Red Oak Consulting HPC PoC

Founded in 2004, Red Oak Consulting was established to meet the market need for high quality, specialist advise for high-performance computing (HPC). As the broader IT industry has evolved towards cloud, we have identified the opportunities for communities which would, traditionally have been using HPC. Cloud offers significant opportunities for a wide set of workloads across a broad set of use-cases. It opens up new and exciting ways of translating ideas, through computation, into actionable outcomes.

We recognise that HPC and cloud journeys involve change - and that change means risk to your business. We’ve developed an industry-leading set of processes and methodologies to manage and mitigate these diverse risks for our customers. When these are combined with our industry-renowned consultants, it provides a world-beating combination. One that our customers can rely on. Our market leadership in the provision of HPC and cloud solutions is founded on the way we work. We ensure that all of our solutions are focused on what is best for you, our customer. We are fully independent. We have no axes to grind. Our success is predicated completely on the success of our customers.

Red Oak Consulting has been partnering with Microsoft Azure for more than 8 years applying our niche HPC skill and knowledge which is critical to support customers when looking at cloud, in particular, Microsoft Azure for a HPC solution. As the Cloud solution for HPC continues to enhance understanding it’s capability for your specific business is vital. To find out if Microsoft Azure (Cloud) is right for your business, investitive questions need to be asked to identify whether the solution of Azure is right for you and your users.

Red Oak Consulting will help you find the answers and share with you, tangible results necessary to further any HPC in Azure dialogue.

Our tried and tested approach of our Proof of Concept (PoC) will enable you to define your Azure cluster, built to allow a unique demonstration of one of your workflow / application’s so performance and capability can be tested. After the completion of benchmarking a full report highlighting the results, scalability and recommendations will be made available to you. Remember NOT all workflows are right for cloud.

To complete the PoC Red Oak Consulting will complete a series of tasks which are outlined below:

Task One: Build Azure Environment

Task Two: Migrate the chosen Application / Workflow

Task Three: Complete Benchmarking

Task Four: Produce a Report Highlighting Results which will include a demonstration of performance scaling and the scaling Curve

Task Five: Provide Recommendations based on Results

The outcome from these tasks, the deliverables which you will receive as part of this engagement will be as follows:

A standalone live Azure Cluster

Results from running a workflow/application on Azure cluster

Final Report showing results with the consultants explanations

The ability to ask questions, get answers from a HPC Cloud technical specialist

Recommendations on next steps

The timeline for the project will be no more than a two-week duration. We recommend an initial kick - off meeting be held prior the project go live where the consultant will meet with your chosen nominated stakeholders to discuss the project hygiene and parameters in further detail. Here the chosen workload will be agreed, the specific areas you are looking at to measure and determine if the PoC is successful, e.g. performance, speed, cost etc.

As with any IT project, there will be constraints and dependencies associated with the project. We believe the below detail those which would be applicable to a PoC project.

Subscription used will be that of Red Oak Consulting.

No more than two applications can be used for the PoC.

Application (s) to be tested must have NO licencing constraints.

Benchmarking activity can last up to $10,000 of Azure ACR.

This is a standalone Proof of Concept (PoC) offering, not designed to any one specific industry.

Full requirements capture does not form part of this project and is not the responsibility of Red Oak.

Customer will appoint a day-to-day contact to liaise alongside the Red Oak Consultant.

The project is to be completed with the Red Oak consultant working remotely.

Red Oak must be in receipt of a valid PO before the project can commence with their support.

This project has been timeboxed to 10 days of time to complete. If further / extra days are required, then an additional PO will be required and Red Oak will charge the daily rate of the project consultant(s).