Heavy Duty Structural Analysis using Abaqus in the Cloud with novel Software Containers

Frank Ding Wolfgang Gentzsch Simpson Strong-Tie UberCloud

Boston, May 23 – 25, 2016

Simpson Strong-Tie

• A leader in structural building systems manufacturing • Products

– Structural connectors

– Fasteners and fastening systems

– Lateral systems

– Anchoring systems

– Repair, protection, and strengthening

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UberCloud

July 2012: Start with community building and cloud experiments

Mar 2013: HPC Docker development => UberCloud CAE containers

Nov 2014: Online marketplace, 40 stores for engineers

Apr 2016: CAE software containers: SIMULIA Abaqus, ANSYS, CD-adapco, CFDturbo, CFDSupport, COMSOL, Dacolt, Flow Science, Friendship Systems, LS-Dyna, NICE DCV, Numeca, OpenFOAM, Red Cedar, … On Cloud Resources from Advania, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Bull extreme factory, CPU 24/7, Google Compute Engine, OzenCloud…

HPC is needed to stay competitive

The digital manufacturing engineer has three options to use High Performance Computing (HPC):

+ HPC on your workstation

+ HPC on your HPC server

+ HPC as a Service, remotely, in an HPC Center or in the Cloud

However: Workstations have limited capacity

Workstations and PCs are important for daily design and development work, but + 57 % of users are dissatisfied with their capacity*

+ Too slow, e.g. jobs run over night or several days + Too small, detailed geometry and physics don’t fit into

memory + Number of jobs are limited which affects the quality of

the final result

* Source: http://www.compete.org/

However: Servers are expensive and complex

A $7o,ooo HPC System costs you $500,000 - $1,ooo,ooo in total in 3 years

Alternative: HPC as a Service: benefits & challenges

HPC as a Service – additional compute power when needed, on demand

Flexibility, business agility, scaling up and down, pay- per-use, instead of buying expensive HPC systems, but

+ It’s a new business and working paradigm

+ Security, privacy, trust in service provider

+ Software Licensing

+ Heavy data transfers

UberCloud Team #47, May – July 2013

• End-user: Frank Ding – Simpson Strong-Tie – HPC Experiment end-user – Early adopter of HPC for FEA – Big fan of Linux cluster computing

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• Thanks to members of the HPC Experiment:

• Matt Dunbar, SIMULIA, 3DS • Steve Hebert & Rob Sherrard, Nimbix • Sharan Kalwani, HPCC Director, Michigan • Antonio Arena & Cynthia Underwood,

NICE Software • Dennis Nagy, BeyondCAE

Why HPC in the Cloud?

• Current HPC Cluster – 4-node 32 cores total

– Nehalem-based Xeon, InfiniBand DDR

• HPC in the Cloud, when ?

– Lack of in-house HPC resources

– Capacity surge – large jobs speedup

– Capacity overflow jobs – large number of jobs

• Benefit?

– no lengthy procurement, acquisition & IT overhead

– shifting budget from capex to opex

– gaining business flexibility

– getting additional resources on demand

Cloud-based HPC Workflow

• Project Workflow – Pre-processing on the local user workstation – Input file loaded to the data staging point thru SFTP – Job submitted to compute cloud thru Nimbix cloud web portal – Job monitoring thru Nimbix dashboard plus email notification

of job status – Post-processing (Abaqus/CAE): remote viz tool NICE DCV

• Mechanical anchor pullout capacity analysis • Predict failure mode & concrete cracking pattern

HPC

Resource

# of DOF Run Time

24 cores 32 cores 36 cores 48 cores 60 cores 72 cores

Cloud HPC 1,937,301 14:29:42 9:49:21 7:39:24 6:17:31 5:30:00

In-House

HPC

1,937,301 16:45:50 12:28:06

Job Benchmark

Barriers and Challenges

• Data movement limited by internet bandwidth

• Use remote viz for post-processing

• End user side internet bandwidth issue

• Intellectual property, sensitive data, privacy

• Traditional software licenses

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Lessons Learned & Recommendations

• UberCloud CAE Experiment: Risk-free proof-of- concept: no money involved, no sensitive data transferred, no software license concerns, and the option to stay anonymous.

• Professional support from UberCloud team

• Top barrier: Massive data movement & end-point internet bandwidth variability

• NICE DCV for remote viz is a viable option if a stable internet bandwidth is available.

• Results accessible anywhere when needed.

The next big step: UberCloud application containers

• Based on Docker, enhanced for engineering & scientific applications

• Software packages designed to deliver the tools that an engineer needs, e.g. whole workflows

• Ready to execute, in an instant. No need to install software, deal with complex OS commands, or configure.

• Software is pre-installed, configured, and tested, and running on bare metal, without loss of performance.

Builder

Launcher

Controller ISV Data Tools

Stackable units with tools (ex: encryption), ISV application codes (ex: OpenFOAM). Just add your own codes and data.

Run anywhere with UberCloud Run Time. Scale up or down the compute power as needed.

Collect granular usage data, logs. Monitor, alert, report.

Any Workstation Any Cluster Any Cloud

Run Time Run Time Run Time

Containers: Build once, run anywhere

Containers remove challenges

HTTPS/VPN Access*

OS Firewall

OS PKI Login

Disk Encryption*

Dedicated Servers in High Security Data

Centers

UberCloud Security Layers

We deploy on single tenant servers (not shared between customers). These servers reside in professionally managed, highly secured data centers.

Data at rest can be encrypted. Disk and file level encryption are both available (optional, may degrade performance)

Admin access to our servers are protected by PKI Public Key Encryption (vs passwords, which can be guessed)

Our servers are protected with firewalls. Only necessary ports are turned on to reduce attacks

Connection to our servers are protected by strong encryption techniques such as HTTPS and VPN

Taking an Abaqus Application

to the Cloud, in a Container

Live Interactive Demo

You’ll receive an email from UberCloud:

UberCloud Marketplace

Dear Thomas,

Your compute environment you ordered is now ready.

Access your compute environment via remote desktop connection (Chrome 8+,

Firefox 7+, Opera 11+, IE 9+)

Login: http://82.221.92.145:5901/vnc.html

Your password for remote desktop access is: glcqgJ3o76dV …

That’s all !

1. Wifi 2. Open your web browser 3. Container URL: http://217.27.198.165:10201/vnc.html 4. Password: 1l258Zq… 5. Upload your data 6. Run 7. Interactive post-processing

Conclusions

- Cloud experiments 2013 took 3 months on average, 50% failed, in 2016 less than one week, none failed

- Software containers are easily packageable, portable, accessible, usable, and simplify support &maintenance

- We now invite you to a special trial project: - free: hands-off, 4h, 4 cores - paid: hands-on, 24h, 32 cores, interactive, 8h support, use your own application and data - Please contact: https://www.TheUberCloud.com/help/

Thank You !

Ask for a Trial:

https://www.TheUberCloud.com/help/