High Performance Computing Pitch Deck

Editor's Notes

• #2: Note that “HPC” is an umbrella term that encompasses what is traditionally viewed as HPC (large, tightly coupled jobs), as well as other workloads that have many small jobs (sometimes referred to as “pleasantly parallel” or “embarrassingly parallel”).
• #3: Hello everyone! Thanks for joining and giving us an opportunity to discuss how Azure can provide great value to your HPC needs. HPC, including HPC and pleasantly parallel workloads, is at the heart of innovation. But being at the forefront of innovation comes at a substantial cost. Traditionally, customers have invested millions of dollars in specialized and highly tuned infrastructure to tackle their business-critical HPC needs.   The investments are most often made in on-premises infrastructure.
• #5: The world Is filled with ever-expanding technologies Everything we do, every product we build, every decision we make is grounded in our mission. All of the skillsets that you have built in the Microsoft ecosystem accrue to these evolving technologies. We at Microsoft stand with everyone who is driving positive change. Fundamentally we are a technology company And we are here to help you
• #6: Defining HPC is an exercise in narrowing down the broad into the specific. HPC is not a product, a service, or a specific tool or framework. It is – simply – anything to scale. It is a processing model that enables people to get complex work done in a much smaller time window than it would normally take otherwise to complete. Impacts of HPC can be seen indirectly all around us, from the design of the car we take to work every day to the latest medicines being developed to cure infectious diseases. How companies choose to handle the enormous processing resources required to get these types of workloads completed will dramatically impact their production efficiencies, competitive edge, and long term business growth. Microsoft is proud to share with you some of the investments we’ve made in the HPC space, bringing the scale of the cloud to turbo-charge these processes without inducing an enormous amount of friction or additional cost along the way.
• #8: This is the fundamental problem for all organizations: business and technology are changing rapidly, and the compute infrastructure can’t keep up. You need to provide the right resources to the right business users at the right time. With a fixed infrastructure, that means making decisions about how you allocate the resources and identify what constrains the business’ ability to get the most value from their compute. And for the most part, the infra in place is able to handle the baseline demand that customers are seeing
• #9: But there’s a challenge with ever-increasing set of business demands – new regulation for example, or new use cases all putting pressure on HPC infrastructure by creating variability in demand. In addition, having a LOS into which jobs are driving your what types of costs has been a challenge to maximizing ROI Another challenge is creating collaboration with the right level of control. Traditionally HPC environments are siloed and not necessarily the purview of central IT and that limits collaboration. For example engineers in Germany, marketing in US.
• #10: A cloud platform is, by definition, the only place here you can take advantage of true elasticity over massive compute scale. In this context, an organization can leverage a cloud environment to better accommodate the variable demand for compute. This would be in the form of bursting a workload out to the cloud, or expanding your own computing environment into the cloud. Either way can be used to suffice inconsistent demand spikes.
• #11: As jobs get more predictable and shifts in resource allocation become more recognizable, an organization could opt to get out of the HPC IT business complete and build a cloud-native model for HPC. This model may take an organization more time to set up and manage long term, but ultimately it is the most efficient use of resources for inconsistent demand spikes for compute. In this model, there is no unused infrastructure. There are no gaps between what is there and what is being consumed. It is an optimized model where usage mirrors demand in a 1:1 relationship, maximizing the resources for the work that needs to be done.
• #12: Typically HPC, or any other, customers look to cloud for a mix of agility or speeding time to market, to access scale they don’t have inhouse, or to be able to shutdown data centers They don’t always move HPC workloads because Cloud has traditionally been more expensive than high utilization, workload-tuned HPC clusters on-premises, managing moving these applications to Cloud has been costly, and managing hybrid data access is a key challenge. Azure’s HPC products enable these benefits by solving these challenges.
• #14: Now let’s talk about some of the differentiated value Azure provides for your HPC needs
• #15: Azure provides the range of capabilities to support the widest variety of compute workloads. But moving HPC workloads into the cloud is not a single destination. Nobody jumps straight to “all cloud.” There’s a spectrum of possibilities, and the “right” answer varies by customer—or even by workload. Whether you’re moving a single application into Azure or going to a cloud-native paradigm, Azure has the resources you need.
