Benefits - Elastic High Performance Computing - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

Compared with other HPC clusters, Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC) clusters provide deployment flexibility, resource elasticity, data security, availability, and visualization.

Benefits of E-HPC clusters

Flexible deployment
You can create E-HPC clusters in the E-HPC console in a few steps. You can deploy a high-performance computing environment and application software in a few clicks. This E-HPC cluster provides high processing power for difficult scenarios. After you create an E-HPC cluster, you can submit jobs to the cluster for computing.
Elastic resources
E-HPC monitors the load of nodes in each E-HPC cluster based on the usage of the job queue. It can then be used to dynamically adjust the computing resources. If the job queue is empty, the E-HPC cluster scales down to the specified minimum number of nodes. When one or more jobs are submitted to the job queue, a suitable number of nodes are created to make full use of the computing resources.
High data security
- E-HPC clusters are isolated from each other by using VPCs. Security groups are used to implement triple access control among the nodes of the E-HPC clusters in a VPC. This feature ensures the network security for E-HPC clusters.
- The data of E-HPC clusters is stored in Apsara File Storage NAS. The transmission encryption and storage encryption features of NAS can protect the data from theft or tampering. The data is replicated into multiple copies and stored at the backend of NAS. This feature can be used to significantly increase data security.
High availability
E-HPC cluster nodes are deployed based on Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Super Computing Cluster (SCC), and Elastic GPU Service resources. This significantly improves the availability of the E-HPC clusters.
Visualized results
E-HPC provides the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) service, which allows you to visualize computing results as graphics. For example, you can view the rendered effects of animations or the cinemagraphs of weather changes.

Benefits of E-HPC over traditional computing clusters

Item	E-HPC	Traditional computing cluster
Deployment	You can use an E-HPC cluster immediately after you purchase ECS instances for the E-HPC cluster. You can run high-performance computing jobs on the E-HPC cluster and obtain computing results in real time. E-HPC clusters are available in multiple specifications. You can select specifications based on your scenarios.	If multiple users use a traditional computing cluster at the same time, the users must wait in a queue due to the limited resources. If you want to scale up a traditional computing cluster, you need to spend a long time to purchase and deploy on-premises resources.
Security	Data is stored in the cloud to ensure high reliability.	Data is stored on clients. Data security is compromised because access to the data is not controlled.
Cost	Resources are automatically scaled up and down to reduce costs of the service without the need to be concerned about service reliability and availability. When you use E-HPC, you do not need to upgrade the hardware. E-HPC provides optimized software licenses and a scheduling mechanism to reduce costs.	You need to purchase computing clusters that can meet your business requirements during peak hours. Therefore, you cannot make full use of the computing clusters during off-peak hours. You need to purchase multiple computing clusters at a time. This upfront cost can be high. You need to upgrade the hardware. Hardware upgrades increase the cost of computing clusters.
O&M	E-HPC provides automatic O&M. This provides the auto scaling feature. It can be used to replace unhealthy nodes. E-HPC provides a variety of software applications for high-performance computing. The software applications are upgraded at the same time as E-HPC.	Resource purchase and delivery are time-consuming. Computing clusters are difficult to upgrade and the related specifications are difficult to change. Professional O&M engineers are required.