Responding to Canada s Research Computing Needs:

Responding to Canada’s

Research Computing Needs:

Jonathan Dursi, CTO

Researcher input and the national

planning process

Memorial University of Newfoundland

McGill University Concordia University

Dalhousie University Université de Sherbrooke

Saint Mary's University

Université de Montréal Université du Québec à Montréal

Carleton University

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Queen’s University

Université Laval

University of New Brunswick St. Francis Xavier University

University of British Columbia University of Calgary

University of Alberta

Simon Fraser University

University of Saskatchewan University of Regina

University of Victoria

Genome Sciences Centre

University of Prince Edward Island

Laurentian University Lakehead University University of Ottawa University of Manitoba

Compute

Canada

Project

Compute Canada Project

Goals

• National Platform for Advanced Research Computing Expertise, Services, and Infrastructure


• Bring an entire national collection of expertise,

services, and compute/data

resources to bear on individual research problems

Memorial University of Newfoundland

McGill University University of Ontario Institute of Technologies (UOIT) Concordia University Dalhousie University Université de Sherbrooke

Saint Mary's University Université de Montréal

Université du Québec à Montréal

University of Toronto

Toronto Hospitals

Wilfrid Laurier University University of Waterloo

University of Guelph McMaster University

Brock University Carleton University Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Queen’s University

Université Laval University of New Brunswick

St. Francis Xavier University University of British Columbia

University of Calgary University of Alberta Simon Fraser University

University of Saskatchewan

Member Univerisity and Personnel Site Member Univerisity, Personnel, and Infrastructure Site

University of Regina

University of Victoria

Genome Sciences Centre

University of Prince Edward Island

Member Univerisity York University Laurentian University Lakehead University University of Ottawa University of Manitoba

Who is Compute Canada?

• The Compute Canada project team:

• National office of the same name

• Keep the funding flowing, keep coordination on track, advocacy, national/international collaborations, etc

• Regional organizations with autonomy, flexibility,

responsibility to implement parts of the platform • WestGrid in Western Canada

• National-level coordination on services, interoperability,

knowledge exchange

What’s it all for? - Now

• Now: Enable Canadian research that

needs HPC by

• Providing access to HPC resources

• Providing a national network of

experts (140 technical staff) to help

Researcher Input

• Cannot be successful without strong

mechanisms for Researcher Input.

• Must provide what researchers need

• while also keeping eye out for

upcoming technologies researchers will need.

Researcher Input

• Many regional organizations are very well

integrated into existing research communities

• Get constant feedback

• Not always disseminated, combined across

the country

• Get different types of input

• Weaker connections to, input from,

research communities not already already big users (= successful with current setup)

National Researcher Input

• Try to get broad, routine, national,

researcher input to bring into

• Operations

• Longer term planning

National Researcher Input

• ACOR (Advisory Council on Research)

• National, broad, panel of researchers; advisory to the board

• Recent Researcher Needs survey

• National ~15 min online survey, 425 completed

• Strategic Plan consultations

• ~25 national meetings, 500 people engaged • Chief Science Officer, Dugan O’Neil, SFU

Today

• Want to tell you today about

• The planning process - Strategic Plan, Management Plan

• The results of the national consultations

(strategic plan town halls, survey) have been • How these inputs are shaping plans

• Want your feedback on those results • Want your feedback on mechanisms for

Strategic Plan

• High-level set of basic purpose, goals of

project

• Build written national agreement about

what business we’re in, what broadly we should be doing nationally to enable

research

• Will not lay out specific projects to meet

those goals - more cloud computing, different training programs, etc.

Strategic Plan

• Needed because, though has existed since

~2006, still not widespread agreement about basic mission, what does and

doesn’t fall within remit.

• Also, CFI condition on MSI grant.

Management Plan

• Or “Operations Plan”, or…

• Putting meat on the bones of the

Management Plan

• If these are our priorities, what do we do,

and how do we measure success?

• What is process for determining

Strategic Plan Town Halls

• 24 in-person town-halls, 3 online • St John’s to Victoria • Hundreds of attendees

Strat Plan: What we heard

• People

• Storage

• Ease of use/interoperability

• Funding

• New use cases

• Industry engagement

• National/Regional organization

What we heard: People

• Importance of technical staff in getting research done

• Very high quality of technical staff

• Consulting/support, training extremely

important and must be supported and grow • Access to resources vital - but for many

groups, without access to that technical expertise, the resources have much less value.

What we heard: Storage

• Not nearly enough, even for “traditional”

compute/simulation intensive workflows

• New data-intensive work extremely poorly

supported

• Different types of storage (archival,

What we heard: Usability

• Ease of use/interoperability

• For many, existing systems throw up

roadblocks.

• Systems highly heterogeneous; use a (say)

WG system, start from scratch to use a (say) CQ system.

• Insufficient access to interactive resources

• Insufficient access to web-based interfaces

What we heard: Funding

!

• Wide agreement about need for predictable,

sustained funding

• For hardware refreshes, staff, operations..

• This concern is shared throughout the entire

research community (Digital Infrastructure summit)

• Advocacy has to be an activity of the national

What we heard: New uses

• Data-intensive: storage

• Cloud-type workflows

• Need more support for researchers in disciplines with

emerging compute requirements

• Humanities

• Social Sciences

• Bioinformatics

• Big Data

• …

What we heard: Industry

!

• Need to encourage, develop programs for,

private-sector engagement.

• Make funders happy

• Incoming stream of interesting applied

research problems

• Opportunities for grad students

• Increase HPC adoption

What we heard: Structure

• National/Regional organization

• How will this work?

