Cloud computing with XBeach

by Marco Westra MetOcean Consult

In this tutorial discusses the possibilities of cloud computing for XBeach (Roelvink et al., 2009) on two different cloud computing systems is presented. Cloud computing is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. A simple web service interface allows the user to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. Cloud computing reduces the time required to obtain and boot new machine to minutes, allowing the user to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change.

The cloud computing systems analysed in this memo are Amazon EC2 (Chapter 2) and Microsoft Azure (Chapter 3). The focus of this analysis is to identify the possibilities per system and to determine the best option in terms of price per XBeach simulation. This analysis is carried out for WP5 (Application at case studies sites) within the RISC-KIT program in order to provide partners that do not have high speed computational facilities with an alternative. The conclusions are presented in Chapter 4.

Amazon EC2

Amazon offers via AWS (Amazon Web Services) several possibilities of cloud computing (EC2: Elastic Compute Cloud). The possibilities of the on-demand instances are tested. There are however also possibilities with so-called reserved instances. This can potentially save up to 75% in prices, but doesn’t have the flexibility of the on-demand services. An Instance is the name for a computer / virtual machine. In this memo the possibilities of the UNIX-environment (Linux) are tested.

More information about the cloud computing possibilities of Amazon can be found on their website: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

Creating an account

Creating an account at Amazon is quite easy. On top of that there is a free tier that is designed to enable to get hands-on experience with AWS at no charge for 12 months after you sign up. After creating your AWS account you can use any of the 21 products and services (EC2 is one of them). You can sign up for the AWS’s free tier with the following steps:

  • Sign-up for an AWS account.
  • Enter your billing address and credit card information. You will not be charged unless your usage exceeds the free usage tiers.
  • Start using AWS choosing from any of the products listed below.
  • For XBeach simulations you need to select the Amazon EC2
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