Abstract
High-Performance Computing (HPC) projects span a spectrum of computer hardware implementations ranging from peta-flop supercomputers, high-end tera-flop facilities running a variety of operating systems and applications, to mid-range and smaller computational clusters used for HPC application development, pilot runs and prototype staging clusters. What they all have in common is that they operate as a stand-alone system rather than a scalable and shared user re-configurable resource. The advent of cloud computing has changed the traditional HPC implementation. In this article, we will discuss a very successful production-level architecture and policy framework for supporting HPC services within a more general cloud computing infrastructure. This integrated environment, called Virtual Computing Lab (VCL), has been operating at NC State since fall 2004. Nearly 8,500,000 HPC CPU-Hrs were delivered by this environment to NC State faculty and students during 2009. In addition, we present and discuss operational data that show that integration of HPC and non-HPC (or general VCL) services in a cloud can substantially reduce the cost of delivering cloud services (down to cents per CPU hour).
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2007 Computerworld Honors Program Laureate Medal (CHPLM) for Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL), 2009 CHPLM for NC State University Cloud Computing Services
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported in part by IBM Corp., Intel Corp., SAS Institute, NetApp, EMC, NC State University, State of North Carolina, UNC General Administration, and DOE (DE-FC02-07)ER25809. The authors would like thank the NC State VCL team for their advice, support and input.
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Vouk, M.A., Sills, E., Dreher, P. (2010). Integration of High-Performance Computing into Cloud Computing Services. In: Furht, B., Escalante, A. (eds) Handbook of Cloud Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6524-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6524-0_11
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