SAN FRANCISCO – November 18, 2024 — Oxide Computer Company and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) today announced a plan to bring on-premises cloud computing capabilities to the Livermore Computing (LC) high performance computing center.
The rack-scale Oxide Cloud Computer is intended to allow LLNL to improve the efficiency of operational workloads and provide LC users with new capabilities for provisioning secure, virtualized services alongside HPC workloads.
HPC centers have traditionally run batch workloads for large-scale scientific simulations and other compute-heavy applications. HPC workloads do not exist in isolation—there are a multitude of persistent, operational services that keep the HPC center running. Meanwhile, HPC users also want to deploy cloud-like persistent services—databases, Jupyter notebooks, orchestration tools, Kubernetes clusters. Clouds have developed extensive APIs, security layers, and automation to enable these capabilities, but few options exist to deploy fully virtualized, automated cloud environments on-premises. The Oxide Cloud Computer allows organizations to deliver secure cloud computing capabilities within an on-premises environment.
“On-premises environments are the next frontier for cloud computing,” said Steve Tuck, CEO at Oxide Computer Company. “LLNL is tackling some of the hardest and most important problems in science and technology, requiring advanced hardware, software, and cloud capabilities. We are thrilled to be working with their exceptional team to help advance those efforts, delivering an integrated system that meets their rigorous requirements for performance, efficiency, and security.”
Leveraging the new Oxide Cloud Computer, LLNL will enable staff to provision virtual machines (VMs) and services via self-service APIs, improving operations and modernizing aspects of system management. In addition, LLNL will use the Oxide rack as a proving ground for secure multi-tenancy and for smooth integration with the LLNL-developed Flux resource manager. LLNL plans to bring its users cloud-like Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities that work seamlessly with their HPC jobs, while maintaining security and isolation from other users. Beyond LLNL personnel, researchers at the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories will also participate in activities on the Oxide Cloud Computer.
“We look forward to working with Oxide to integrate this machine within our HPC center,” said Todd Gamblin, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at LLNL. “Oxide’s Cloud Computer will allow us to securely support new types of workloads for users, and it will be a proving ground for introducing cloud-like features to operational processes and user workflows. We expect Oxide’s open source software stack and their transparent and open approach to development to help us work closely together.”
LLNL plans to work with Oxide on additional capabilities, including the deployment of additional Cloud Computers in its environment. Of particular interest are scale-out capabilities and disaster recovery. The latest installation underscores Oxide Computer’s momentum in the federal technology ecosystem, providing reliable, state-of-the-art Cloud Computers to support critical IT infrastructure.
