#13: Cloud Computing

Introduction

Welcome to our session today which is about Cloud Computing. My goals for today are to

1. Explain what’s possible with cloud computing
2. Give a little demo

Before Cloud Computing

• As far back as the 60s, “time sharing” / client-server models show how computing advances are often costly / unevenly distributed
• Running servers/services “on prem”
• People / companies have to manage the infrastructure
• Only people/groups who could afford to buy “big iron” could perform/offer compute-heavy services

What exactly is Cloud Computing?

According to International Organization for Standards (ISO) there are 5 key factors:

1. On-demand self service: unilateral and without human interaction.
2. Broad network access: Available everywhere, not just corporate / home LANs.
3. Resource pooling: Provider’s resources are pooled and shared.
4. Rapid elasticity: rapid provisioning and releasing; can appear unlimited.
5. Measured service: access to resources is monitored, logged and billed.

Use Cases

Cloud Computing is often pitched at big companies but the key point of this talk is that there’s no reason you can’t use them for your own personal projects or assignments (though you should never NEED to use a paid service for your coursework!). It’s nice to know it’s possible to access this power / hardware on a temporary basis.

• Hosting services eg:
  • Websites, databases
• Number crunching eg:
  • Rendering
  • Compiling
  • ML Training
• The whole self hosting universe
  • Make your own VPN
  • Git servers
  • Mastodon instance
• Cloudy gaming
• Testing software
  • ARM and Mac OS instances

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Amazon, AWS, and EC2

So how does this all work?

We’re going to be exploring these concepts by via Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) but first a few notes:

1. This is not an advertisement for Amazon, I promise! Many other cloud providers (Google, Hetzner, Linode, Azure) exist. Amazon’s is just the oldest and the one I’m most comfortable with.
2. The interface for AWS is a bit hairy; there might be simpler solutions out there!
3. We’re mostly going to be talking about rentable virtual computers with EC2. However, EC2 is only a part of ‘cloud computing’ / Amazon Web Services (AWS); AWS has over 200 other services including EBS, S3, Lambda (serverless), Cloudfront, etc etc.
4. We’re going to be working with 64-bit x86 linux instances but you can also create instances for other OSes / architectures including Windows.

Anyway, EC2 has a few different types of computers to rent:

• General Purpose: A1, T3, T2, M5, M5a, M4, T3a
• Compute Optimized: C5, C5n, C4
• Memory Optimized: R5, R5a, R4, X1e, X1, High Memory, z1d
• Accelerated Computing: P3, P2, G3, F1
• Storage Optimized: H1, I3, D2

Advantages

• Available everywhere, always on
• It’s someone else’s problem to make sure the infrastructure is working
• Flexible / Scalable: CPU / RAM / GPUs on demand etc etc
• Maintenance, power included
• Costs: renting a super computer for a short burst or renting a small instance for months/years
• Scriptibility

Disadvantages

• There is no cloud…
• “Cost”
  • Did you shut it off?!
  • Is cloud computing actually cheaper?
• Locality and Latency:
• More concerns around security
  • Must trust provider
  • Public IPs? Firewall?
  • Sharing hardware with other people!
    • most ‘instances’ are a part of a larger computer!
• Lots more details here

Pricing on EC2

• On demand pricing
  • Remember: ~720 hours in a month
  • But also “bursts”
  • page 1 of 27:
• Savings plan – probably not super relevant to us
• Spot Instances
• Free Tiers:

Remember: if something is persisting, you’re probably paying for it.

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Case Study: Amazon EC2

Lets rent an amazon machine and crunch some numbers!

Elements of creating an instance:

Micro Instance example

• You can follow this to get a low-spec machine running on a free tier
• You’ll need:
  • An Image (or AMI)
  • A desired instance type
  • A key pair
  • A network
  • A security group
  • An EBS volume
• If all goes well you’ll be at a remote terminal now!
• Payoff for Missing Semester skills!

Rendering example

Lets try to render the Blender 3.2 splash screen image, White Lands, by Oksana Dobrovolska.

• A note about Quotas; might need to request access in advance!
  • Quotas are good actually
• Settings:
  • AMI: Ubuntu
  • Instance type: c5.4xlarge
  • Security group: make sure it has ssh / xrdp ports
  • 20GB+ drive
• Connect with something like: ssh -i keypair.pem ubuntu@18.168.154.102
• Then:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install -y ubuntu-desktop xrdp
    sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert
    sudo adduser jesse
  

• reboot then

    su - jesse
    wget https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/graphics/blender/release/Blender4.3/blender-4.3.2-linux-x64.tar.xz
    wget https://download.blender.org/demo-files/splash-screens/blender-3-2/blender-splash-3-2-v2-640d7b753da44f1a8c9629209b46305a.blend
  

• connect with rdp client!

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Final Thoughts

• PLEASE REMEMBER TO TURN OFF YOUR INSTANCES AND ANY EBS VOLUMES YOU’RE NOT USING!
  • Terminated instances will stick around in interface for a bit…
• Otherwise, have fun!

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