Cloud based HPC is being considered by many large enterprises. These organizations are trying to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of HPC systems. But, the seamless integration of cloud based HPC with on-premise systems is still a challenge. Syncious solution ‘SyncHPC-E‘ tries to solve this problem. It supports features like user management, user access control, Active Directory authentication, etc. Project team leaders can easily manage HPC user accounts with this solution.
There is another solution (SyncHPC-S), which provides simplified workflow for individual users. The blog post with title ‘On-demand HPC Solution by Syncious’ explains the workflow of SyncHPC-S.
This document explains specific features of ‘SyncHPC-E‘.
SyncHPC-E can be linked to on-premise Active Directory (AD). It supports Active Directory authentication. Also, HPC admins can manage AD users from the user interface provided on SyncHPC-E. Hence, AD domain users can be easily integrated with cloud based HPC systems.
SyncHPC-E also supports allocation and assignment of individual user storage space in cloud. If a new user is added to SyncHPC-E, then a cloud storage of specific size is allocated to this user. User can use it for storing input and output HPC data.
SyncHPC-E defines three user roles:
1. HPC Administrator:
Users with this role can do all of the tasks related to SyncHPC. Following image shows the dashboard of HPC admin.
The tasks of HPC administrator are:
- New deployment of HPC cluster
- manage users (Add, delete, assign roles, associate HPC deployment).
Add user wizard options are shown below:
Below image shows the already added users, their roles and associated HPC cluster/deployment name.
- Billing / Payment
- Power on/off compute nodes
- Scale up/down compute nodes
- Connect to head node
- Submit and monitor HPC Jobs
2. Power User:
This user can independently manage the HPC cluster associated to him/her. Dashboard of power user is shown below:
Power User’s permitted actions are:
- Power on/off compute nodes
- Scale up/down compute nodes
- Connect to head node
- Submit and monitor HPC Jobs
3. Job Operator:
This is a HPC end-user role. The users of this role can only submit and monitor their own jobs. Dashboard of job operator is like following image:
Allowed actions for Job operator are:
- Connect to assigned cluster node
- Submit and monitor HPC Jobs
In summary, SyncHPC-E provides an easy HPC user account management option. It also integrates on-premise active directory. Hence, transition to cloud based HPC is seamless for enterprise users.
SyncHPC + SyncVDI 