Owen Thomas, Red Oak Consulting

Momentum to move HPC workloads to the Cloud continues to grow. Does this mean the Cloud vendors have met all the practical requirements needed to enable efficient HPC in the Cloud solutions or do challenges still remain? Having conducted several HPC projects we have observed several developments which simplify HPC workload migrations. Having undertaken benchmarking exercises, led PoC’s and pilots across academia institutes, industries and workflows, we have first-hand experience not only of the challenges, but also of how valuable it is for open research to embrace HPC in the Cloud. HPC in the Cloud is a rapidly evolving technology and questions remain around its role in the HPC marketplace; How does Cloud compare against traditional on-premise solutions? How do the financials of the Cloud model work? How does Cloud affect deployments when the security & storage are considered? In this talk we discuss our experiences and challenges encountered. We’ll look at why non-functionals of HPC in the Cloud are critical to the success of any migration. We will also talk about on-going developments and how in our view HPC in the Cloud remains at the forefront of a sustainable future.