In 2021, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) procured and integrated Flexible HPC (Flexi HPC), 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 use-cases for the new infrastructure by reflecting back on the tenants through the first 3 years, highlighting key partnerships and integrations. There is an ongoing discovery that feeds back into product development, learning across the strong partnership with AgResearch, repositories, sensitive data solutions, training environment, as well as NeSI's own emerging roadmap for migrating its traditional HPC capabilities. All of these examples make flexible use of the different layers of capability; from the underlying data center, network/REANNZ, security, Research Developer Cloud, colocation, and managed services that have been built collaboratively. 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. Flexi HPC aspires to play a core role in enabling collaboration with partnering organisations to embrace the shift in the mode of eResearch, in order to address dynamic needs of the researchers, building and supporting growing services and capabilities together with the community, and sharing the knowledge along the way. ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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 mid2018 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 highperformance private cloud platform, to NeSI.
Thomas Berger is Product Manager at NeSI. Thomas has been focused on improving the user experience of NeSI services by continuously improving MyNeSI, a researcher-facing portal, and also its eq...
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 mid2018 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 highperformance private cloud platform, to NeSI.
Thomas Berger is Product Manager at NeSI. Thomas has been focused on improving the user experience of NeSI services by continuously improving MyNeSI, a researcher-facing portal, and also its eq...