Advancing Science at NASA through Cloud Computing Examples

Advancing Science at NASA through Cloud Computing: Examples from Nebula Dr. Tsengdar Lee Acting CTO for IT August 16, 2011 Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Nebula Pioneers a New Frontier for Cloud Computing § One of the first cloud computing platforms built by the Federal Government for the Federal Government § Over 300 users at 9 Centers + JPL + HQ § White House was first client Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Nebula Pioneers a New Frontier for Cloud Computing Nebula developed to provide: § “Instant-on” IT Infrastructure § Automated provisioning capabilities, and § Quick scale-up services All Necessary to… Process large datasets quickly, easily share them with colleagues and ultimately store them securely at a good price Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Why NASA Created Nebula § In 2008, limited commercial cloud offerings could not meet NASA requirements for: § Security § Network performance for managing data in and out of the cloud § Private cloud customization capabilities § Limit vendor lock-In Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Nebula Principles § Open and public APIs, everywhere § Open-source platform, apps, and data § Full transparency » Open source code and documentation releases § Reference platform » Cloud model for Federal Government Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Nebula Iaa. S Services Software to provision virtual machines on standard hardware at massive scale Software to reliably store billions of objects distributed across standard hardware Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Previous Options for NASA Scientists Requirements* Very large data set processing Current Options* BUILD IT Build my own IT infrastructure that may/may not comply with Federal/Agency IT security standards. Sciencescale application developm ent BUY IT Missions Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011 Timely sharing of results with collaborat ors and the public Compute intensive processing Go through a lengthy procurement and provisioning process for basic IT services DO NOTHING The current basic IT services model is cost prohibitive and I cannot afford to process my data and share with collaborators and the public at large.

Supercomputing (grid) § Tasks are distributed among subset of nodes of supercomputer § All data is accessible to all nodes via high-speed interconnects § Failure of a node results in failure of a job § Nodes cannot be added or removed during Job Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Cloud (batch) §Work separated into many individual tasks §Each task is performed with only the subset of data needed §Failed tasks can be restarted by re-issuing tasks to new node §Nodes may be added and removed as needed/ available Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Nebula Case Examples SERVIR integrates satellite observations, ground-based data and forecast models to monitor environment changes and improve response to natural disasters SPo. RT transitions unique NASA satellite observations and capabilities to NOAA to predict short-term weather events Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011 i. RODS is an open-source, data grid software solution to manage, share, search and distribute large, diverse scientific datasets

SERVIR & SPo. RT: Modeling Capabilities § Application Concept: » Create Nebula images that are capable of supporting the research and operational goals of both SERVIR & SPo. RT. » Potential Benefits: • Rapid deployment of standard models to respond to natural disasters without disrupting other activities. • Reduces the installation and maintenance of IT resources at remote or offsite location Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

SERVIR: Weather Forecasting § Severe weather is natural hazard of interest to both SERVIR and SPo. RT § Use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model to produce high-resolution, short-term forecasts § Instances can be used to: » Use one instance for single region » Share resources for a high-resolution run or a larger forecast domain » Provide rapid response to new events or research opportunities without impacting other resources Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

A True Nebula Story… On April 27 th tornadoes devastated parts of Central and Northern Alabama including a large stretch of downtown Tuscaloosa. Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

§S Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011 SPo. RT used Nebula to process datasets provided to National Weather Service through Google Earth to verify path length and width of tornado combining spectral channels to obtain false color imagery of damages impacting vegetation and ecology

§Nebula hosted tiling application with large hi-res images §Rapidly configured §Tiles created pushed back to local web server §Made available via Google Earth Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Broad view of tiled ASTER images and Tornado tracks heading northeast on March 27 §EF-4 Tornado marked in orange §EF-4 Tornado identified in red §EF-5 Tornado marked in purple Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Comments from SERVIR & SPo. RT “Our Linux machines were busy processing data from other tasks and could not be interrupted… But even if they could… They would not have been as easily configurable as Nebula. ” “Nebula gave us the chance to ‘play in a sandbox’ where configuration testing was easy and fast and could be used without disrupting other local systems. ” Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

That’s Fantastic! NASA SPo. RT says they’re pleased with Nebula’s scalability capabilities…. “An earlier test run of my forecast model ran for 54 consecutive days without issue before I brought it down. That’s fantastic!” Andrew Molthan Senior Meteorologist Servir and SPo. RT NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Technology – Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (i. RODS) § Targets large repositories and digital preservation § Supports the federation of independent, distributed collections § Supports server-side workflows that are implemented by chaining execution rules together based on data policies § Includes features such as domain-specific validation, automatic replication, and digital signature/checksum computation § Validates assertions about data such as integrity and authenticity Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

NCCS Develops i. RODS DMS for Climate Studies § NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) provides compute engines, analytics, data sharing, long-term storage, networking and other high-end computing services for Earth science community § NCCS completed a pilot project to develop an i. RODS-based Data Management System (DMS) to handle massive amounts of observations and model data used in climate and weather studies § DMS team used Nebula to host DMS prototype with goal of managing and publishing climate simulation data using i. RODS with a distributed set of Nebula instances Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Steps for i. RODS Distributed Data Storage and Management § Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data placed under i. RODS control § MERRA data stored on file system and registered with i. RODS § Registration process stored metadata about MERRA files in i. RODS database § Entire catalog of monthly MERRA products resulted in ingestion of 360 files that occupy 47 GB § Data was shared between two instances Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

i. RODS Results § By eliminating the need to explicitly switch an i. RODS client between distinct grids, federation allowed perusal or download of data from multiple i. RODs depositories through a single interface § Upon completion, users could examine, search for, and download simulation data from either Nebula instance though a single i. RODS web interface Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011

Thank You Nebula Case Examples-August 16, 2011