Mr Blair Bethwaite1, Mr Jun Huh1
1New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, Auckland, New Zealand
Background
In 2021, the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) has procured and integrated FlexiHPC, a new high-performance private cloud platform. It is envisaged that NeSI’s FlexiHPC will provide the sector with a programmable platform for collaboration around science data and support a scalable approach to mid-tier HPC with national expertise complementing localised integration. This talk will cover some of the motivations and early use-cases for the new infrastructure, alongside a helicopter view of the core technology components, key partnerships and integrations.
Method
The FlexiHPC platform is being designed to support multiple models of consumption and integration, including contemporary on-demand access to shared services alongside dedicated hardware tenancies with deep local integration.
Results
NeSI is finding the growing needs to learn and build capabilities around many areas both technical and non-technical; including cybersecurity, cloud native engineering, service design with defining value propositions for customers, building a mature service management approach, and indigenous data sovereignty.
NeSI is taking the approach of supporting multiple types of tenancy models to address the different needs of partnering organisations. This talk will also touch upon recent developments on the FlexiHPC and also discuss some of these different types of tenancy models that can include co-ownership of infrastructure and shared responsibility model.
Biography:
Blair Bethwaite has worked in distributed computing for over a decade that includes full HPC & cloud systems design, implementation, and operations. Previously at Monash University, Blair most recently led Monash’s use of OpenStack to underpin research computing. Originally from Christchurch, in mid-2018 Blair returned to take up the opportunity of becoming NeSI’s Solutions Manager, focusing back up the technology stack closer to the user. Blair is leading the work in bringing FlexiHPC, a new high-performance private cloud platform, to NeSI.
Jun Huh is Product Manager at NeSI. Jun brings his experience from start-ups into the field of eResearch. He is involved in genomic data management related projects for the past 2-3 years, to help build a data repository system in partnership with Genomics Aotearoa, and more recently, prototyping for Rakeiora Pathfinder project, which focuses on enabling research while retaining full visibility and control of data to the indigenous communities.