Give Einstein a temporary boost via Google Cloud Compute trial
15 Jan 2016 12:50:57 UTC
Topic 198377
(moderation:
If you feel like giving Einstein some extra CPU power temporarily, you can do so by signing up for a 60 day free trial at cloud.google.com.
Here you can create one or more virtual machines, up to a combined total of eight (logical, with hyper threading? don't know.) Xeon cores, with a selection of operating systems to choose from, such as Debian, Ubuntu or Windows Server.
I chose to start an eight core machine with Ubuntu 15.10. Once it is created, which doesn't take long, you'll see it under 'Compute Engine' > 'VM instances', and you can see 'SSH' and a few dots to the right, under 'Connect'. Click the dots, then choose 'open in browser window', and now you can simply interact with the machine via a CLI through your browser. Very neat.
Then you can simply install boinc on it via the usual apt-get or aptitude way, and once that's complete, you can attach to Einstein via the CLI with boinccmd, using boinccmd --project_attach http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
See here for a help page on boinccmd commands. For example, to see WU progress or to update the project, use:
boinccmd --get_tasks boinccmd --project http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ update
A few remarks/limitations:
- No GPU processing.
- No GUI for your VM, as far as I know.
- I tried, but failed to run a project (ATLAS or vLHC) needing VirtualBox in the virtual machine. Maybe nesting VMs is not possible, or I did something wrong. Either way, I stuck to Einstein, as a 'normal' CPU project.
- Mining cryptocurrency via this method is forbidden by Google.
- You will not be billed once the trial period is over, i.e. the trial will not automatically change into a paid subscription.
- Whether you can use the full 60 days depends on how powerful the machine is you create. You get $300 to 'spend' on machines in 60 days, and more powerful machines cost more.
- I must say, hats of to Google for creating this very easy-to-use browser-based interface and for letting people test it for free!
I found this tip somewhere, and thought I'd share it with you. I expect to see a temporary bump in RAC soon. :)
Give Einstein a temporary boost via Google Cloud Compute trial
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Thanks, Michgelsen !
I created an Ubuntu 15.10 8vCPU, 8GB system yesterday and it seems to be running Einstein@Home well so far. No GPU, but the CPU power is nice.
Thanks again for this tip and write-up.
Interesting. I would be
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Interesting. I would be interested in the final US $ / credits ratio at the end of the trial period. Just to compare to my electricity bill :-)
This is cool. I would have
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This is cool. I would have expected Google to specifically forbid distributed computing projects like other providers do, but I only see the cryptocurrency thing as mentioned reading through the fine print.
I found a reddit thread mentioning this and someone posted that Amazon also has a free offer of about a month: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
I have not tried it yet.
Please, help me about this.
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Please, help me about this. Can someone write "step by step" cmd commands. My VM(Ubuntu), is running but I can not start BOINC.
Thank you!
RE: Please, help me about
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Hi Sale - see Boinc_on_Ubuntu
I have a videocard-less, Gold
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I have a videocard-less, Gold PSU, i4590S server at home with similar throughput. My home server uses a total of 50W while running 2 WUs of FGRP4. I could do 4 WUs in parallel, but that would push the PSU into fan mode, which would shorten the life of the PSU by some unknown amount. I built the system to have a high FLOPS/watt ratio and last a long time.
In comparison, the Google Cloud 8 vCore system with 8 WUs of FGRP4 churns through the same amount of work in the same amount of time. I was hoping for the Google Cloud 8 vCore system to be faster, but it is indeed a vCore system. It seems it takes 4 vCores to equal 1 core of an i4590S.
In my part of the world (Atlanta, GA), electricity costs $0.11/kWh. Hence, my monthly cost of my home server @ 50watts is roughly $4/month. Since the Google Cloud server gets the same amont of work done, I estimate it's worth $4/month for someone in Georgia, USA.
Electricity in most of the rest of the 1st world (including U.S.) is usually about double. So, I figure ~$8/month for most of the rest of you guys and gals.
Edit : My estimate is apples-to-apples CPU-only, ex. FGRP4 vs. FGRP4. My estimate goes out the window when comparing against GPU WUs.
Might be interesting to
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Might be interesting to compare some GPU apps, but unfortunately there's no BRP6 CPU version.
Anyway, a GeForce 750 Ti does a single BRP6-Beta task in ~6500 secs and consumes ~50% of TDP, which should equal to approximately 30 W (the card is 60 W TDP). I'm sure this beats any CPU app ;-)
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I did it! Instead weak
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I did it! Instead weak account key you have to input account key.
What happens after the trial
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What happens after the trial period?
RE: What happens after the
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They promise not to automatically charge you. I suppose your projects get cancelled.