Dr. Maurice Bouwhuis, Head of the e-Science Support Group, SARA, The Netherlands

Virtualization has brought about a new utility computing model, called "Infrastructure-as -a-Service" (IaaS) cloud computing, for the on-demand provision of virtualized resources as a service. This paradigm can also be used to provide High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities to researchers.

With this newly developed HPC-Cloud environment researchers are provided with access to their own Virtual Private HPC Cluster. It is a virtualized HPC Cluster that can be configured to exactly match their needs, without interfering with the needs of other users. It is flexible, offers self service and is dynamically scalable to their needs.

This talk will give an overview of experiences gained with this type of HPC cloud, both from the perspective of the service provider and from the viewpoint of the researchers that have used the infrastructure.