CERN and Rackspace Form OpenStack Partnership

By Ian Armas Foster

July 3, 2013

Amazon Web Services is the cloud provider most often cited in scientific articles about high performance applications in the cloud. Meanwhile, cloud competitor Rackspace has not ventured much into the high scientific computing arena.

That is, until this week when Rackspace, noted provider of cloud services, will be looking at getting into the cloud based HPC game by partnering with CERN, a development that was announced on Monday.

“We have never really played in research, higher education, and other technical spaces,” says Rackspace CTO John Engates, “but we are getting traction now, thanks to OpenStack.” With the partnership with CERN and the ensuing work on OpenStack, Rackspace hopes to join those ranks. Indeed, they are certainly starting with one of the higher profile scientific computing use cases.

CERN’s partnership with Rackspace comes out of a division called openlab that CERN set up to experiment with IT storage and computational structures, some of which will take place in the public cloud offerings provided by Rackspace.

According to CERN, the Large Hadron Collider generates 25 petabytes of data per year on its own. Engates noted that CERN actually generates more data than that, but they end up discarding some of it simply as a result of lack of storage resources.

Specifically, the organization tasked with finding somewhere to put all of the data generated by the Large Hadron Collider needed a partner that would provide a space for all of the floating data that gets destroyed as a result of there simply not existing enough room.

A significant amount of resources from the partnership will be dedicated to incorporating the open source OpenStack into the scientific organization’s IT infrastructure.

Beyond expanding their storage and computational resources, the appeal here for CERN is the continuing promotion of open source technologies to carry out cloud-based projects. According to CERN’s IT infrastructure manager Tim Bell in the video below detailing CERN’s OpenStack efforts and what it means for CERN’s overall goals, “CERN’s always been a contributor to open source projects…Open source technology allows us to be able to contribute to improvements without having to do the work ourselves.”

Bell is planning on adding 15,000 hypervisors to support CERN’s experimental workloads. The goal here will be to improve the virtualization process such that the performance penalty for moving workloads, especially the high performance workloads with which CERN often handles, is not overly dramatic. Part of that, according to Engates, will involve OpenStack to enable the usage of APIs.

“They are also looking at OpenStack as a way to put APIs on the front of their supercomputers,” says Engates.

Aside from the ramifications of CERN moving certain storage and computational necessities to a cloud based system, somewhat of an inevitability if one has been following their desire to keep the balance of their data, Rackspace’s entry into the scientific computing field could mark a significant moment in porting high performance applications into a virtualized environment.

This is not CERN’s first dealing with Rackspace, as they used the ‘Swift’ object storage controller three years ago as part of the foundation of their OpenStack storage system. The work done on OpenStack to improve its provisioning by CERN and now Rackspace could promote the moving of more high performance applications to a cloud as the performance cost from a virtualized layer between the servers and the applications dwindles.

Until that happens, CERN does plan to add those aforementioned 15,000 hypervisors to virtualize current workloads. Another aspect to the partnership is the allocation of resources from both CERN’s private cloud and Rackspace’s public cloud and how to get the two to mesh such that workloads are optimized.

 “We’ve collaborated with them to make their workloads not only go to the public cloud,” said Jim Curry, SVP, General Manager, Rackspace Private Cloud, “but also to do work within their private cloud, and most importantly developing a platform that allows them to choose to consume public cloud resources or private cloud resources.” That dichotomy between public and private cloud, as shown in the picture below, is important in keeping with CERN’s previously stated goal of allowing access to their datasets to researchers across the world.

HPC in the Cloud has examined recently the issues facing CERN and what they were hoping to accomplish as a global scientific initiative through making datasets accessible over Google servers. In that case, Google was making available 100,000 servers to the researchers for what was essentially overflow computational support.

This Rackspace-CERN partnership has ramifications on multiple levels of the HPC cloud spectrum, including furthering CERN’s goals of keeping all of their data and providing access to datasets for researchers across the globe, as well as potentially entering another player into the experimental application field for scientific computing in Rackspace.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire