Quick Start¶

Brief description¶

Arrhenius Persistent Compute and Data (PCD) is a national cloud service provided by NAISS that gives researchers in Sweden flexible access to computing resources for their work. It is designed to support projects that benefit from adaptable environments, such as developing new tools, testing ideas, or running data-driven applications. PCD complements traditional high-performance computing by offering a more customizable and accessible platform, helping researchers explore and innovate across a wide range of disciplines.

Resources in Arrhenius PCD¶

Arrhenius PCD is an internal and scientific Cloud platform that aim to offer storage, virtualization, container services in a Cloud fashion. However, PCD is not an alternative Cloud platform for enterprise Cloud providers. Users can use different types of resources such as Virtual Machines (VMs) and containers ( i.e. Pods in a Kubernetes platform) for academic and scientific use.

Arrhenius PCD offers Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) using an OpenStack platform where users can create VMs, subnets, Cloud load balancers and even associate them with Public IPs. Also, it is planned to offer a mutli-tenant Kubernetes platform so users will be offered Kubernetes as a service as our container service offering.

To improve user accessibility and user experience, an all-in-one integrated dashboard has been provided. An open-source cloud platform, called Waldur, is offered as the PCD user dashboard, so that users do not need to use two different dashboards for the Kubernetes and OpenStack platforms. User resources can be managed and accessed through the Waldur dashboard.

It is available free of charge to researchers at Swedish and EuroHPC researchers in higher education institutions through open application procedures.

What is/is not PCD partition¶

The PCD resources are not meant to be a replacement for NAISS supercomputing resources (HPC clusters). Rather, it should be seen as a complement, offering advanced functionality to users who need more flexible access to resources (for example more control over the operating systems and software environments), want to develop software as a service, or want to explore recent technology such as for “Big Data” (e.g. Apache Hadoop/Spark) or IoT applications.

Examples of applications that must run in the normal HPC clusters since the SSC isn't built for those purposes.

• AI/LLM/Deep Learning and other applications relying on GPU resources cannot be run in the PCD due to the limited access to GPU's.
• Applications assuming high performance or large volumes of storage, network, or cores.
• Bechmarking will not perform well within PCD due to performance limitations.
• PCD isn't classified for Sensitive data, those project MUST use Cluster system for sensitive data within NAISS.

Most frequently asked questions regarding PCD usage can help understand what applies to your use case.

Acknowledging PCD¶

Please acknowledge use of the NAISS Arrhenius Persistent Compute, and Data in your publications. Follow the ethical guideline for NAISS resources . For the center, use “NAISS Arrhenius Persistent Compute Data”, and when relevant, also acknowledge support or help from your local center contacts.

NAISS General Terms of Use¶

In order to use PCD resources, a project member must first confirm the NAISS General Terms of Use. Until they accept this agreement, they will not be able to log in to PCD resources. After accepting the agreement, it may take up to two hours for their access to be activated, after which they will be able to log in and use PCD resources.

Migration from Swedish Science Cloud (SSC)¶

SSC, as the NAISS legacy scientific cloud platform, will be shut down on June 30. Therefore, you will be contacted by the current SSC support team if you are a PI of a SSC project and your SSC project extends beyond the shutdown date. In that regard, you as project members are expected to back up your resources before termination date of SSC resource, i.e. June 30. You may use your backups to run your applications and workloads on the new Arrhenius PCD partition resources instead, untile the end date of your project. Please contact SSC support if you need any assistance or have any questions regarding this migration process.