March 23, 2023 — If you happen to’ve ever felt intimidation on the thought of working with supercomputers, you’re not alone. Many researchers throughout disciplines aren’t accustomed to supercomputers. That’s exactly why it’s essential to verify ACCESS portals are straightforward to make use of by anybody and Open OnDemand is the device that makes that occur.
What’s Open OnDemand?
Open OnDemand is an open-source portal that allows web-based entry to HPC companies. This highly effective utility was developed by the Ohio Supercomputer Middle (OSC), an ACCESS useful resource supplier, and funded by the Nationwide Science Basis. You may even entry Open OnDemand in your cell phone or pill.
“Open OnDemand advances democratization targets of NSF’s superior cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. It removes limitations skilled by some researchers attempting to make use of high-performance computational and knowledge assets inside their complicated workflows from primarily anyplace,” stated Tom Gulbransen, NSF’s program officer for the ACCESS program.
Whereas Open OnDemand isn’t at present obtainable for all of the useful resource suppliers within the ACCESS portfolio, a number of of the bigger supercomputing facilities already make use of it. Bridges2 on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Middle (PSC), Expanse on the San Diego Supercomputing Middle (SDSC), Anvil at Purdue’s Rosen Middle for Superior Computing (RCAC) and Delta on the Nationwide Middle for Supercomputing Purposes (NCSA) are all arrange with Open OnDemand. The hope is that ultimately many of the ACCESS supercomputing assets will make the most of Open OnDemand, homogenizing researchers’ expertise with the assets, irrespective of the place they’re utilizing them.
Open OnDemand is browser-based, which implies you don’t want to put in a shopper to make use of it. Its graphical consumer interface (GUI) is created to be easy sufficient for any degree of experience, and it’s configurable such that useful resource suppliers can create specialised purposes for distinctive wants. This sort of scalability comes without charge. Since Open OnDemand is open supply, it’s free to make use of by anybody. Open OnDemand can be already extensively adopted, with situations deployed on all continents save Antarctica, with greater than 400 energetic installations.
The scalability of Open OnDemand makes it straightforward to combine in style purposes for knowledge visualization, simulations and modeling. Some in style purposes already deployed in Open OnDemand situations embrace MATLAB, Jupyter, R Studio and Visible Studio Code. Open OnDemand is a extremely versatile device that can solely get higher as extra assets put it to use and adapt the open-source code to their wants.
Lastly, the simplicity of the portal makes it straightforward for customers of all ability ranges to make use of. Alan Chalker, director of strategic applications on the OSC, is happy with how extensively Open OnDemand has been adopted. It’s not simply researchers all around the world utilizing it userbase additionally has a hanging variety of disciplines and experience.
“As a direct results of Open OnDemand, the Ohio Supercomputer Middle now supplies companies to shoppers from over 40 completely different science domains, together with numerous fields reminiscent of horticulture and crop science, political science, anthropology, and welding engineering,” commented Alan Chalker, director of strategic applications, OSC.
How Does Open OnDemand Match into the ACCESS Infrastructure?
ACCESS is a big group that facilitates analysis; all of the elements of the group are essential for it to perform. Operations, Allocations, Metrics and Help work in tandem to assist researchers meet their targets. Some features of those groups are much less seen than others however aren’t any much less essential. Researchers who make the most of ACCESS have completely different wants and should solely work together with sure elements to various levels. All researchers begin with Allocations, however skilled customers might not use a lot of the companies Help supplies. Some might dive deeply into Metrics to make their analysis extra environment friendly. Many researchers won’t ever work together with the Operations crew, however Operations continues to be there, making certain the whole lot runs easily. Each single researcher, nevertheless, must interface with their allotted assets, which makes the benefit of that interface essential, irrespective of the scope of the undertaking or the experience of the researcher.
That is the place Open OnDemand is available in. As its adoption widens amongst ACCESS useful resource suppliers, Open OnDemand will streamline the analysis course of, permitting for a seamless transition from useful resource to useful resource. This doesn’t finish at simply ACCESS assets both.
Many researchers use a mix of assets for his or her initiatives. They might use ACCESS for one side after which flip to Amazon Net Providers (AWS) for one thing else. Since AWS makes use of its personal occasion of Open OnDemand, researchers received’t discover a distinction in portals when switching between assets. The portal stays the identical in all circumstances. The extra Open OnDemand is adopted, the better it turns into for researchers to maneuver not simply between assets however between initiatives. In the event that they’ve used Open OnDemand as soon as, they’ll be capable to launch into their subsequent undertaking proper a lot faster, even when the useful resource they’re utilizing is totally completely different than the one they used of their first undertaking. When OSC in contrast the instances from account creation to the primary login, the variations have been astounding. Utilizing OnDemand versus conventional entry, researchers took 76 fewer hours to get from account creation to first login. They took 20 fewer hours from their first login to their first job.
Lastly, as a result of flexibility of Open OnDemand’s browser-based interface, researchers can entry their work actually anyplace an web connection is out there. Researchers can examine knowledge on a laptop computer whereas ready for a flight on the airport and even on their telephone whereas sitting at a pub watching a soccer match. It’s that easy and straightforward to make use of. It’s so easy that a number of customers credited it with maintaining their initiatives on observe initially of the pandemic in 2020.
“Wichita State College bought a cluster earlier than the pandemic and put in OnDemand simply as COVID was shutting down campuses,” stated Terrance Figy, professor at Whichita State College. “I don’t suppose you all understand how vital OnDemand was; we imagine it helped us retain college students, each undergraduate and graduates.”
Facilitating analysis for everybody is the cornerstone of ACCESS. Open OnDemand is one other ACCESS device that will help you attain your analysis targets.
Undertaking Particulars
Establishment: Ohio Supercomputer Middle (OSC)
Funding Company: NSF
Grant Quantity: Grant nos. 1534949, 1835725, and 2138286
Open OnDemand relies upon work supported by the Nationwide Science Basis beneath grant numbers 1534949, 1835725, and 2138286 and beneath energetic growth by a crew from the Ohio Supercomputer Middle, U. of Buffalo CCR, and Virginia Tech.
Supply: Megan Johnson, NCSA and ACCESS