Explainer: Cloud computing

By Damien Irving.

We’re all familiar with doing data analysis on our own laptop or desktop computer, usually after hours of messing around to get the relevant software installed (e.g. Python, Matlab, R). This is fine for small problems that you’re working on by yourself, however in today’s world of big data and collaborative research, people are increasingly turning to remote computing for better performance and/or to simplify the process of working with others. In other words, many researchers really only use their personal computer these days to access (via a network, such as the internet) a computer located elsewhere.

In general, remote computing can be labelled as either supercomputing or cloud computing. In the case of supercomputing, the remote machine in question is a very large, very powerful computer such as Raijin at the National Computational Infrastructure in Canberra. Hundreds of researchers around Australia conduct their research and data analysis on Raijin every day.

In the case of cloud computing, the remote machine isn’t a single, large, powerful computer, but instead a collection of many regular machines. In fact, the remote computers in cloud computing are often no better or more advanced than your personal laptop. Here the advantage is not the power of any single computer, but the fact that there are so many of them. By way of analogy, think of supercomputing as a single Formula 1 car and cloud computing as an entire fleet of Holden Commodores.

You might not be aware of it, but any researcher (i.e. staff or student) at an Australian university can apply for access to the NeCTAR Research Cloud. If your research involves a computationally expensive data processing task that would take many days/weeks/months to run on your personal computer, then parallel computing on the NeCTAR Research Cloud would definitely be an option worth investigating. To read more about using the cloud to speed up your code (and why you might select cloud computing over supercomputing or vice versa), check out this blog post.

Applying for an account on the NeCTAR Research Cloud also represents a great way to get a “new” computer, without actually having to purchase a physical computer (which is obviously expensive and inconvenient). For instance:

  • If you need a Linux machine to run a some software a colleague sent you but your personal computer runs Windows, you can simply apply for access to a Linux machine on the cloud.
  • If Matlab or Python keeps crashing because the data array you’re trying to analyse exceeds the 4GB of RAM on your laptop, apply for a computer in the cloud with 16GB of RAM.

In other words, the cloud is a great way to access a computer (or 3 or 30) to play around with, without having to go to the effort and expense of actually buying one. A small start-up account on the NeCTAR Research Cloud is free (and requires no application), so why not try it out today!

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