HUBzero + Cloud: P
Power tool for the m
masses un, Christopher Thompson
n, Alex Yountss, Preston Sm
mith and Caroll Song Dave Brau
osen Center fo
or Advanced Computing Ro
Purd
due Universityy Today’s powerful cybe
erinfrastructure, including the high perfformance and
d distributed computing systems aand clouds, caan be an unfo
orgiving place for the non p
power users. Users are oftten expected to be familiar w
with Unix com
mmand lines, w
whether runn
ning computaation jobs or m
moving data ffrom one placce to another. W
When they ne
eed immediate help, userss typically relyy on emailingg technical support and sysstem administrators, while in the commeercial service provider worrld, online interactive help is fairly comm
mon. we bridge thesse gaps and h
help scientificc users to be m
more producttive? We have developed How do w
Springboa
ard, a web plaatform based on the succeessful HUBzerro software, tto provide eassy access to H
HPC, cloud and
d other digitall resources an
nd online collaboration capability for in
nstant help. Springboard has been integrated with tthe TeraGrid, including acccess to all thee TeraGrid ressources and relevant informatio
on (e.g., usagge, allocation,, etc). Leveragging the HUBzero middlew
ware, especially the use of VNC (Virtual Network Comp
puting), Sprin
ngboard userss are able to sshare their on
nline sessionss, including running o
of tools and ap
pplications, as well as login
n and commaand windows to the compu
uting resourcces, This capab
bility not onlyy allows real‐ttime collaborration amongg the collaborators, but alsso provids an online interactive platfform that sup
pport staff can
n use to help their users. e a Springboaard GUI appliccation, Cloud Dashboard, tthat allows ussers to accesss This posteer will feature
cloud reso
ources from SSpringboard in their web b
browsers thro
ough a GUI. The Cloud Dasshboard connects from the SSpringboard w
web portal to
o Wispy, a clo
oud resource provided by P
Purdue Univeersity and a resource partner on th
he Science Clo
oud (http://w
www.scienceclouds.org). W
Wispy is a cluster running the d software. Itt accepts userr supplied virttual machine images and rruns each VM
M KVM and Nimbus cloud
with up to
o 4 CPUs and 16GB of mem
mory. Users aare able to package their applications and operating systems ccompletely insside the imagges they subm
mit and have ffull control ovver the execu
ution environment. Wispy haas been used to provide sm
mall, instant, on‐demand cclusters for various tasks aand running co
omplicated o
or prepackageed application
ns on addition
nal hardware resources. Th
here are currently 32 physicaal hosts (128 cores) on Wispy with a capacity limit o
of 128 VMs. Cloud Dasshboard supp
ports both battch and interactive, or on‐demand, types off applicationss. From its G
GUI, a user caan load multip
ple VM imagees and run th
hem on Wispy. The user m
may choose th
he length of runtime of th
he VM, wheth
her to save th
he image upo
on terminatio
on, and with o
one click, can
n launch thee VMs in the cloud. The VM
M status is reported back to the u
user in the GU
UI. While the user may connect to the VMs VMs are rrunning, the u
via one bu
utton click an
nd a separate login window
w is then displayed (Figure 2). The user may also choose to
o issue a comm
mand to be eexecuted on aa VM via the Dashboard (Figure 3). In
ntegration witth additional cloud resources is in the plan. Figure
e 1. Illustration of Springboarrd, Wispy and Nimbu
us
Tools such as the Cloud Dashboard have the potential to change the way HPC, cloud and other digital resources are typically used today, i.e., via command lines, which means a steep learning curve for a lot of people. These tools will enhance the usability of the HPC and cloud resources and allows the researchers to focus their attention and effort on scientific discovery rather than the intricate details of the computing and software environments. Together with the HUBzero’s community participation and collaboration tools, Springboard hopes to bring the high end computing and data resources to the masses! Figure 2. Cloud Dashboard GUI and VM access window
Figure 3.Running a command in VM via Cloud Dashboard GUI