November 2014 Summaries

Running engineering simulations in the cloud while using existing licenses presents challenges due to the hardware dependency of on-premise license servers, which are typically behind corporate firewalls. Traditional solutions involve setting up a VPN connection, but this requires significant time and corporate IT involvement. An alternative is using a reverse SSH tunnel, which avoids modifying firewalls and allows secure, encrypted communication between cloud instances and a license proxy server. This method offers flexibility, as the connection can be controlled and terminated by the customer without affecting the corporate firewall. A specific example involves configuring FlexLM, where ports are mapped through an SSH command to facilitate communication between the cloud and the license server. This approach allows engineers to manage licenses efficiently while maintaining security, with Rescale providing the necessary setup and support for seamless integration.

Rescale is addressing the challenge of integrating remote visualization solutions into engineering workflows by providing a secure, user-friendly, and incremental approach to cloud-based visualization. The company aims to offer a variety of third-party pre- and post-processing tools, including FEMAP, Tecplot, Ensight, Paraview, and native GUIs like Star-CCM+, ANSYS, and AVL FIRE, while tackling issues such as network performance, large data set management, and GPU utilization for 3D visualization. Initial efforts include a basic remote desktop solution using VNC over SSH, allowing users to set up a visualization node as part of their Rescale job, with future plans to enhance user experience by supporting different visualization needs, such as monitoring job progress and optimizing data transfer. Users interested in testing these solutions are encouraged to contact Rescale, and feedback is welcomed to refine the remote visualization experience further. The initiative is led by Mulyanto Poort, VP of HPC at Rescale, who brings extensive experience in software development and mechanical engineering.

Rescale provides a straightforward method for capturing periodic snapshots of a working directory during a job run, which can be useful for restarts or local review. Users can select the desired run from the Status tab, click the "Snapshot" button, and confirm the action to package the current directory, including subdirectories, into a zip file. This snapshot can then be downloaded from the modal or the Results tab, with each snapshot being labeled by date and time if multiple are taken during a run. Adam McKenzie, the author and CTO responsible for managing HPC and customer success teams, has a background in aerospace engineering from Boeing and holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University.