Recurring Meeting of Cleveland Clinic - Stanford University

Date: February 21, 2014

Time: 2:00 PM EST

Means: Conference Call

Attendees:

1. Ahmet Erdemir (Cleveland Clinic)
2. Craig Bennetts (Cleveland Clinic)
3. Snehal Chokhandre (Cleveland Clinic)
4. Joy Ku (Stanford University)
5. Henry Kwong (Stanford University)

Immediate Action Items:

• Stanford University (Joy & Henry)

  • Provide test server location to evaluate mockup interface.
  • Provide list of servers in XSEDE to ask for feedback.

• Cleveland Clinic (Ahmet & Craig)

  • Provide detailed information on computational cost of simplified test problem and Open Knee(s) - Generation 1.

Agenda:

1. Progress on mockup interface development for the compute gateway to Simtk.
2. Location of mockup interface.
3. Update on status of XSEDE related progress (i.e. gateway).
4. Update on data server related info.
5. Status of bug report on editing task privacy in the task manager.
6. Decide action items for next meeting.
7. Other.

Notes:

1. Progress on mockup interface development for the compute gateway to Simtk.
   • A functional mockup interface is ready. The system allows selection of a server. In return, selection of software packages installed on the server is possible. The list of software is automatically updated based on the server. If the user decides to change the configuration file a pre-loaded text box appears with various configuration parameters. The text box can be widened. For large content, a vertical scroll bar appears. Currently, a submission prompts a notification window about license agreement. In following, a response window opens up. The user gets an e-mail about the job submission. The mockup seems to be functional to the specifications and ready to run test simulations.
2. Location of mockup interface.
   • The mockup interface is currently at a test server. The url of the server will likely change. Henry will inform the group about the new location. User login with Simtk account will be necessary. The interface is specifically located under the advanced tab of the Open Knee project site replica (in the test server), labeled as "job submission".
3. Update on status of XSEDE related progress (i.e. gateway).
   • Joy is trying to decide what to request for a start-up allocation. In addition to computing time, data storage and visualization resources can be requested. It may be useful to get some data storage as well to test data management setups (see the following agenda item).
   • Joy requested CPU time requirements for potential simulations. The cloud computing specifications provide some indications for a simple test problem. The Cleveland Clinic team will elaborate on this on the wiki and also provide computing requirements for the first generation model of Open Knee(s). The information should include the computing hardware on which the simulation was conducted, the operating system, simulation settings (parallelized or not), and the CPU and wall-clock times. This information will be used in the XSEDE application.
   • Joy will provide links in regard to list of servers available in XSEDE. The Cleveland Clinic team is expected to help identify desirable servers to access.
   • The Stanford University team is also exploring other cloud computing architectures such as Amazon Elastic Computing. The goal is to provide a general purpose interface regardless of the underlying computing framework. Google Compute Engine is another alternative.
4. Update on data server related info.
   • The teams had a discussion on the use of Midas Platform for data management. Joy wondered the advantages of this platform when compared to other cloud services, e.g. Box. Ahmet noted the focus of Midas Platform on scientific data and imaging, providing visualization opportunities and allowing incorporation of metadata. It may be also be possible to integrate Simtk authorization and authentication to a Midas Platform installation.
   • Ahmet noted that it may be possible to provide data management services through XSEDE, in case storage capacity and bandwidth become concerns.
5. Status of bug report on editing task privacy in the task manager.
   • This bug has been addressed yet. Currently this is a low priority task for both teams.
6. Decide action items for next meeting.
   • See Immediate Action Items above.
7. Other.
   • A discussion on potential future platforms for Simtk was held. Ahmet described their use of Trac and the potential of Apache Bloodhound. The Simtk has a single server entry with multiple servers as backups.