2017 Massachusetts Open Cloud Annual Workshop and Tutorials

Thank you for attending the Third Annual Massachusetts Open Cloud Workshop!

The Third Annual Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC) Workshop was held on October 3-4, 2017 at Boston University. The MOC workshop welcomed users of the MOC, researchers and startups interested in cloud computing, students and our industry partners. The MOC has become a growing and active community of users and a broad set of industry/academic research projects.

The workshop was designed to engage all parties with any interest in the MOC – it does not matter if you have been a part of the MOC’s development from the start, or are just hearing about it and want to learn more. The segments are described below:

October 3

• The day kicked off with a overviews on the MOC vision and orients users with the latest on the MOC technologies and offerings.
• Over the course of the day, 10-minute Ted-style talks were given in three Micro-talk Sessions. These talks are designed to give the audience a high-level overview of a given topic.
• Throughout the conference space posters designed by talk presenters were displayed. Anyone interested in exploring the content covered in a talk on a deeper, more technical level was encouraged to find the accompanying poster to engage with the speaker.
• Two Topic Roundtable Sessions provided additional opportunities for all attendees to explore MOC-related topics on a deeper level. These sessions, which were facilitated by MOC staff and collaborators, provided an opportunity for open dialogue. 
• The success of the MOC hinges upon its strong partnerships. During the Industry Partner Panel, attendees  heard from the MOC’s industry partners who discussed their relationship with the MOC and the value their companies are deriving from this unique partnership.
• The event closed with a reception, allowing additional time to discuss talks and posters, as well as opportunities for networking.
• An invitation only dinner was held following the reception.

October 4 (Morning)

• The MOC Leadership, Academic Advisory Board and Core Partners met to discuss strategic and business related initiatives. (Invitation only)
• Tutorials sessions focused on OpenStack, MOC OpenShift and Big Data/Cloud Dataverse were offered. 

October 3, 2017 – Main Workshop

Location
Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering
Boston University
610 Commonwealth Avenue, First Floor
Boston, MA 02215

Agenda and Schedule 

• Robert Baron, MOC and Dan McPherson, Red Hat, OpenShift on the MOC Abstract and Bios, Slides, e-board
• Vinay Kapalavai and Tariq Anwar, MOC and Northeastern University, MOC Monitoring Slides
• Kristi Nikolla, MOC, Resource Federation: Why and How with Mix & Match Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Sahil Tikale, Naved Ansari, MOC and Boston University, and Sourabh Bollapragada, MOC and Northeastern University, Hardware Isolation Layer (HIL) & Bare Metal Imaging (BMI) Bios, Slides
• Lucas Xu, MOC, MOC Simple GUI:GIJI Abstract and Bio, Slides

9:40 – 10:00 AM  Break

10:00 – 10:20 AM  Micro-Talks: Related Initiatives
This session will focus on initiatives with connections to the MOC.

• Jim Culbert, MGHPCC, MGHPCC as a Platform for MOC Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Saul Youssef, Boston University, Large Scale Shared Regional Storage for the Northeast Abstract and Bio, Slides

10:20 – 10:25 AM  MOC Team and Alum Video10:25 – 11:05 AMMicro-Talks: Key User Stories I
The MOC today supports a growing and diverse community of users. This session highlights some of the current uses of the MOC  as well as some of the user stories that are driving our evolution.

• Chris Hill, MIT, Deploying HIL as an automated self-service isolation tool in a Slurm HPC environment Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Ahmed Sanaullah and Martin Herbordt, Boston University, CCIX, Bump-in-the-Wire FPGAs, and HPC in the Cloud Abstract and Bio
• Ben Lewis, Harvard University and Aaron Williams, MapD, Building systems for harvesting, storing, and analyzing big data in support of research Bios, Slides
• Larry Rudolph, Two Sigma, Trammell Hudson, Two Sigma and Nabil Schear, MIT Lincoln Lab, Secure Cloud/Bolted, Slides

11:10 – 11:50 AM  Topic Roundtables I
Topic Roundtables provide an opportunity to participate in a deeper open discussion on a specific topic.  Select one topic during this session.

• Big Data and Machine Learning
  • Mercé Crosas,  Harvard University and Stan Sclaroff, Boston University
• Scientific Computing/HPC
  • Chris Hill, MIT and Martin Herbordt, Boston University
• Cloud Security
  • Trammell Hudson, Two Sigma and Nabil Schear, MIT Lincoln Lab

11:50 – 1:00 PM   Lunch, Posters and Networking
Posters will be on display throughout the floor. Attendees are encouraged to find speakers to ask questions or go deeper than what was covered in the talk.1:05 – 2:05 PMMicro-Talks: Cloud Infrastructure Research 
The MOC has created an open platform that enables cloud research and innovation. During this session we will hear from several research teams about their research and its connections to the MOC.

• Mayank Varia, MACS, Boston University, Cryptographically secure computing on the MOC Abstract and Bio, Slides, Slides
• Lily Sturmann, MOC and Harvard University, and Jethro Sun, MOC, Pythia: A just-in-time instrumentation framework for debugging distributed systems Abstract and Bios, Slides, e-board
• Jim Cadden, Boston University, Enabling fine-grain elasticity through the operating system  Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Ayse Coskun, Boston University,Smart Analytics on the MOC: System Discovery, Performance Analysis and Beyond  Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Emine Ugur Kaynar, MOC and Boston University, Mania Abdi and Mohammad Hajkazemi, MOC and Northeastern University, D3N: A Datacenter-scale Data Delivery Network  Bios, Slides, e-board
• Rodrigo Fonseca, Brown University, FlexNet: Enabling Flexible Datacenter Networks Slides

2:05 – 2:15 PM  Break

 2:15 – 2:20 PM  MOC Team and Alum Video

2:20 – 2:25 PM  IBM Announcement

• Fred Allman, IBM

2:25 – 3:20 PM  Micro-Talks: Key User Stories II
The MOC today supports a growing and diverse community of users. This session highlights some of the current uses of the MOC  as well as some of the user stories that are driving our evolution.