• Many examples of similar organizations

• Relationship need not be the same in

every region

What we heard: New Tech

• Cutting edge technologies - hardware,

software, etc

• Need leading edge for

• Researchers who want it now

• Evaluation for researchers unsure

• Need to help shape technologies of

particular importance to Canadian research

Strat Plan: What we heard

• People

• Storage

• Ease of use/interoperability

• Funding

• New use cases

• Industry engagement

• National/Regional organization

Strategic Plan

• Is being reflected in the Strategic Plan.

• Stronger emphasis on people, services

• Growth into broader use cases without

sacrificing existing HPC users

• Emphasis on engaging with funders for

predictable, infrastructure-like funding

• Emphasis on engaging w/ private sector R&D

• Negotiating clarity in role of nat’l office,

Researcher Needs

Survey

•

In the field, Oct 2013

•

Short (15 min) survey

•

Questions about

•

Current research tasks

•

Current pain points, priorities

•

Future growth

Researcher Needs

Survey

•

Well-suited to more immediate

management plan drafting

•

Concrete, specific computing needs

Goals of Survey

•

Broad community results

•

Identify groups for followup - to occur

•

One-on-one interviews

•

Deep dive into future needs in

representative groups

•

Develop a picture of what is needed by

Complementary Data

•

International surveys on academic researcher needs

(XSEDE, PRACE)

•

International surveys on commercial researcher

needs (IDC, Intersect360)

•

Ontario: ORION/Ontario Needs Assessment

(~50-100 interviews)

Responses

Academia Federal Govt Prov Govt Hospital Other Not for Profit Int'l Enterprise Cdn Enterprise Cdn. SME Sector Responses by Sector

•

~425 responses

•

Overwhelmingly academic

•

Results reflect:

•

Relative lack of communications power outside academic circles

•

Consultation fatigue:

CIHR, SSHRC, CFI were all in field simultaneously

Text fields

•

Asked about

•

current research projects,

•

data,

•

analysis,

•

current bottlenecks,

•

problems with existing services/

resources

•

What we heard: Storage

•

Storage

•

Researchers wasting time shuffling,

compressing, re-generating data

•

More storage of various types

needed

Aging Infrastructure

•

Aging infrastructure was a repeated

problem

•

~50% of respondents said they could

do more, better research if they had more access to compute/storage

•

Unreliability, related in part to aging

Usage Barriers

•

Lack of interactive access

•

Lack of large-memory nodes

•

Long queue times

•

Last-mile connectivity

•

Uptime/reliability

Sharing

•

Many researchers would greatly like to

enable web interfaces to their work

•

Data sharing (secured or public) was

Support

•

Very strong vote of confidence overall in

support, training

•

Many don’t seem to know the breadth

of support available

•

Many people need help with

automation, optimization

Other Natural Sciences Health Sciences Engineering Arts And Letters

General Research Area

Range of

disciplines

• 2/3 still traditional physical

science/HPC areas

PC Multiple PCs Group Server Dept Server Group Cluster Dept Cluster Collab Cluster CC Abroad $$ Cloud Other

Where Computation is Done

• (amongst respondents)

• Very little use of commercial

cloud

• Significant use of independent

resources

CC significant

fraction of research

computing

Too Slow Too Small Missing S/W Mismatched H/W Bad Interface Delays in Access Unreliable Lack of Viz Other Current Problems

Current 


pain points

• Existing resources: • Too slow/small • Delays in access

• Lack of particular hardware/

software

Current

priorities

• Traditional compute, storage,

training are top three priorities

Training Storage Web/Database Traditional Compute Collaboration Hosting Viz Helpdesk Consultancy

Training

• Almost all groups think that

having additional expertise to bring to bear on their problems would be useful 0 10 20 30 40 % Respondents

Training

• Almost all groups think that

having additional expertise to bring to bear on their problems would be useful

• …for a variety of reasons

comput

data

run

simul

larger

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Not applicable 5 ... Very Satisfied 4 3 2 1 ... Very Dissatisfied

Satisfaction with CC Computational Resources

CC Compute

• Users mostly satisfied or very

satisfied with existing compute resources..

CC Compute

• Users mostly satisfied or very

satisfied with existing compute resources..

• But ~1/3 of users will need more

than 3x as many resources to stay internationally competitive Unsure Decrease <3x Decrease >3x Same Increase <3x Increase >3x

Storage Usage

• Mostly fairly modest

• Mostly satisfied with CC storage

where applicable More than 1 PB 500 TB ... 1 PB 100 TB ... 500 TB 10 TB ... 100 TB 1 TB ... 10 TB Less than 1 TB Not sure 0 10 20 30 % Respondents Storage Currently Used

4 3 2 1 ... Very Dissatisfied

Storage Usage

• Mostly fairly modest

• Mostly satisfied with CC storage

where applicable

• But will again need substantial

increases to stay internationally competitive Unsure Decrease <3x Decrease >3x Same Increase <3x Increase >3x

Not using CC

• Good, in a way

• More disuse because wasn’t

aware (fixable) and don’t need (yet) than unsuitable

• But still need to work on the

unsuitable Wasn't Aware Don't Need Too hard Specific Needs Other

Next Steps: Survey

Academia Federal Govt Prov Govt Hospital Other Not for Profit Int'l Enterprise Cdn Enterprise Cdn. SME Sector Responses by Sector

•

Next steps:

•

Begin followup surveys

•

Continue push into

underrepresented sectors

•

Compare with

Next Steps Broadly

•

Share SP draft in a couple of weeks

•

Begin management plan as SP

converges

•

Incorporate Research needs survey

Future Researcher

Consultation

•

What should we do?

•

ACOR

•

New web page, updated with useful

information, planning, etc.

•

Annual town halls (+ town hall at

HPCS?)