Govt brews national cloud for science

Researchers to get $50 million, closer links to CERN

Australia's scientific community is planning to tighten links between Australia’s cloud research networks and the mammoth grids spread across the Northern Hemisphere, like those used in the Large Hadron Collider.

Australia's scientific community is planning to tighten links between Australia’s cloud research networks and the mammoth grids spread across the Northern Hemisphere, like those used in the Large Hadron Collider.

The local ACRS grid connects eight High Performance Computing Facilities in each state, including the CSIRO, with a growing list of university cluster networks. Systems services manager Jim McGovern said a cloud model will provide users with better ease of use and more flexibility.

"For example, researchers will be able to package programs in a virtual machine and send them off to whatever facility is best suited to process [the data], but before that happens, we will continue unifying the resources so the many scientists who aren't in IT can easily use the network," McGovern said. "The cloud will be able to better utilise availability and schedule jobs to free processors".

University researchers will eventually be able to authorise with the network using their internal credentials through the Australian Access Federation, which also serves as an education medium for users.

The ARCS is planning to expand its international grid links that connect Australian and New Zealand researchers to the big European and US networks. McGovern says local processing capacity is sufficient but there is room for improvement in international research collaboration.

Expert opinion, however, is divided on the benefits of cloud over grid architecture. The European Infrastructure Reflection Group says even the best cloud offerings are not yet sophisticated enough to support complex grid-like use, and that research community "would be best served" with a mix of grid and cloud-based services. It further notes that grids are better equipped to handle large bursts of processing, while clouds are more suited to longer-running compute jobs.

McGovern said the consumer sector will benefit from the experience of the grid operators in dealing with record network traffic levels, and the pressing need for interoperability developed without commercial pressures.

Mapping out funds

While public and private sector science research funding has been buoyed with a 25 per cent increase, or $3.1 billion over the next four years, the government will need to doll out more cash prior to 2012 to support the grid expansion, according to Botten.

He says the $50 million allocation to the supercomputer data centre supplied under the National Collaborative Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) will not pay for maintenance or staff wages. Researchers rely on a whopping $7.5 million a year from grid partners, compared to $1.6 million from the government which is set to close with NCRIS by 2011.

"A decision in NCRIS' extension has only been partly taken by government. There is a lot of co-investment that has to be found to keep a $30 million supercomputer alive; we're talking about multi-million dollar power bills each year," Botten said. "There is a need to fund people... the universities are generally cash-strapped, so generating levels of co-investment can be difficult."

New supercomputer data centres like the National Facility will be targeted to support specific fields, rather than a scatter-gun approach where all scientific fields have equal stake in resources. Large organisations and universities have joined the Bureau of Meterology to fund the climate change component, but Botten said the model will need to be shifted so research is not sidelined.

"There will have to be rearrangements down-the-track so that those scientific organisations that do not reside in the priority areas will have access to the compute resources. It will wash itself out through co-investment - eventually everyone will have to chip in to help maintain the machines and they will in turn own a stake of the resources for whatever scientific fields are important to them."

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags supercomputersCSIROsupercomputinglarge hadron colliderCERNdata centre top pickNational Computational Infrastructure (NCI)Australian National University (ANU)Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)

More about ASACERNCRS AustraliaCSIROCSIROetworkHolden- General MotorsLinuxNASA

Show Comments
[]