential and a lot of work
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12. Flexibility = Virtual Machines
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Create any number of virtual machines for different applications.

13. Flexibility – obtain the computing power you need
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14. Virtual Machines – a standard virtual desktop
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15. Virtual Machines – examples and costs
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16. Virtual Machines
 Available with Windows or Ubuntu Linux
 Can be preconfigured with any software
 Can easily be cloned and deployed
 You only pay when you use them
 Ideal for lectures and projects
 Provide students access to a machine during the course of a project
 Give students the right to install their own software
 Give students from different universities access to a common infrastructure
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17. Example: MSE Course in Computational Fluid Dynamics
 Students coming from all over Switzerland
 Excercises using OpenFOAM (open source CFD software)
 Every student needs access to this software during 14 weeks
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18. Example: MSE Master Thesis in Singapore
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A virtual Azure workstation +
Azure storage can be
accessed from everywhere

19. Azure in education – some other issues
 Online collaboration
 Students will use online collaboration tools
 The question is only whether it is provided by the university or not
 Office 365 is really popular among students
 Word, Excel, PowerPoint, …
 OneNote for collecting information and taking notes
 Windows tablets are becoming really popular
 Reading scripts
 Taking notes
 Storage
 Cloud storage is cheap, both for students and universities
 External USB drives cannot be the solution of the future
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20. Improving teaching – are we still doing the right thing?
 What should we teach?
 What is the value of solving equations on paper?
 Does everyone need to be able to program?
 What about general computer skills
 How should we teach it?
 More multimedia during lectures
 Student participation (using, laptop, tablet, or smartphone).
 Can we become more efficient?
 Correcting and grading written exams is time-consuming and boring
 Assessing student performance should be simpler
 We should spend our time teaching!!!
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21. Computing power to students
 What about compute intensive applications – simulations?
 Three issues to solve …
 Data management
 Computation
 Visualization – pre- and post-processing
 … but they are already solved
 HPC nodes on Azure are really powerful (16 cores, 112 GB RAM)
 Infiniband networking works on Azure (distributed parallel computing)
 Storage on Azure is cheaper than local storage
 Visualization over Remote Desktop is OK for many purposes
 Better solutions with GPU and OpenGL-Support are being implemented
 A virtual cluster can be scaled to any size when it is needed
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