Introductory Material

Introduction to Cloud Computing for Research

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min
Questions

  • Why and when should we use the cloud?

  • How do we use the cloud?

Objectives

  • Understand cloud scalability and use in research

Why use the cloud?

There are about six advantages to using the public cloud as a research platform.

  1. You do not wait for compute tasks to go through a queue

    Compute can start as soon as you want it

  2. You do not purchase and maintain hardware, operating systems etcetera

    Upgrades just happen

  3. You pay for resources you use; and then shut them off

    You don’t have to buy into an institutional cluster if the cost calculation doesn’t make sense for you.

  4. You have huge scale-up potential (reduced processing time)

    In principle, you have near-infinite computing capacity.

  5. There is a huge support community rapidly expanding cloud tools and tech

    Because of the public availability of these resources, and substantial buy-in from industry, there is a large eco-system of tools and resources.

  6. Storage, reliability, security and many other off-the-shelf services

    And they just keep making new stuff.

There are about four reasons to not migrate to the cloud

  1. You have already identified an adequate-to-your-needs computing environment like XSEDE Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. In some cases, you already have the access to the resources you need.

  2. You don’t have time to learn how to work on the public cloud There is stuff to learn. That’s what we’re here for! But there will be more to learn after this session is over. If you prefer to learn other things, you might not want to invest your time in learning about the cloud.

  3. You operate your computer(s) at a very high duty cycle (more cost-effective) If your computer is constantly computing something, the cloud might end up costing you more.

  4. There is too much administrative drag preventing you from using the cloud That’s a thing. Especially when working with human subject data that is encumbered through regulation (such as HIPAA).

The cloud components are compute, store, manage, web and services

Key Points