HPC and Cloud Technologies in Greece and South Eastern Europe

Tryfon ChiotisGRNET

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GRNET• state-owned company (SA) under GSRT

established in 1998

• provide advanced e-infrastructures/services to the Greek academic and research institutions:– National and international connectivity – Infrastructures/services (network, computing,

storage) to the community

• promotion and dissemination of ICT in the public and private sector

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• > 100 universities, research centers, academic organizations • > 15.000 schools • > 1.000.000 users• Dark fiber backbone (Nx10 Gbps)• access 1 || 10 Gbps per institution• International connectivity through GEANT network 3*10

Gbps• Neutral point for the Greek Internet Exchange (GRIX)

node – peering all Greek ISPs at 10Gbps each• GRID services• Storage Services

– (e.g. Online Storage-Pithos, 50 or 100 GB/user–6500 users per day)

• VPS VM provisioning (>400 VMs) & Public Cloud (~okeanos)• 2 DataCenters (NRC & Ministry of Education premises)

GRNET numbers:

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• 35 PoPs– 8410km fibers (IRU)

• MANs Attiki & Thessaloniki

• DF loops 33 cities• Single-mode fiber pair• 15-years IRUs• Availability >> 99%

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Cloud Services

• Virtual Private Servers (VPS)– Persistent volumes/longevity/non volatile VMs (RACKSPACE

style)

• Public Cloud Service ~okeanos (VM, volumes)– Short lived/volatile instances (high churn rate)

Amazon (AWS) style

• Online File Storage Service (Amazon S3 like)– Files, groups, REST API

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Public Cloud Service ~okeanos• Deliver IaaS to GRNET’s customers

• direct: IT depts of connected institutions• indirect: university students, researchers in academia

• Other IaaS efforts (Amazon, Rackspace, Nimbula,

Nebula, GoGrid etc)• Amazon EC2 not an end-user service• Need to develop custom UI, AAI layers• Vendor lock-in• Unsuitable for IT depts

persistent, long-term servers, custom networking requirements

• Nimbula Director offers similar functionality

GRNET and HPC- Invited by the Ministry of Development to submit a proposal which will support Greece’s participation in PRACE.

- Goal is the development of a national HPC infrastructure that will join PRACE’s Tier-1 European infrastructure.

- Budget 3.5 MEuro- Procurement and installation of HPC infrastructure

- Operation and provision of support services

Technical specs and target applications

- Aiming for at least a ~150 Tflops supercomputing system -Petabyte level storage-Hosting in GRNET’s existing Datacenter-Support for a wide range of scientific disciplines:

Biomedicince, Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, Physics, Metoerology, Climatology, Seismology, Computational Chemistry etc.

-Based on the results of the HellasHPC feasibility study-National survey among 29 academic and research institutes (summer 2010)-Collected requirements from 200 scientific applications developed by 162 research teams from various scientific domains

High-Performance & Supercomputing: HP-SEE

• 33 months 3,88 m€ project, 540MMs

• 120 Tflops aggregate• 2 BlueGene machines• Larger procurements coming up

• Close links to PRACE• Possibility of a joint Tier-1 centre

• Balance of national and EC funds• Towards long-term sustainable

European hierarchical model

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Key results: HPC Initiatives

• Support the setup of national HPC task forces or their incorporation in existing structures– National HPC initiatives guidelines provided– Governance, organizational, operational, training and dissemination details

provided– D2.2: “National HPC task-force modeling and organizational guidelines”

• Recommendations for HPC centers procurement provided– Legal, procedural, technical and planning– D2.1: “Procurement guidelines analysis”

• Regional collaboration models in definition: Draft resource sharing MoU in place

• Liaison with PRACE, other pan-European activities, and world-wide initiatives

HP-SEE: Project Objectives

• Objective 1 – Empowering multi-disciplinary virtual research communities

• Objective 2 – Deploying integrated infrastructure for virtual research communities– Including a GEANT link to Southern Caucasus

• Objective 3 – Policy development and stimulating regional inclusion in pan-European HPC trends

• Objective 4 – Strengthening the regional and national human network

Crucial for regional cooperation: policy development and political support

• Project: South-East European Area for eInfrastructures

• Area: "INFRA-2008-3.1: ERA-NET supporting cooperation for research infrastructures in all S&T fields“

• Start: 1 April 2009

• Duration: 36 months

• Project type: Coordination and support action

• Partnership: Ministry partners + eInfra partners programme manager partners

• Core Objective: Develop and strengthen the coordination and cooperation of national eInfrastructures programmes in the region of South-East Europe.

SEERA-EI: policy level collaboration

• Establishing a communication platform for programme owners, at www.seera-ei.eu

• Analysis of past and current eInfrastructure programmes and funding modalities

• Joint training events; bilateral visits• Best Practices identification• National programme cookbook

• Studies for joint operations centers, network (SEELight), HPC (regional ops centers)

• Joint pilot call between Ministries in cloud computing• Join regional strategy and vision MoU

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Common vision & strategy

See more on: http://okeanos.grnet.gr