Is the Cloud Right for Me?

Now that you have an idea of what cloud computing is, the question that is most pertinent to researchers is whether or not you should move your work to the cloud. The following chart outlines some fundamental questions to ask in your assessment:

Many researchers move to the commercial cloud simply because their local compute resources (local HPC clusters, or departmental clusters) are insufficient to deal with the volume of data and type of computation. With the cloud, there is no wait time to obtain the computing resources you need. With sufficient funds, you may even be able to obtain a near infinite number of CPUs, RAM and GPUs and compute can start as soon as you want it!

Note

Scalable computing is the ability to obtain more computers(horizontal scaling) and/or to obtain more powerful computers(vertical scaling)

With cloud computing, you do not need to purchase or maintain and update hardware, operating systems and a slew of dependencies. For the most part, providers maintain their hardware. Further, cloud providers just keep making new services to keep up with demands the rapidly expanding community building cloud-native workflows. Cloud providers are constantly evolving their tools and resources with a focus on storage, reliability, and security.

Other factors that will play in your decision to move to the cloud include knowing where common large datasets are hosted. The core idea in working on the cloud involves a paradigm shift: researchers should no longer bring their data to the compute (i.e. downloading data) but should instead bring their compute to the data! If you think about it, why spend hours on end to download data and find a place to store it when you can work directly with the data?

If your collaborators are already working in the cloud i.e. hosting data on the cloud or building cloud-based workflows, it would also make sense for you to bring your work to the cloud. Go here for more on Open Science and Collaboration.

Why not to migrate to the cloud?

If you have already identified an adequate-to-your-needs computing environment like XSEDE or you already have the access to the resources you need, it just doesn’t make sense to migrate to the cloud!

Using the public cloud requires a learning curve. Sometimes you may just simply not have the time or resources to do this important step. The CLASS Program can help you overcome some of these hurdles, but you may prefer to spend your time learning other things or exploring other avenues and it just doesn’t seem worth it to invest your time in learning about the cloud.

If you operate your computer(s) at a very high duty cycle i.e. you computer is constantly computing something and you have massive datasets that you work with frequently that is stored on-premise, the cloud may not be a very cost-effective option.

Finally, if there is too much of an administrative drag preventing you from using the cloud (e.g. regulations and compliance such as HIPAA or FERPA), you may want to reconsider staying with your local infrastructure.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the million dollar question: “But which cloud provider should I choose?!”