Cloud computing provides open, flexible, global platforms that support multiple programming languages, tools, and frameworks. Cloud computing platforms can assist researchers in processing complex workloads in a cost-effective, scalable, and secure manner.
What do you need to perform your research? A computer with more memory? A cluster with thousands of cores? A big data platform? An internet of things (IOT) solution? A machine learning solution? All of these are available from the cloud computing providers.
Utilizing the cloud, researchers can quickly analyze massive data pipelines, store petabytes of data and share their results with collaborators around the world, focusing on research not servers.
Accelerated time to research: Quickly deploy compute resources in minutes and get started performing research instead of configuring and managing servers and infrastructure.
Cost effective
On demand pricing allows you to pay only for what you use. Cloud computing eliminates the need to procure and maintain IT hardware. You only pay for the time you actually use; and can shut down resources when you aren’t actively using them.
Flexible
The cloud offers a wide variety of services allowing you to match the correct resources with your specific research requirements. You can run 100 compute instances for a single hour for the same cost as running a single compute instance for 100 hours.
Elastic and Scalable
You can automatically scale your resources to meet your needs. Cloud services allow you to scale up instantly when your workload increases to meet demand and to also scale down when those the workload requirements decrease. Resources are virtually unlimited for computation, storage, networking, and data management.
Share and Collaborate
Researchers can easily collaborate with colleagues around the globe. Easily share data, machine images, or workflows in seconds.
Rapidly growing ecosystem
Cloud providers are continually improving and adding additional services. There are currently hundreds of micro services available.
Familiar options
The cloud is built on familiar computing machinery, operating systems, software environments and applications (Linux, Windows, Python, R, MATLAB)
Cloud computing allows you to implement processing pipelines, build and test modifications, create websites and web applications, implement databases, and securely manage your research computing environment. Some options available are:
- Archive data inexpensively with extremely high reliability
- Build out familiar data systems (Postgres, MySQL, Spark)
- Create automated secure data feeds that extract from / load to your data system
- Maintain data repositories for other researchers to access
- Manage access to your cloud resources across your research team, and with collaborators around the globe
- Run MATLAB, R, Python or any other programming environment
- Create an estimate of what your use of the cloud will cost
The cloud is secure with appropriate steps
The cloud is physically and programmatically secure, provided you take the appropriate precautions. The Emerging Technologies and Architecture (ETA) team can help you to develop, document and follow the necessary steps to secure your data. The University of Texas has BAA’s with Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google (GCP). The ETA team and the Information Security Office (ISO) can work with researchers to help ensure compliance with HIPAA, FERPA, and other regulatory requirements.
Moving your research to the cloud
The UT Emerging Technologies and Architecture team can consult with you to help you understand what is involved in moving your research computing to the cloud. If you are interested in learning more about the cloud and the resources available at the University, the Emerging Technologies and Architecture team can assist you in modeling how a cloud implementation could work for your research including working with our cloud partners to estimate what it would cost in time and money.
Find out more:
Early success stories: See how other researchers are successfully using the cloud
Cloud computing basics: Learn more about cloud computing
Getting started: Research Computing and Data Management Resources