ENERGY MANAGEMENT
The first step , which the University of Pisa − along with academic institutions , enterprises and organisations all around the world − had to complete in just a few short , frantic days , was moving the entire entity ’ s operations online . “ We had to transform the university ' s entire educational offering from being in-person to being fully remote ,” says Davini . “ This process didn ’ t relate only to lessons ; it also required us to find a way to take our labs , workstations and other teaching activities online . The new infrastructure we ' d been designing since 2017 was essential to offering these services . Thanks to this digital transformation project , the pandemic didn ' t find us unprepared .”
HPC in a Post-COVID World Increasingly , HPC is experiencing a similar journey to other enterprise and administrative functions : it ’ s headed to the cloud . “ The ability to pay-per-use for HPC resources in the cloud makes its strategic advantages affordable for almost any organisation , including universities ,” says Christopher Huggins , the EMEA Business Director for Data Centric Workloads & Solutions at Dell Technologies . “ And , while some organisations may not be comfortable with every type of cloud computing , sharing HPC compute and storage resources over a network is hardly news to veteran IT shops .”
Davini adds : “ In the past , there was the idea that , to do HPC analysis , you would come to Pisa and do it on-site . Now , that perception has shifted . I think this shift to scientific research and HPC workloads being done remotely will lead to more collaboration between different academic institutions all over the world , especially while international travel is being limited by the effects of the pandemic .”
126 June 2021