Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HEROES (Hybrid Eco Responsible Optimized European Solution)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-03-01 bis 2023-02-28
While Europe is investing massively in providing HPC resources for its user ecosystem, the HEROES project looks at it through its usage dimension by addressing 2 common issues faced by engineers, scientists or researchers as they need to access High-Performance Computing/Machine Learning environments. The first issue relates to accessibility and the need for democratisation of HPC, Simulation and Data Science. Democratisation is only possible through Choice and enablement of various options for end users. Here comes the second dimension of the project which is about efficiency: there is not a single HPC architecture to run all applications efficiently and there is not a single usage context and commonly people look at performance and cost dimensions to drive their choice. The HEROES project team is adding the need for energy efficiency in the equation.
HEROES is both a software platform designed to be multi-tenant with security at its core and will be deployed in a wide variety of contexts all allowing HPC users to access a choice of different HPC infrastructures (whether they seat on their own premises, in the public cloud, managed by specialised HPC providers or in national/European public Research Centers) and submit the typical HPC Workflows on the “best platform for the job” determined by its decision module.
It is equally critical to use High Performance Computing resources in order to address the challenges posed by Climate Change and Global Warming and to make a more eco-responsible use of these HPC resources. The HEROES Platform understands energy consumption across HPC platforms and can be configured to point to the most eco-responsible option and either recommend or automatically choose it. The project team is convinced that showing HPC impact on environment will help to progressively - through education - change users’ behaviour.
By connecting HPC offer to User demand through a configurable framework, the HEROES project enables the concept of marketplaces to pave the way to a European HPC economy conscious of the importance to be energy efficient and not only performance/price oriented.
HEROES is both a software platform designed to be multi-tenant with security at its core and will be deployed in a wide variety of contexts all allowing HPC users to access a choice of different HPC infrastructures (whether they seat on their own premises, in the public cloud, managed by specialised HPC providers or in national/European public Research Centers) and submit the typical HPC Workflows on the “best platform for the job” determined by its decision module.
It is equally critical to use High Performance Computing resources in order to address the challenges posed by Climate Change and Global Warming and to make a more eco-responsible use of these HPC resources. The HEROES Platform understands energy consumption across HPC platforms and can be configured to point to the most eco-responsible option and either recommend or automatically choose it. The project team is convinced that showing HPC impact on environment will help to progressively - through education - change users’ behaviour.
By connecting HPC offer to User demand through a configurable framework, the HEROES project enables the concept of marketplaces to pave the way to a European HPC economy conscious of the importance to be energy efficient and not only performance/price oriented.
The project achieved a prototype that applies its software solution to composable workflows useful in Renewable Energy Industry and in the Manufacturing Industry for applications in designing energy efficient products. The workflow definition has been kept at a generic level with a cross-industry purpose in order to broaden applicability.
All modules of the prototype (API, identity/data/workflow management, application containerization, decision module, energy monitoring and optimization, user interface…) are functional (though could be hardened and extended for a production platform) and the whole platform relies on DevOps tools managing the different services through a Kubernetes cluster.
Concerning the main elements of the prototype:
1. Workflows: two have been selected to reflect classical HPC and AI use cases: a CFD workflow with OpenFoam, and an object recognition in videos with Tensorflow. Applications have been containerized with Singularity and integrated with the workflow manager (NextFlow).
2. Web interface: a simple web interface has been implemented and allows a user to execute the use cases
3. Energy: EAR has been extended to have a Lite version which does not require root privileges to be installed; a new reporting plugin with HEROES requirements has been added; additional metrics have been added.
4. Workflow Placement: a new Decision Module plugin has been added to OKA, it leverages machine learning and multi-criteria decision algorithms to propose placement options for the workflows. OKA analytical and predictive capabilities have been enhanced to support the use cases and integrate with EAR for energy metrics.
5. Identity, data and workflow management: multiple services have been implemented to provide an abstraction to the target clusters. Through a single entry-point (REST APIs), users can manage data in dedicated object stores managed by HEROES per user/organization. Workflow submission is simplified through the selection of available workflow templates, integration with the Decision Module, and integration of an updated version of Nextflow. Identity management is delegated to a centralized Keycloak, and access to remote clusters is done in a secure way despite sharing accounts on the clusters (thanks to containerization and data management with the HEROES-FS).
All modules of the prototype (API, identity/data/workflow management, application containerization, decision module, energy monitoring and optimization, user interface…) are functional (though could be hardened and extended for a production platform) and the whole platform relies on DevOps tools managing the different services through a Kubernetes cluster.
Concerning the main elements of the prototype:
1. Workflows: two have been selected to reflect classical HPC and AI use cases: a CFD workflow with OpenFoam, and an object recognition in videos with Tensorflow. Applications have been containerized with Singularity and integrated with the workflow manager (NextFlow).
2. Web interface: a simple web interface has been implemented and allows a user to execute the use cases
3. Energy: EAR has been extended to have a Lite version which does not require root privileges to be installed; a new reporting plugin with HEROES requirements has been added; additional metrics have been added.
4. Workflow Placement: a new Decision Module plugin has been added to OKA, it leverages machine learning and multi-criteria decision algorithms to propose placement options for the workflows. OKA analytical and predictive capabilities have been enhanced to support the use cases and integrate with EAR for energy metrics.
5. Identity, data and workflow management: multiple services have been implemented to provide an abstraction to the target clusters. Through a single entry-point (REST APIs), users can manage data in dedicated object stores managed by HEROES per user/organization. Workflow submission is simplified through the selection of available workflow templates, integration with the Decision Module, and integration of an updated version of Nextflow. Identity management is delegated to a centralized Keycloak, and access to remote clusters is done in a secure way despite sharing accounts on the clusters (thanks to containerization and data management with the HEROES-FS).
At the end of the project, the consortium implemented a prototype of the HEROES platform through a demonstrator of the concept of Marketplace applied to the context of a large industrial client having access to its own cluster and Public Cloud resources. Through the demonstrator the users access an “HEROES Marketplace” to run use cases based on CFD and AI workflows. Through the dissemination of the demonstrator, the HEROES Project Team will be able to craft more ambitious projects supporting eco-responsible democratization of HPC, both in the roadmap of EuroHPC vision and for smaller organizations for which access to such resources is an inhibitor to innovation.
