ProfitBricks was formed in 2010 to provide virtual data centres for corporate customers, allowing them to combine the advantages of cloud computing with the established look and feel of a traditional data centre. The technical department of a Swiss University approached ProfitBricks with the challenge of migrating its on-premise high performance computing environment to the cloud. The Professor in charge of the University’s IT department explained the drivers for this unprecedented decision: “We knew our HPC environment was in need of an upgrade, and we recognised that we didn’t utilise our supercomputer in a consistent manner. In high pressure situations we required almost limitless compute resources, when at other times our supercomputer stood idle. In essence, we realised that we didn’t need full compute power, 100% of the time.”
The university decided it would be far more cost effective to run an HPC environment in the cloud on a scalable, “pay as you go” basis, rather than replace the hardware required to carry out a full upgrade of the on-premise system.
The university’s technical team chose ProfitBricks as it is the only IaaS provider where the physical processor is mapped one-to-one with the virtual processor, guaranteeing the high performance they needed. The university made the decision to team ProfitBricks with the Bright Computing infrastructure management solution they’d used on-premise, so they could continue to administer their cloud-based HPC environment through the single management interface they were accustomed to.
Lee Carter, VP EMEA at Bright Computing, explained; “This is a unique example of how Bright Computing can help a company move their HPC requirement to the cloud.” He continued; “Bright enables the university to dynamically expand and contract the infrastructure needed to support their research projects, all at the click of a button. This ensures the university only pays for the computational resources it needs, when they need them, saving time and expense.”
Petra-Maria Grohs, CSO of ProfitBricks added; “Bright and ProfitBricks have demonstrated that providing elastic high performance compute infrastructure in the cloud is a viable option for organisations that wish to consume high volumes of compute power on an ad hoc basis.” He continued; “The University’s solution is highly agile, yet it performs as well as an on-premise HPC environment. This is a really ground-breaking solution.”
