Best Practices for HPC in the Cloud

The use of cloud computing technologies within HPC has grown considerably within the last few years. The complexity and scale that comes with cloud environments can make the first experience a daunting proposition. Cloud technologies offer a number of new capabilities to streamline tasks for HPC users and administrators, however, how to use them in HPC may not be immediately clear.

This tutorial will provide a solid foundation of skills to run common HPC workloads using cloud technologies as well as providing a deeper view into how to use cloud-native technologies into HPC workflows, such as object storage. The tutorial starts with a primer on modern cloud foundations and how they map to common HPC concepts. This includes a hands-on portion that allows attendees to setup their own cluster in the cloud and run a sample application. The rest of the tutorial provides progressively deeper dives through lectures and hands-on sessions for topics such as common HPC on cloud architectures, automation, containers, and serverless technologies and how they can be used in HPC workflows.

This tutorial uses a combination of lectures and hands-on labs on provided temporary Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts to provide both conceptual and hands-on learning.

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Contributors:

• Maxime Hugues (AWS)
• Pierre-Yves Aquilanti (AWS)
• Francesco Ruffino (AWS)
• Nicola Venuti (AWS)
• Brian Skjerven (AWS)
• Francesco Ferrari (University of Genoa)
• Matt Koop (AWS)
• Angel Pizzaro (AWS)
• Sean Smith (AWS)
• Garg Soham (AWS)
• Anh Tran (AWS)