• #16: It provides you with the most productive infrastructure—you’ll have a powerful and modern infrastructure at your disposal.   We’ve taken an open and integrated approach, embracing the hybrid model as the logical starting point for most Enterprises. All the tools and technologies that you’re familiar with and dependent on will run as-is.   And Azure provides rich capabilities for cost control and governance, so you can put a lid on your costs and foster collaboration with the right level of governance on a trusted platform.   Let’s dig into some of the specifics…
• #17: We know that one of the most important things for HPC is performance and access to a productive infrastructure.   Azure provides the most productive infrastructure for HPC of any cloud provider. In fact, in a recent study by independent researcher Exabyte, Azure came out as the best performing, ahead of other cloud competitors, and even most traditional on-premises clusters. Azure has highly HPC-optimized infrastructure components: the fastest CPUs, latest generation GPU, and mission-specific FPGAs for everything from AI training jobs, accelerated computing, and visualization.   We also have InfiniBand support for your tightly coupled jobs, offering real HPC scalability in the cloud. And for your most demanding HPC workloads, our partnership with Cray allows customers to get dedicated supercomputers on their Azure virtual network.
• #18: With it’s roots firmly embedded in Linux, a realistic conversation about HPC has to include OSS. Fortunately, OSS has become a first class citizen on Azure. Existing deployments on OSS platforms and frameworks can be moved into Azure as-is, without costly re-architecting or recoding. Plus, services like Azure Batch and Azure CycleCloud assist you in deploying, managing, and scaling your solutions easily. Whether you like to scale based on the jobs you need to run or on the size/capabilities if your environment, Azure gives you the services you need to make the right decisions for your needs. Add to that a high performance file caching service like Avere, and the hassles of managing HPC processes between on and off premises just got a whole lot easier. Using a hybrid model for HPC requires tight coupling and alignment between cloud and premises. Azure Stack does exactly that by bringing to your premises the full suite of powerful cloud services…all at your fingertips. This establishes a symmetrical continuity in development and engineering processes, as well as resource utilization and operational logistics. Azure Stack is a perfect complement to an organization exploring edge computing and IoT opportunities, all of which are well served with a cohesive HPC strategy.
• #22: Now let’s talk about some of the differentiated value Azure provides for your HPC needs
• #25: Microsoft and Cray have partnered to bring you the extreme performance, scalability, and elasticity your most demanding high-performance computing workloads require. Azure customers can have their own Cray supercomputer delivered as a managed service and run it alongside their other Azure services powering big compute workflows. This enables a number of use cases: Uncover the impossible in climate modeling, precision medicine, oil and gas simulation, manufacturing, and more with a dedicated Cray® XC™ series or Cray® CS™ series supercomputer with attached Cray® ClusterStor™ storage in an Azure datacenter. Develop modeling and simulation, AI, advanced analytics, deep-learning workflows, and modern applications starting with Azure’s H-series and N-series virtual machines, and growing into a Cray XC-series or CS-series supercomputer. A Cray supercomputer connected to Azure speeds up the flow of data and simplifies communications between resources. Run multi-stage workflows without having to wait for data to transfer to and from your on-premises datacenter. Run simulations on your Cray supercomputer and then do post-processing and product generation on Azure virtual machines. Or use Azure Archive Storage to hold results for later re-analysis. Lower your total cost of ownership (TCO) and foster collaboration by co-locating your top-end HPC workloads in Azure. Build your initial system at the right size, without worrying about managing facilities for future growth, and give your internal teams a trusted way to share infrastructure and data. With Azure managing the back end of your infrastructure and Cray staff managing your supercomputer, you’re freed up to focus on what you can do with them.
• #26: There are many concerns between the resource and the end service. How do you provision and manage virtual machines with dynamic scaling? How do you install applications? How do you manage users? How do your users run and monitor jobs? Batch takes care of those concerns for you. You can focus on building cloud-native applications instead of focusing on building and managing infrastructure.
