I read this as a thinly veiled advertisement for the authors service, toolchest.
Toolchest actually runs scientific computing on AWS! I'm just frustrated by what we can build, because most scientific compute can't effectively shift to AWS
AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
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Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#92No one seems to consider colo data centers anymore as even an option?
My university owns hardware in multiple locations, plus uses hardware in a collocation, and still uses the cloud for bursting (overflow). You can't beat the provisioning time of cloud providers which is measured in seconds.
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#93I agree with the article. We at croit.io support customers around the globe to build their clusters and save huge amounts. For example, AWS S3 compared to Ceph S3 in any data center of your choice is around 1/10 of the AWS price.
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#94Buying your own fleet of dedicated servers seems like a smart move in the short term, but then five years from now you’ll get someone on the team insisting that they need the latest greatest GPU to run their jobs. Cloud providers give you the option of using newer chipsets without having to re-purchase your entire server fleet every five years.
In HPC land, most hardware is amortized over five years and then replaced! If you keep your service in life for five years at high utilization, you're doing great.
For example, the Blue Waters supercomputer at UIUC was originally expected to last five years, although they kept it in service for nine; it was considered a success: https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/historic-blue-waters-supercomp...
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#95Having worked for 2 of the largest cloud providers (1 of them beimg the largest) i have to say "The Cloud" just doesnt makes sense (maybe with the exception of cloud storage) yet for most use cases, this including start ups, small and, mid size companies its just way to expensive for the benefits it provides, it moves your hardware acquisitions /maintainance cost to development costs, you just think better/cheaper because that cost comes in small monthly chunks rather than as a single bill, plus you add all security risks either those introduced by the vendor or those introduced by the masive complexity and poor training of the developers which if you want to avoid will have to pay by hiring a developer competent in security for that particular cloud provider
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it really depends on the task. Where HIPAA violation is a real threat, the equation changes. And just for CYA purposes those projects can get pushed to a cloud. Which does not necessarily involve any attempts to make them any more secure, but this is a different topic. That said, many scientists are operating on premise hardware like this: some servers in a shared rack and an el-cheapo storage solutions with…
> And it works just fine for them. Until it doesn't because there's a fire or huge power surge or whatever. That's the point -- there's a lot of risk they're not taking into account, and by focusing on the "it works just fine for them", you're cherry picking the ones that didn't suffer disaster.
> there's a lot of risk they're not taking into account
I see it the other way: experimental scientists operate with unreliable systems all the time: fickle systems, soldered one-time setups, shared lab space, etc. Computing is just one more thing that is not 100% reliable (but way more reliable than some other equipment), and usb data sticks serve as a good enough data backup.
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#97A former colleague did his PHD in particle physics with a novel technique (matrix element method). I can't really explain it, but it is extremely CPU intensive. That working group did it on CERN's resources, and they had to borrow quotas from a bunch of other people. For fun they calculated how much it would have cost on AWS and came up with something ridiculous like 3 million euros.
I can’t specifically to CERN and the exact workload. But bear in mind that the 3MM euros is non negotiated sticker pricing. In real life, negotiated pricing can be much much less depending on your org size and spend. This is a variable most people neglect.
That is true, and a large part of the theoretical cost was probably also traffic, and the use of nonstandard nodes. They could have gotten a much more realistic price.
I guess the point is also that scientists often don't realize computer costs money, when the computers are already bought
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#98Having had the responsibility of providing HPC for a literal buildings full of scientists, I can say that it may be true that you can get computation cheaper with owned hardware, than in a cloud. Certainly pay as you go, individual project at a time processing will look that way to the scientist. But I can also say with confidence that the contest is far closer than they think. Scientists who make this argument almos…
I've been running a group server (basically a shared workstation) for 5 years and it's been great. Way cheaper than cloud, no worrying about national rules on where data can be stored, no waiting in a SLURM batch queue, Jupyter notebooks on tap for everyone. A single $~6k outlay (we don't need GPUs which helps). Classic big workstations are way more capable than people think - but at the same time it's hard to justif…
Aren't you talking about 1 server when this is talking about HPC?
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#99This rings true for me. I have a federal grant that prohibits me from using its funds for capital acquisitions: i.e. servers. But I can spend it on AWS at massive cost for minimal added utility for my use case. Even though it would be a far better use of taxpayer funds to buy the servers, I have to rent them instead.
> prohibits me from using its funds for capital acquisitions
What is a legitimate reason for this restriction?
Re: AWS doesn't make sense for scientific computing
#100Having had the responsibility of providing HPC for a literal buildings full of scientists, I can say that it may be true that you can get computation cheaper with owned hardware, than in a cloud. Certainly pay as you go, individual project at a time processing will look that way to the scientist. But I can also say with confidence that the contest is far closer than they think. Scientists who make this argument almos…
>the security infrastructure, provide redundancy and still get to shared compute when they have an overflow need The article points out that this is mostly not necessary for scientific computing.
Which I thought was the best point of the article, that a lot of IT best practice comes from the web app world.
Web apps quickly become finely tuned factory machines, executing a million times a day and being duplicated thousands of times.
Scientific computing projects are often more like workshops. Getting charged by the second while you're sitting at a console trying to figure out what this giant blob you were sent even is is unpleasant. The solution you create is most likely to be run exactly once. If it is a big hit, it may be run a dozen times.
Trying to run scientific workloads on the cloud is like trying to put a human shoe on a horse. It might be possible but it's clearly not designed for that purpose.