RACE (RMIT AWS Cloud Supercomputing) Hub

Dr Robert Shen¹, Professor James Harland

¹RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

RMIT University endorsed the cloud-first strategy to partner with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AARNet to be the first Australian university to implement a dedicated commercial cloud supercomputing facility – RACE Hub (RMIT AWS Cloud Supercomputing Hub), enabling true scalable and elastic high-performance computing to support digital innovation. The RACE Hub aims to provide AWS-oriented services, training and expert support to allow RMIT staff and students to maximise the scientific return from the existing data and computing infrastructure.

RACE Hub has two industry partners:

1. AWS supported us in customising the “Service Workbench” platform to provide the AWS-oriented services (EC2, S3, SageMaker Studio and other AWS services) to RMIT staff.
2. AARNet enabled us to become the first Australian University to implement an “AWS Direct Connect” of up to 400Gbps. The high-speed Direct Connect allowed RMIT staff and industry partners to access tremendous cloud-based computing power seamlessly.

Besides providing the AWS cloud infrastructure, RACE Hub also offers three kinds of services:

1. Training: provides face-to-face/online/hybrid training to lower technical barriers.
2. Consultation: engages with RMIT staff and students to better understand their needs and provide a tailored cloud-based technical solution to save cost.
3. Expert support: embeds data and computing experts in research groups to solve their data and computing challenges.

This presentation will detail the RACE Hub services and review research engagement outcomes and lessons we learned on leveraging cutting-edge commercial cloud services to accelerate research and teaching excellence.

Biography:

Robert received his PhD from the School of Information Technology, University of Sydney, 2006. After that, he worked as a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, software lead&integration support at Australian National Data Service, and eResearch Director at Astronomy Australia Limited. Since January 2022, Robert has worked at RMIT University as the AWS Cloud Supercomputing Hub Director.