• #30: Like Batch, Azure CycleCloud enables access to the HPC resources that Azure provides. Unlike Batch, which runs jobs in Azure, CycleCloud runs compute clusters. It is designed to allow line of business IT groups to provide easy access to cloud clusters for their users. Azure CycleCloud also features tools for managing the flow of data and compute jobs between internal and cloud clusters. Jobs can run where they’re best suited based on the specific requirements and the current resource utilization.
• #33: Extremely important pieces of the bigger HPC puzzle is respective to using your preferred applications, working with a specific partner, or complying with industry regulations.
• #34: Azure has a robust partner ecosystem from hardware partners up through software vendors and systems integrators. Many software vendors work closely with Azure to ensure their applications have great performance.
• #35: We meet our customer with whatever technology they use/want If you are an IT manager, you can enable your dev teams to pick their tools and platforms
• #36: Being compliant with more than 50 industry standards, Azure has the largest global footprint and compliance portfolio of any cloud. Now let’s shift gears and take a look at what some of our customers are doing with Azure.
• #37: Extremely important pieces of the bigger HPC puzzle is respective to using your preferred applications, working with a specific partner, or complying with industry regulations.
• #38: . “
• #39: Let’s look at some industry specificshttps://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/metlife-insurance-azure-cloud-services-windows-server-analytics-platform-server-en.
• #40: Schlumberger: Schlumberger is the largest oilfield services company in the world. It employs 115,000 people in more than 85 countries. Their products and services span from exploration through production. It supplies technology, integrated project management and information solutions to customers working in the oil and gas industry worldwide. This is Schlumberger’s first fully commercial software as a service (SaaS) solution for cloud, and they decided that Azure is the right cloud platform to host it on for the initial launch in North America and Europe. Challenge: INTERSECT is their high-resolution reservoir simulator for large and complex engineering models. These models have not been traditionally possible in the cloud (at least not efficiently) because they require specialized hardware and an array of different technologies that are not part of a “normal” cloud offering. But, at the same time, these models are starting to outgrow the on-premises resources that companies and service providers have at their disposal So, in essence, SLB & his customers are confronted with is a combination of an ever-growing demand for more and faster compute resources (driven by the ever-growing characteristic of the simulations), paired with the difficulty of having access to the right type of resources. Fortunately, this is just the kind of challenge that we have been working hard to solve in Azure. Strategy: The accessibility and scalability offered by cloud computing should be the answer to the challenges mentioned earlier, but before this is true, the backend infrastructure must have the right technology to enable the simulator to really perform.  This is where Schlumberger and Microsoft working together have created and delivered the most appropriate technology solution Results: Thanks to the availability of this service, Schlumberger’s customers can now submit simulations to the cloud directly from Petrel, the industry leading reservoir modelling tool and the simulation environment that Schlumberger provides for generating the models, as well as for visualizing the results. This means that a reservoir engineer never leaves the environment that she or he is familiar with. The engineer just needs to select where the simulation should run: locally, on an on-premises cluster, or on the cloud. After the simulation has run, the engineer can analyze the results back in Petrel, as usual. But perhaps what is most exciting about this solution is that these capabilities are available on a subscription-based model, making it possible for companies of all sizes, on all parts of the world—including those customers who are unable to afford their own HPC environment—to have access to high science, on an enterprise-class simulation solution like INTERSECT. This, in particular, is one of the greatest advantages of a cloud solution. Learn more To learn more about Big Compute solutions on Azure, see: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-a8-a9-a10-a11-specs To learn more about Schlumberger INTERSECT Simulator in the Cloud, see: http://www.software.slb.com/INTERSECTcloud http://youtu.be/6110hvTysrM http://youtu.be/RmgXZE1Wylw To learn more about Schlumberger INTERSECT, see: http://www.software.slb.com/products/foundation/Pages/intersect.aspx http://youtu.be/GvuCHwcW2sQ
