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Virtual Machines for Faculty eResearch Applications

ITS operates a pool of Virtual servers that are dedicated to supporting central and faculty eResearch Applications - the Virtual eResearch Application (VeRA) servers.  These run on the dedicated Monash eResearch Application (MeRA - or colloquially “Meerkat”) physical server hardware. The objective of this service is to provide a general purpose pool of virtual server machines on which Monash researchers can load and run their own application software, thus obviating the need for the researchers to provision their own local server hardware.

The hardware is distributed across Monash’s two main data centres, and the VMware/VMotion virtual machine operating system automatically and transparently switches individual VeRA virtual machines between the various physical “meerkat” servers, in the event of site failure, hardware failure, or to rebalance load between servers.

This means that an application owner only needs to request one VeRA server (not two) to provide operational protection for each application.  Furthermore this simplifies server naming - the virtual server always retains the same single DNS hostname regardless of which hardware it is running on, avoiding the need for multiple names and complex name-redirect arrangements.

Some of the VeRA servers are allocated to centrally provided Monash eResearch Applications, whereas others are available for direct use by researchers in faculties, so that researchers do not need to buy or operate their own local servers.  All VeRA servers and all data stored within them are stored and reliably backed-up in the Monash central LaRDS petascale research data store.

Additional information on the project as well as the VeRA Service Statement can be found here.

Goal – Shared Services

The University seeks to achieve efficiency improvements by providing facilities such that researchers do not have to buy and operate their own local servers and thus researchers and research support staff can spend more time doing research than providing their own IT support.  One of our contributions has been to establish a general use virtual machine platform for eResearch Applications (the VeRA servers), consistent with ITS-SS (Shared Systems) standards, and built and operated by ITS-SS so as to ensure University security and operational requirements are met.  This is consistent with the University’s Shared Services initiative.

Who can use the VeRA service?

The Service can be utilised by Monash staff engaged in academic research and authorised Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students.

Obtaining access and support

To obtain a VeRA server for your specific research needs, please directly contact the VeRA Service Manager, Russell Keil in ITS Research Support Services.  Because of the different funding and allocation arrangements (see below) applying to the VeRA servers, it is important that researchers directly contact ITS Research Support Services for access, and not the ITS Service Office who handle Corporate server hosting arrangements.

In terms of technical support, please note that once a virtual server has been provisioned and handed over to a user, the user loads, operates and supports their own application software on it. Application support is NOT provided by ITS-RSS.


Funding

In each annual budget cycle we put in a request for additional MeRA (Monash eResearch Application) server capacity appropriate for the following year’s anticipated growth.  In practice, this would normally be via one of the central ICT strategic initiative capital development project proposals for the coming year.

Some of the virtual VeRA servers are used to deliver central MeRA applications, and some by faculty research groups.  This dual intent is made clear in the annual funding requests.

Because most of the work is done by ITS-SS (Shared Systems), their staff costs need to be factored in, in both the annual central funding request, and any per-VM project charging.  In general, the total labour cost component is of similar magnitude to the hardware cost.

Allocation policy

Virtual machines are neither an infinite nor free resource.  Virtual machines consume resources on real physical server hardware.

Allocation would be by analogous process to that previously agreed by the eResearch @ Monash Steering Committee for other production ITS services in support of eResearch, specifically the central MSG high performance computing and LaRDS data storage services.  See below for further details.

In the event that whatever capacity that had been funded for the current year has "run out", it will have "run out" and no additional capacity will be made available until the following year, unless an individual central or faculty project is in a position to fund the additional server capacity out of their own project budgets.

Provisioning costs

Note (as above): these costs are in general not passed on to the end-user.

So that the reader has some feel for the costs involved, here are some order of marginal cost figures, now that the MeRA infrastructure has been established.

  • $k~50 one Sun X4600 system (inc. data centre costs but excluding LaRDS user data space)
  • + $k~50 ITS provisioning costs

would typically deliver around 50 VeRA VMs, depending on actual configuration dimensioning.

Note that (because each VeRA server is automatically transferred to standby hardware in the case of hardware failure) an application owner only needs to request one VM (not two) to provide operational protection for each application.  (Of course, an application owner would at their option still need around 3 VMs to support a multi-landscape application development environment if required, viz: some subset of “SANDBOX”, "DEV", "QAT" and "PRODN" landscapes).

Allocation process

There would be an allocation fraction for approved central MeRA applications, typically around 50% depending on relative demand and available capacity.

The remaining fraction, e.g. the other 50%, would nominally be allocated to faculties on the same proportional allocation formula as used for LaRDS (please refer to Table 1 which is a formula based weighted combination of Research Income, Academic Staff and HDR Students).  Like LaRDS and MSG, VeRA allocation would be extremely soft, flexible and informal.  It is in no-one’s interests to leave resources under-utilised while there is real unmet demand elsewhere.

Guidelines for reasonable resource limits

  • A request for a large number of VMs from the one research group suggests the need for a design review prior to fulfilment of the request in full.
  • It should always be remembered that (for several decades) multi-user operating systems like Unix and its derivatives have been capable of (indeed designed to) support multiple applications in the same server – the move from physical to virtual servers does not diminish the multi-taking capability of the operating system.
  • If the intent of the request is so that local equipment can be re-used rather than retired, then the Shard Services goals have not been achieved in full, and hence the justification for allocation of a VeRA is significantly diluted.

Formal contention resolution process

(as for MSG and LaRDS services)

This formal process is only activated BY EXCEPTION, in the hopefully rare cases that there is actual resource contention.

Intra-faculty contention:

Escalate to relevant ADR (or equivalent/delegate) for adjudication on the relative merits of the contending research activities.  We at ITS/MeRC/Central are not in a position to so adjudicate.

Inter-faculty contention:

Escalate to Director Monash e-Research Centre (who is the most senior relevant central academic staff member reporting directly to DVC-R) to adjudicate on the relative merits of the contending research activities across the different faculties.  Again we at ITS are not in a position to so adjudicate.

Practical allocation process

(as for MSG and LaRDS services)

Normally (except for the hopefully rare cases where the above formal contention resolution processes need to be invoked) practical allocation as per the above Allocation Process is administered on a day-to-day basis by Director ITS Research Support Services, or delegate (e.g. ITS-RSS Operations Manager or equivalent).  Please contact ITS Research Support Services directly for allocation of a VeRA server.

Turn around time for building a VeRA server, once requirements are confirmed, is usually of the order of 24hours.