2. Cloudy With a Chance of Rootkits
Martin Hamilton
Loughborough University /
HPC Midlands
3. Topics
1. What is e-Infrastructure?
2. Barriers to Adoption
3. Opening Pandora’s Box
4. Conclusions
4. Topics
1. What is e-Infrastructure?
2. Barriers to Adoption
3. Opening Pandora’s Box
4. Conclusions
5. 1. What is e-Infrastructure?
—Research community
context:
HPC, SKA, LHC, DLS, NGS
and other TLAs
—Industrial context:
TSB Catapults, BIS/EPSRC
supercomputer
centres, “on ramps” for
SMEs
6. 1. What is e-Infrastructure?
[http://goo.gl/fIpA7R]
7. 1. What is e-Infrastructure?
Case Study - HPC Midlands:
—BIS/EPSRC regional centre
—3,000 core supercomputer
—Expertise from Loughborough
University & University of
Leicester
—Software from leading ISVs
—Flexible usage model for use
by research and industry
8. 1. What is e-Infrastructure?
Case Study - HPC Midlands:
—BIS/EPSRC regional centre
—3,000 core supercomputer
—Expertise from Loughborough
University & University of
Leicester
—Software from leading ISVs
—Flexible usage model for use
by research and industry
11. 1. What is e-Infrastructure?
Not just HPC:
- Bioinformatics
- Diamond Light
Source, SKA etc
- Major capital kit at
Institutions
- But not just kit?
- Open Access Pubs
- Open Data
- Software
12. Topics
1. What is e-Infrastructure?
2. Barriers to Adoption
3. Opening Pandora’s Box
4. Conclusions
13. 2. Barriers to Adoption
Picture credits: CC-BY-NC by Flickr user ladybeames; Peter Strutton, HPC Midlands
14. 2. Barriers to Adoption - Awareness
equipment.data.ac.uk
Kit Catalogue™ – kitcatalogue.com
Key question:
What are the boundaries
of e-Infrastructure?
19. 2. Barriers to Adoption - Training
- Typically supply led
- Inflexible timing
- Prohibitively
expensive for SMEs
- Ad-hoc engagement
with ISVs
- Where is the MOOC?
20. 2. Barriers to Adoption - Assurance
Challenging
preconceptions:
—“Supercomputing is just for
rocket scientists”
—“Academic services are
inherently insecure”
—“Legal would never sign off
on anything like this”
—“It’s just too hard to satisfy
assurance requirements”
Photo credit: CC-BY-NC by Flickr user justin_case
21. 2. Barriers to Adoption - Assurance
Challenging preconceptions:
—Common off-the-shelf packages
have HPC solver capability, e.g.
FLUENT, NASTRAN, MATLAB
—Pen testing / audit tools don’t
care if you are an academic site
—Locking systems down is hard
work – get over it
—FTSE100 firms’ have similar
requirements to research and
education organizations
Photo credit: CC-BY-NC by Flickr user justin_case
22. 2. Barriers to Adoption - Assurance
Challenging preconceptions:
—Common off-the-shelf packages
have HPC solver capability, e.g.
FLUENT, NASTRAN, MATLAB
—Pen testing / audit tools don’t
care if you are an academic site
—Locking systems down is hard
work – get over it
—FTSE100 firms’ have similar
requirements to research and
education organizations
Photo credit: CC-BY-NC by Flickr user justin_case
23. Topics
1. What is e-Infrastructure?
2. Barriers to Adoption
3. Opening Pandora’s Box
4. Conclusions
32. 4. Conclusions
—More disciplined approach to contractual
relations, technical aspects of service provision
—Requirement for certain public sector data, e.g. NHS
patient records
—Similar considerations around regional shared
services as for generic “cloud” providers
—Opportunity to set common expectations around
levels and types of service
—Migration between service providers and marketplace
for e-Infrastructure services
33. Cloudy With a Chance of Rootkits
Martin Hamilton
@martin_hamilton
m.t.hamilton@lboro.ac.uk