• #42: Schlumberger: Schlumberger is the largest oilfield services company in the world. It employs 115,000 people in more than 85 countries. Their products and services span from exploration through production. It supplies technology, integrated project management and information solutions to customers working in the oil and gas industry worldwide. This is Schlumberger’s first fully commercial software as a service (SaaS) solution for cloud, and they decided that Azure is the right cloud platform to host it on for the initial launch in North America and Europe. Challenge: INTERSECT is their high-resolution reservoir simulator for large and complex engineering models. These models have not been traditionally possible in the cloud (at least not efficiently) because they require specialized hardware and an array of different technologies that are not part of a “normal” cloud offering. But, at the same time, these models are starting to outgrow the on-premises resources that companies and service providers have at their disposal So, in essence, SLB & his customers are confronted with is a combination of an ever-growing demand for more and faster compute resources (driven by the ever-growing characteristic of the simulations), paired with the difficulty of having access to the right type of resources. Fortunately, this is just the kind of challenge that we have been working hard to solve in Azure. Strategy: The accessibility and scalability offered by cloud computing should be the answer to the challenges mentioned earlier, but before this is true, the backend infrastructure must have the right technology to enable the simulator to really perform.  This is where Schlumberger and Microsoft working together have created and delivered the most appropriate technology solution Results: Thanks to the availability of this service, Schlumberger’s customers can now submit simulations to the cloud directly from Petrel, the industry leading reservoir modelling tool and the simulation environment that Schlumberger provides for generating the models, as well as for visualizing the results. This means that a reservoir engineer never leaves the environment that she or he is familiar with. The engineer just needs to select where the simulation should run: locally, on an on-premises cluster, or on the cloud. After the simulation has run, the engineer can analyze the results back in Petrel, as usual. But perhaps what is most exciting about this solution is that these capabilities are available on a subscription-based model, making it possible for companies of all sizes, on all parts of the world—including those customers who are unable to afford their own HPC environment—to have access to high science, on an enterprise-class simulation solution like INTERSECT. This, in particular, is one of the greatest advantages of a cloud solution. Learn more To learn more about Big Compute solutions on Azure, see: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/big-compute https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-a8-a9-a10-a11-specs To learn more about Schlumberger INTERSECT Simulator in the Cloud, see: http://www.software.slb.com/INTERSECTcloud http://youtu.be/6110hvTysrM http://youtu.be/RmgXZE1Wylw To learn more about Schlumberger INTERSECT, see: http://www.software.slb.com/products/foundation/Pages/intersect.aspx http://youtu.be/GvuCHwcW2sQ
• #43: Extremely important pieces of the bigger HPC puzzle is respective to using your preferred applications, working with a specific partner, or complying with industry regulations.
• #45: So what does it take to move HPC to the cloud? When many organizations are looking at moving their HPC workloads into the cloud, they start with a totally do-it-yourself approach. They start to discover some of the challenges that come from a paradigm shift. Fortunately, Azure has the resources needed to address these challenges.
• #46: Azure. Cloud for all. These 4 pillars represent the main value proposition for what differentiates Azure from the competition. As you can see in the proof points, these are the reason why customers choose Microsoft, because of the unique value that we provide in a productive, hybrid, intelligent, and trusted cloud. With Azure, you can do—or be—all of these things. Productive Get unparalleled developer productivity with integrated tools from mobile DevOps to serverless computing. Learn about accelerating innovation Hybrid Develop and deploy where you want, with the only consistent hybrid cloud on the market. Extend Azure on-premises with Azure Stack. Learn about our consistent hybrid cloud Intelligent Create intelligent apps that delight with data-driven experiences. Go quickly from concept to release with Azure data services and artificial intelligence, from image recognition to bot services. Learn about intelligent apps Trusted Join startups, governments, and 90 percent of Fortune 500s that trust the Microsoft Cloud for security, privacy, transparency, and the most compliance coverage of any cloud provider.
• #48: Thank you!
• #49: Extremely important pieces of the bigger HPC puzzle is respective to using your preferred applications, working with a specific partner, or complying with industry regulations.