• Mike Weintraub, Northeastern University, Using Mass Open.Cloud for Course Infrastructure Bio, Slides
• Andrei Lapets, Boston University, Open-Source Resources for Research Efforts across Disciplines Abstract and Bio, Slides
• Mercè Crosas, Harvard University, Cloud Dataverse, Slides
• Rudolph Pienaar, Ellen Grant and Yangming Ou and, Boston Children’s Hospital, Modularized container services and architecture for medical data processing in the cloud Abstract and Bios, Slides 1, Slides 2
• Jonathan Woodson, Boston University, Analytics in Healthcare Bio, Slides

3:20 – 3:35 PM

Keynote

• Tim Connelly, Executive Director, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, Economic Development in the Digital Age Abstract, Bio

3:40 – 4:20 PM  Topic Roundtables II
Topic Roundtables provide an opportunity to participate in a deeper open discussion on a specific topic.  Select one topic during this session.

• Use Cases
  • Michael Daitzman and Gretchen Stewart, Intel
• Cloud Infrastructure & Operations
  • Hugh Brock, Red Hat and Jim Culbert, MGHPCC
• Networking and Storage
  • Rodrigo Fonseca, Brown University, and Leon Zachary, Intel

4:20 – 4:30 PM  Break4:30 – 4:35 PM  

MOC Team Video

4:35 – 5:25 PM Industry Updates and Core Partner Panel
Partners have been integral to the success of the MOC.  During this segment, we will feature Industry updates and hear directly from the MOC’s partners.

• Video, Rory McNeil, RSpace
• Video, Christopher Scranton, Jobcase

The Core Partner Panel will feature the representative from the MOC Core Partners discussing their work with the MOC and the value it has brought to their companies/organizations.

• Mark Astley, Two Sigma
• Adam Freudberg, USAF
• Jan Mark Holzer, Red Hat
• Gretchen Stewart, Intel
• Leon Zachary, Cisco

5:25 – 5:35 PM  Closing Remarks/Open Floor

5:35 – 6:30 PM  Reception, Posters and Networking

Hariri Institute
111 Cummington Mall
Boston, MA 02215
All attendees are welcome to attend the reception.

October 4, 2017 – Tutorials and Closed Meeting of the MOC Academic Advisory Board and Core Partners

Events

Special Meeting of the Academic Advisory Board and Core Partner Executives

• 8AM – 1PM
• Invitation only
• Location: Boston University, Hariri Institute, Hariri Seminar Room, 111 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215

Tutorial Sessions (Tutorial Session Only Registration)

• Open to all interested parties that register in advance

Schedule

9:00 – 9:45 AM           OpenStack led by Jeremy Freudberg and Austin Smith, MOC
9:50 – 10:35 AM         Cloud Dataverse led by Sarah Ferry, MOC and Julian Gautier, Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science
10:40 – 11:25 AM       OpenShift led by Dan McPherson, Red Hat and Robert Baron, MOC

The sessions are being offered back-to-back in the same room.  You are welcome to come attend as many of the sessions as you’d like and you are welcome leave and return.

Location
CILSE @ Boston University
610 Commonwealth Ave
Colloquium Room (entrance in first floor lobby)
Boston, MA 02215

Bring
A laptop if you would like to follow along and create an account/set up a VM.

If you are interested in learning more before the Tutorials (NOT required)
Only if you want, take a look at the “Getting Started” part of the wiki, to review what will be covered during the OpenStack tutorial:
https://github.com/CCI-MOC/moc-public/wiki/Getting-started

Session Descriptions and Materials

• OpenStack: The MOC offers an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering based on OpenStack, providing users with self-service access to virtual machines, object storage, and on-demand Big Data environments (Hadoop, Spark, Pig etc.). This tutorial will show you how to get started using this environment. OpenStack Tutorial and Demo Video

• Cloud Dataverse & Big Data: Cloud Dataverse is a collaboration between the MOC and the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) to enable a repository for storing and sharing datasets hosted in a cloud. This tutorial will show users how to access and share datasets using Cloud Dataverse as well as how to spin up different computational tools on those datasets using the MOC. Cloud Dataverse Training Presentation

• MOC OpenShift: On top of our OpenStack service, the MOC and Red Hat have just started offering an OpenShift service. OpenShift offers users a self-scaling container platform with support for anything that can be containerized including web frameworks, databases, and messaging queues. In seconds, one can spin up new containers along with rich Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment capabilities built in. This tutorial will introduce you to the essentials of OpenShift and the underlying Kubernetes/Docker technologies upon which it is built. OpenShift on OpenStack Training Presentation, OpenShift Tutorial Video

Getting Around and Staying in Boston

• Guest Wireless Access
• Parking – You may park in any public lot on campus.  The Granby and Kenmore Lots are closest to CILSE, but due to capacity, it is possible you may need to park at the Agganis Lot and take the Green Line train inbound to Blandford St/plan for a 20 minute walk.
• Getting around Boston – General info
• Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority – If you will be using the subway, Boston University is located along the “B” route of the Green Line. CILSE is at “Blandford Street” (first stop after Kenmore Square).
• Accommodations – We did not block space at any specific hotels, but recommend any of the options provided on this page
• Map of Boston University
• Both Uber and Lyft operate in Boston, in addition to taxi options.
• Other Things to do in Boston

Contact
Please contact Jennifer Stacy with any questions or to be added to the mailing list to receive updates on the Workshop.

Speakers and Facilitators
Additional information can be found here.