CINECA HPC Cloud Model

The CINECA HPC Cloud infrastructure integrates and completes the HPC ecosystem, providing a tightly-integrated infrastructure that covers both high performance and high flexible computing. The flexibility of the cloud adapts better to the diversity of user workloads, while still providing high-end computing power.

Note

CINECA HPC Cloud infrastructure is certified ISO 27001 since 2022 for “Servizi informatici HPC in cloud per la ricerca in ambito life science”.

CINECA Service Model

CINECA HPC Cloud infrastructure is provided via an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. In IaaS model, the Cloud Provider administrates the hardware and virtualization layers of the infrastructure and provides both computing resources (virtual CPUs, storage, network, GPUs…) and high-level APIs (dashboards, command line (CLI) tools) that users can employ to control the resources they were granted.

HPC Cloud use cases

Cloud computing means paramount flexibility. With a cloud IaaS model, users are able to setup their project environment as they see fit, using all the infrastructure tools and resources and with the support provided by CINECA to meet their specific needs.

CINECA users rely on the HPC Cloud infrastructure to address different use cases. The list below is not meant to be exhaustive, but to provide examples of scenarios where HPC Cloud can be particularly useful.

Hosting of data processing and analysis services (typical Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS).​

Hosting of HPC mini-cluster with adequate performance.​

Hosting of data management services receiving or exposing data from/to web.​

Hosting of data management services receiving or exposing data from/to internal CINECA HPC infrastructure.​

Hosting of workload processing sensitive data.​

Bridging HPC Infrastructure, e.g. hosting front-end services for management of workloads on CINECA HPC system.​

Flexible and automated deployment via Kubernetes on top of OpenStack of containerized workflows.​

Collaborative infrastructure deployment within a user tenant (Infrastructure as Code, IaC).​

Everything that requires performance and flexibility (respect to the HPC cluster).​

Responsibilities

While CINECA is responsible for the provisioning and maintenance of the hardware and virtualization layer (OpenStack), the users are responsible for anything they set up and install on their project (e.g. network setup, OS and applications on virtual machines, access to services and VMs). A clear separation of roles in using the service is represented in the scheme below:

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Roles and responsibilities

Name

Description

Role

Responsibilities

CINECA

Cloud provider

  • Administers physical infrastructure

  • Provides virtualization layer and API tools

  • Maintaining hardware and virtualization layer

  • User support

User Admin

  • Users with granted budget on CINECA HPC cloud

  • Project PIs and collaborators in CINECA UserDB

  • Create and manage cloud resources via the provided APIs (dashboard or CLI)

  • Responsible for all the resources they create (VMs, storage, networks,…)

  • Administer of the resources

  • Maintain VMs for which they have admin privileges

  • Implement security measures

  • Backups/snapshots of resources during the project and at the end of the validity period

User

Users with granted access to the project VMs by User Admins.

Can utilize VMs and services they have been granted access to by User Admins.

Maintain the VMs for which they have admin privileges

Any user (“User Admins” or “Users”) with administration privileges on IaaS resources (VMs) has the responsibility to maintain the security (security patch, fix) on those resources. In particular, they have the responsibility to perform VMs and volume data backups.

Warning

Currently snapshots and backups of resources are stored in the same HPC Cloud infrastructure.

From the project management perspective, CINECA will interact only with “User Admins”. At the end of the project validity, the “User Admins” will receive communication from CINECA staff that the project as expired with the date by when the resources will be removed. It is “User Admins” responsibility to make copy of the necessary VMs or data before that date.