The CHPC Cloud System is a CentOS-based cloud computing infrastructure powered by Openstack and open source storage software Ceph. Openstack provide services like server virtualization, block & object storage systems, software defined networking, an image repository, a web based dashboard and authentication.You can read more about Openstack and its various projects.

The Centre for high performance Computing (CHPC) hosts an OpenStack cloud built on Supermicro server and storage systems, using the Supermicro TwinPro servers to provide 320cores/640threads (2.50 - 3.90GHz) and over 3TB DDR4 memory providing some 9GB RAM per core and all in just 4U of rack space. It is connected through Mellanox 100GB ethernet networking to Supermicro Ultra and Supermicro Simply Double Servers, providing a CEPH Storage cluster with over 1.5PB (1500TB) of mechanical disk storage and more than 220TB of flash storage, offering resources such as:

• Compute Resource: provides you with access to a large set of CPU & RAM and are provisioned on a per Instance basis.

• Storage Resource: Block & Object storage functionality based on the open source software 'Ceph'. Ceph provides a scalable and highly available storage solution across many commodity servers.

• Networking Resource: provides 10Gbps Internet connectivity, 10Gbps inter-host and 240Gbps inter-rack network connectivity using Openstack's Software Defined Networking (SDN).

Fees for using the CHPC cloud system

The cloud resources are allocated on per project basis, then several instances are provisioned based on the available resources allocated to the project. The billing is calculated by allocation not by percentage of utilization. The current billing fees are calculated as follows:

• R0.23 per vCPU hour.

• R0.14 per GB hour of vMemory(vRAM).

• R0.0017 per GB hour of storage (volumes, images and object storage).

The Cloud is now open to a broader community of researchers. Apply today and start using our resources. A new project account creation on the Cloud user database can be requested through the application process. Upon acquiring cloud user account and submitting a project on our cloud user database, we will send you an email with further instructions.

Cloud users are expected to:

• Make appropriate use of Cloud resources and use good social behavior.

• Do not share private ssh keys or login information.

• Cite the Cloud in any papers describing research.

• Submit tickets to the CHPC support ticketing system when encountering technical issues not covered by the Cloud support documentation.

Already a Cloud user? Login to the Cloud Console and get started with running your analysis.

As an OpenStack cloud end user, you can provision your own resources within the limits set by cloud administrators.

The examples in this guide show you how to perform tasks by using the following methods:

• OpenStack dashboard: Use this web-based graphical interface, code named horizon, to view, create, and manage resources.

• OpenStack command-line clients: Each core OpenStack project has a command-line client that you can use to run simple commands to view, create, and manage resources in a cloud and automate tasks by using scripts.

As a cloud end user, you can use the OpenStack dashboard to provision your own resources within the limits set by administrators. You can modify the examples provided in this section to create other types and sizes of server instances.

For your convenience, we offer these short instructions that you should follow in order to start a new instance, while also recommending you read the official user guide to familiarize with more advanced functionalities.

1. First please open https://openstack.chpc.ac.za in your browser and login using the credentials provided.

2. Launching a virtual machine, you have to accomplish a number of steps.

a) Provide the initial hostname for the instance, the availability zone where it will be deployed, and the instance count. Increase the Count to create multiple instances with the same settings.:

b) Select the instance source, the template used to create an instance. You can use an image, a snapshot of an instance (image snapshot), a volume or a volume snapshot (if enabled). You can also choose to use persistent storage by creating a new volume.

c) Decide on the flavor needed when launching the instance, Flavors manage the sizing for the compute, memory and storage capacity of the instance.

For this example. We are launching the instance with m1.tiny flavor** selected from the list of available flavors. The m1.tiny flavor will allocate the instance with 2x vCPU, 5GB of vRAM and 20GB of root disk. In order to carefully manage our compute resources, Only allocate what you are expecting to use, This is the total compute resources allocated to the instance created.