OCF Launches Rentable HPC Service

High Performance Computing (HPC) specialist OCF Plc is effectively offering businesses and public bodies a data centre for rent, after it launched its enCORE service.

According to OCF, enCORE is a “compute on demand” service which makes use of available processing power from an approved network of academic and research server clusters. Indeed, the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory (STFC Daresbury Laboratory) has become the first organisation to commit its available server cluster processing power.

STFC’s new System x iDataPlex server cluster deployment consists of a 2.5 Tflop server cluster, and 50 percent of its processing power will be available to OCF’s customers. And because there are SLA agreements in place, OCF’s customers will receive priority on the server cluster.

The basic idea behind the enCORE service is that it allows customers to order more computing resource, as and when they need it, without the costly capex outlays of acquiring new server capacity or increasing their data centre resource.

And it also presumably lets the organisations that provide resources to the cloud service get some revenue back from computing resources that have been costly to install. Many universities have  advanced supercomputers which can generate funds through the scheme.

Return On Investment

The Sheffield-based company is looking to sign up a network of academic and research partners “to contribute a constant and significant level of compute power to meet projected customer demand.”

“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,” said Jerry Dixon, OCF’s Compute On Demand business development manager.

“In the last six years alone, we have integrated £50 million of bespoke high performance server and storage clusters for customers,” he added. “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.”

Power On Demand

According to OCF, enCORE should appeal to any sized UK business, from any sector, because the service can act as an overflow service for businesses with a temporary requirement for more processing power. It can also enable SMBs to pitch for larger projects that would otherwise be impossible, due to the limitations of their IT infrastructure.

OCF says that enCORE can “serve as a courtesy service for customers whilst they wait for tenders to complete or for a new HPC system to arrive,” or it can “act as a direct hardware replacement by businesses in order to reduce their capital expenditure.”

“This is a very novel public private partnership,” said 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.”

Licensing Issues

Before the system is installed, OCF will work with customers to discover the required volumes of processing power and benchmarks, in order to demonstrate that enCORE can run specific applications or problems faster than customers’ existing infrastructure.

In addition, OCF also has a number of applications that can be used with this service such as the scientific package OpenFoam. Otherwise OCF 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.

OCF said that data transfer between the customer and enCORE is handled by enCORE’s secure web interface or, in the case of extremely large files, by secure shuttle service.

OCF was unable to provide a spokesman at the time of writing, but contracts are said to flexible and the use of enCORE involves a “small annual subscription plus a cost per core hour used.”

The enCORE service from OCF mirrors a similar idea from the University of Cambridge. Back in April 2009, the University revealed its high performance computing (HPC) service was planning to launch a commercial cloud offering.