Frameworks: Software NSCI-Open OnDemand 2.0: Advancing Accessibility and Scalability for Computational Science through Leveraged Software Cyberinfrastructure

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Reducing barriers that limit the adoption of high performance computing (HPC) addresses an important problem that broadly affects the science, engineering, and humanities communities. This effort builds on existing capabilities with large and varied user communities, and on national scale cyberinfrastructure and high-performance computing resources. The approach has several benefits: - It increases the use of HPC resources among communities that are not well represented on HPC yet, but have growing needs for HPC. - It is also beneficial to HPC providers, by supporting advanced features for monitoring and visualization of the states of systems. - The resulting framework will be used for training and workforce development, expanding the future ability to use advanced cyberinfrastructure for science. This project builds on the strengths of existing efforts, and has the potential to benefit a broad user community. The project develops Open OnDemand 2.0, an open-source software that enables access to high-performance computing, cloud, and remote computing resources via the web, and lower the barriers to access HPC systems. The project combines two widely used HPC resources: - Open OnDemand 1.0 - an existing open-source, web-based project for accessing HPC services; and - Open XDMoD - an open-source tool that facilitates the management of high performance computing resources. Project activities include enhancing an existing web portal-to-HPC system (OnDemand), integrating XDMoD, extending the portal to provide other methods of access for other science domains, and improving the scaling of the system. The software employs a unique per-user web server architecture. This gives a user full system-level access to an HPC cluster through a web browser. Job performance visibility is provided by XDMoD, which enables users to make more efficient usage of HPC resources. Innovation and discovery will be integrated through a study which investigates ways to leverage the system-level access provided by Open OnDemand with science gateways. The integrated platform will enhance resource utilization visibility, extend to more resource types and institutions, and support a smooth and easy utilization of HPC resources with intuitive web interfaces. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.