Category Archives: Penguin Computing

High Performance Computing, OpenStack, Penguin Computing

Scyld Cloud Management Platform Moves HPC Applications to the Cloud

Image representing Penguin Computing as depict...Penguin Computing today announced the availability of the Scyld Cloud Management Platform (SCMP) on its public HPC cloud Penguin Computing on Demand (POD). SCMP is a comprehensive software suite that makes it easy to implement service-based on-demand access for HPC applications. SCMP provides services for:

  • web-based user sign-up and account management
  • generating detailed resource usage reports
  • provisioning and managing of virtual servers
  • instantly allocating storage
  • managing users and user groups

SCMP’s storage system is based on the distributed open-source storage system Ceph, which supports file-based, block-based and object-based storage. The management of virtual servers leverages OpenStack, an open-source solution for creating and managing large groups of virtual servers in a cloud computing environment. All SCMP components are accessible through an intuitive web-based interface, as well as a web-service API.

“As the first organization to offer commercial cluster management solutions for HPC and as one of the first to offer a public HPC cloud, we have a solid foundation on which we built SCMP,” says Tom Coull, Senior VP of Software and Services at Penguin Computing.

SCMP is also the foundation of Penguin Computing’s upcoming Scyld Cloud Manager (SCM), a packaged software suite that will enable customers to build their own public and private HPC clouds.

An early adopter of SCMP is the global biotechnology company Life Technologies. The Scyld Cloud Management Platform has enabled Life Technologies to offer cloud-based genomic sequencing analysis services through its Torrent Suite Cloud offering.

“SCMP is the core component of our Torrent Suite Cloud infrastructure,” says Matt Dyer, associate director of Bioinformatics at Life Technologies. “It enables us to offer a flexible solution for processing and managing genomic sequencing data to our customers. Typical use cases include software development and testing, as well as data sharing in collaborative projects.”


Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, High Performance Computing, Medical, Medical imaging, Partnerships, Penguin Computing

Numira Biosciences, Penguin Computing Partner for Cloud Pre-Clinical Imaging

Penguin Computing and Numira Biosciences announced a partnership to bring graphics-intense data on-demand to Life Sciences customers. The platform will leverage a convergence of enabling technologies from Penguin Computing’s HPC as a Service offering, POD; Numira Biosciences’ AltaPortal product; and Nvidia’s GPU technology to deliver advanced pre-clinical imaging services to researchers at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies around the globe.

Researchers will benefit from the cutting edge graphics, GPU power, global accessibility and reliability of Penguin Computing’s HPC as a Service platform, POD. Numira’s AltaPortal product provides a secure web interface for managing projects and exploring datasets, media and documents. By leveraging POD, AltaPortal will enable researchers to interactively navigate rich 3D data from microCT scans with overlaid analytics customized to the task at hand. The data will be delivered as a media stream to the client’s web browser, eliminating the need to transfer large and potentially proprietary datasets over networks, and allowing them to be secured in a central location.

“Penguin has enjoyed steady growth in the genomics sector with its POD offering. Adding Numira’s medical imaging software and services to our POD partner portfolio will enhance our breadth in the bioinformatics market and further establish POD as a destination for that set of users” said Matt Jacobs, SVP of Corporate Development for Penguin Computing.

“At Numira we’ve built our reputation delivering rich quantitative analytics for preclinical medical imaging. With our AltaPortal web service, we’re taking it to the next level; our customers will be able to interactively explore and quantitatively assess their preclinical imaging data with our custom 3D visual analytic tools. Penguin’s POD service offers the ideal platform for our rendering-on-demand engine,” said David Weinstein, Numira’s Chief Technology Officer.


Education, High Performance Computing, HPC, Indiana University, Linux, Memphis University, Penguin Computing, University of Delaware, University of Virginia

Penguin Computing Offers HPC Compute Clouds Built for Academia, Research

Penguin Computing today announced partnerships with multiple universities to enable easy, quick and unbureaucratic on-demand access to scalable HPC compute resources for academic researchers.

“Penguin Computing has traditionally been very successful with HPC deployments in academic environments with widely varying workloads, many departments competing for resources and very limited budgets for capital expenses, a cloud based model for compute resources makes perfect sense,” says Tom Coull, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Software and Services at Penguin Computing. “The new partnerships help academic institutions with a flexible cloud based resource allocation for their researchers. At the same time, they present an opportunity for IT departments to create an ongoing revenue stream by offering researchers from other schools access to their cloud.”

Penguin has implemented three versions of academic HPC clouds:

Hybrid Clouds – Which are a local ‘on-site’ cluster configured to support the use of Penguin-on-Demand (POD) cloud resources as needed on a pay-as-you go basis. Local compute resources can be provisioned for average demand and utilization peaks can be offloaded transparently. This model lowers the initial capital expense and for temporary workload peaks excess cycles are provided cost effectively by Penguin’s public HPC cloud. Examples of hybrid cloud deployments include the University of Delaware and Memphis University.

Channel Partnership – Between Universities and Penguin Computing, allow educational institutions to become distributors for POD compute cycles. University departments with limited access to compute resources for research can use Penguin’s virtual supercomputer on-demand and pay-as-they-go, allowing them to use their IT budget for operational expenses. When departments use the university’s HPC cloud, revenue can supplement funding for IT staff or projects, increasing the department’s capabilities. This model has been successfully implemented at the California Institute for Technology in conjunction with Penguin’s PODshell, a web-service based solution that supports the submission and monitoring of HPC cloud compute jobs from any Linux system with internet connectivity.

Combination Hybrid / Channel – The Benefits of the first two models have been successfully implemented at Indiana University (IU) as a public-private partnership. Penguin leverages the University’s HPC facilities and human resources while IU benefits from fast access to local compute resources and Penguin’s HPC experience. IU can use POD resources and provide compute capacity to other academic institutions. The agreement between IU and Penguin also has the support of a group of founding user-partners including the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan who along with IU will be users of the new service. The POD collocation offers access through the high-speed national research network internet2 and is integrated with the XSEDE infrastructure that enables scientists to transparently share computing resources.

“This is a great example of a community cloud service,” said Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology and CIO at Indiana University. “By working together in a productive private-public partnership, we can achieve cost savings through larger scales while also ensuring security and managing the terms of service in the interests of researchers.”

For more information about Penguin Computing’s HPC compute resources, please visit www.penguincomputing.com.