SCIENCE

STFC Daresbury Laboratory first organisation to commit available server cluster processing power

Data processing, data management and data storage provider OCF plc has announced a new, unique Compute On Demand service, enCORE. In a first for the UK, enCORE uses available processing power from academic and research-based high performance server clusters to provide an infinitely scalable, data processing service for UK businesses.

OCF has already signed a collaboration agreement with the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory (STFC Daresbury Laboratory) to make use of its available processing power from a new System x iDataPlex server cluster deployment. A 2.5 Tflop server cluster, STFC Daresbury Laboratory will make around 50 per cent of its processing power available to OCF’s customers. Through an SLA driven agreement, the requirements of OCF’s customers will receive priority on the server cluster.

OCF is aiming to sign a network of academic and research partners to contribute a constant and significant level of compute power to meet projected customer demand.

OCF’s service is aimed at UK businesses of any size and from any sector; primarily enCORE can:

· act as an overflow service for businesses to meet a temporary requirement for more processing power

· enable SMB’s– design consultants for example - to pitch for larger projects than would otherwise be possible, due to the limitations of their IT infrastructure

· serve as a courtesy service for customers whilst they wait for tenders to complete or for a new HPC system to arrive

· act as a direct hardware replacement by businesses in order to reduce their capital expenditure

Jerry Dixon, OCF plc’s newly appointed Compute On Demand business development manager says: “OCF has a heritage and well earned reputation in High Performance Computing integration – both in academia and in the private sector through customers like Landmark Solutions, Lola Cars and Smoke & Mirrors. In the last six years alone, we have integrated£50m of bespoke high performance server and storage clusters for customers. We are taking our knowledge and experience of customer pain points and looking to solve them in an alternative way. A HPC system deployment is not necessarily the only answer anymore.”

“This is a very novel public private partnership,” says Michael Gleaves, STFC Daresbury Laboratory. “For us making the best use of our research budget, it presents the chance to gain a superior server cluster – capital equipment - and offset costs. Plus, in doing so, help UK businesses operate and compete more effectively. The Partnership between OCF and STFC will also ensure the cluster is fully utilised during any dips in commercial demand.”

enCORE

· As part of the Compute on Demand service, OCF is responsible for pre-sales qualification with customers to discover required volumes of processing power and benchmarks to demonstrate that enCORE can run specific applications or problems faster than customers’ existing infrastructure.

· OCF also holds a number of applications ready for use with the service such as OpenFoam; it can work with Independent Software Vendors to get application licensing for the term of a contract with customers, or it can potentially access the end users licences directly, thus ensuring adherence to the ISV’s licensing policy.

· Data transfer between the customer and enCORE is handled by enCORE’s simple secure web interface or, in the case of extremely large files, by secure shuttle service.

· Contracts with OCF are flexible, and use of enCORE involves a small annual subscription plus a cost per core hour used; interested parties should contact OCF for pricing.