<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Michael,</div><div><br></div><div>You had nice ideas. Many beyond me.</div><div><br></div><div>Yet the GUI interface seems very interesting. I can certainly support this direction. Actually I know for sure that there is a need to simplify interfaces for HPC for a broader user community. Many users do not know neither care what happens when they hit enter - they just want results fast and in a way they can understand them. A GUI is a large step towards this. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Can you explain more what are you planning to do - less about the technology - more about the functionality. What would the user see? Do you intent to have this tool open for developers? Or can it be a service that can be customized easily and geared towards end users with little understanding in HPC?</div>
<div><br></div><div>I look forward for more information about these directions.</div><div><br></div><div> Jacob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 5:05 AM, Michael Shamberger <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:shambergerm@gmail.com" target="_blank">shambergerm@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>To introduce myself, I am a University of Cincinnati engineering graduate and will start my masters at Georgia Tech in HPC in the Spring after 15 years of IT work.</div>
<div>
<br></div><div>I am trying to see if there is interest in the following capabilities for StarCluster.</div><div><br></div><div>- User interface - I am planning to open source a django user interface for StarCluster in early January. It will have a python based API and also provide the capability of dynamically launching web facing applications with starcluster providing the compute behind them.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- Google Compute Engine - If you are not aware, GCE has launched a competitor service to Amazon (<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/03/google_compute_engine_launches/" target="_blank">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/03/google_compute_engine_launches/</a>). The offering is interesting because they charge by the minute after ten minutes intead of 1 hour and reviews say instances come up faster. This could potentially make your workload cheaper then even Amazon spot pricing. I would like to hear opinions/ideas on the best way of enabling GCE to be a backend cloud option to StarCluster. A fork of the boto package could do the job. There was already a rejected pull request last year to add GCE capability to boto.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- private cloud - Run StarCluster bare metal on own hardware with cloudburst capability.</div><div><br></div><div>- Software plugins - I am developing docker based MKL compiled software plugins for various HPC software stacks (SciPy, R, Bioperl, OpenFoam, etc) to run on top of grid workers and also plan to release those as open source. These packages can be notoriusly hard to compile and install correctly.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Please reply to this email or send mail to me directly.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Michael Shamberger</div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
StarCluster mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:StarCluster@mit.edu">StarCluster@mit.edu</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/starcluster" target="_blank">http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/starcluster</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>