Practical Considerations in Cloud Utilization for the Science Gateway nanoHUB.org

nanoHUB.org is arguably the largest online nanotechnology user facility in the world. Just between July 2010 and June 2011 it served 177,823 users. 10,477 users ran 393,648 simulation jobs on a variety of computational resources ranging from HUB zero-based virtual execution hosts for rapid, interact...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in2011 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing pp. 287 - 292
Main Authors Zentner, L. K., Clark, S. M., Smith, P. M., Shivarajapura, S., Farnsworth, V., Madhavan, K. P. C., Klimeck, G.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.12.2011
Subjects
Cloud computing
Computational modeling
cyber-environments
grid computing
HUBzero
Logic gates
nanoHUB
Nanotechnology
performance monitoring
Probes
Production facilities
science gateway
Virtual machining
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:nanoHUB.org is arguably the largest online nanotechnology user facility in the world. Just between July 2010 and June 2011 it served 177,823 users. 10,477 users ran 393,648 simulation jobs on a variety of computational resources ranging from HUB zero-based virtual execution hosts for rapid, interactive runs as well as grid-based resources for computationally-intense runs. We believe that as such our users experience a fully operational scientific "cloud"-based infrastructure even though it is not using "standard" computational cloud infrastructures such as EC2. In this paper we explore the use of standard computational cloud-based resources to determine whether they can deliver satisfactory outcomes for our users without requiring high personnel costs for configuration. In a science gateway environment, the assignment of jobs to the appropriate computational resource is not trivial. Resource availability, wait time, time to completion, and likelihood of job success must all be considered in order to transparently deliver an acceptable level of service to our users. In this paper, we present preliminary results examining the benefits and drawbacks of utilizing standard computational cloud resources as one potential venue for nano HUB computational runs. In summary we find that cloud resources performed competitively with other grid resources in terms of wait time, CPU usage, and success in a multiple job submission strategy.
ISBN:1457721163
9781457721168
DOI:10.1109/UCC.2011.46