CERN Testing Cloud For Crunching the Universe's Secrets

Nerval's Lobster writes "The European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as CERN) requires truly epic hardware and software in order to analyze some of the most epic questions about the nature of the universe. While much of that computing power stems from a network of data centers, CERN is considering a more aggressive move to the cloud for its data-crunching needs. To that end, CERN has partnered with Rackspace on a hybrid cloud built atop OpenStack, an open-source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform originally developed by Rackspace as part of a joint effort with NASA. Tim Bell, leader of CERN's OIS Group within its IT department, suggested in an interview with Slashdot that CERN and Rackspace will initially focus on simulations—which he characterized as 'putting into place the theory and then working out what the collision will have to look like.' CERN's private cloud will run 15,000 hypervisors and 150,000 virtual machines by 2015—any public cloud will likely need to handle similarly massive loads with a minimum of latency. 'I would expect that there would be investigations into data analysis in the cloud in the future but there is no timeframe for it at the moment,' Bell wrote in a follow-up email. 'The experiences running between the two CERN data centers in Geneva and Budapest will already give us early indications of the challenges of the more data intensive work.' CERN's physicists write their own research and analytics software, using a combination of C++ and Python running atop Linux. 'Complex physics frameworks and the fundamental nature of the research makes it difficult to use off-the-shelf [software] packages,' Bell added."

rackspace?!

[Blymie]

Rackspace?!

Wait, what?!

Rackspace is the most *horribly* run hosting service of all time. I could go on for hours and hours and HOURS describing how inept and incapable they are.

From months to source SSDs, to providing horrible support, and utter incompetence on the part of their staff... I mean, they're HORRIBLE! Just plain horrible. If any of their automation breaks down? Well, good luck getting help FAST. I mean, if a VM move fails, well.. maybe you'll get help in 24 *hours*.

Maybe. If it's the weekend, well.. or at night... well, after all, people only use the internet during the day!

And if anything is even slightly outside of the box? Good luck with that!

No, no, no. Not to mention, expensive. I was saddled with these boneheads when a PHB decided they were a great idea! Meanwhile, they take MORE time out of your day, than just maintaining hardware servers in a data center, because if anything goes wrong?

Well, emails, calls, conferences, blah blah blah. In 1/10th of the time it would take for rackspace to fix ANYTHING, I could just tell a traditional data center to reboot my box, or install a new one.

Hell, I've had VMs@Rackspace that were HUNG, that would NOT respond to the web console reboot command. TIme to get that fixed? HOURS. Christ, just GET IT FIXED.

And cost? COST! PHB made me use these boneheads. We leased two Dell R720s. For the cost of 3 MONTHS worth of the lease, I could have bought a better equipped R720! Or, hey, maybe TWO Supermicro servers!

Rackspace is a time sucking hole in the ground. It's "expert" admins will suck your time away. Hell, I had to put off dozens of projects, whilst I dealt with their constant and continual fuckups, the phone calls, the emails, the explaining to them how to fix simple thing!

Heck, don't even get me started with Rackconnect, good god. Worse, buggy as hell as it is (or at least was), they had all sorts of problems with their automated iptables scripts. I snag it, debug it, and realise that some conehead there can't write simple bash...

Fix it...

Report the fix...

And am still suck with months, I repeat MONTHS of their script being used on my boxes, with no way to replace it (it was scp'd in on boot), and therefore broken firewall rules all over the place. MONTHS, when I provided them with a fix! A ONE LINE FIX AT THAT!

No, no, no, no, NO they are horrible, stay away, run the other way, my god stay the hell away from Rackspace, the most useless company on the planet!

If any of you, I repeat ANY of you want more detailed info, please let me know.... I hope they burn in flames as they go down into a tarpit in hell!