Cloud Computing for High Performance Optimization of Water Distribution Systems

Z. Y. Wu
1
and M. Khaliefa
2

1
Applied Research, Bentley Systems, Incorporated, Watertown, CT06795, USA, email:
Zheng.wu@bentley.com
2
Computer Science Department, University of Connecticut, USA

ABSTRACT
Cloud computing is quickly becoming an innovative model for delivering IT infrastructure,
applications and data management. It shifts the emphasis from static, stand-alone
applications to dynamic, shared environments, dynamically allocated among various tasks
and accessed via a network. In this paper, we investigate the use of cloud computing for
high performance optimization of water distribution systems. The paper covers the general
survey of leading commercial cloud computing services, high performance computing
(HPC) cloud differentiators and demonstration of the improved HPC cloud implementation.
With necessary background information on cloud computing, a prototype of the high
performance computing (HPC) cloud is proposed and developed for water system
optimization. The prototyped HPC cloud is constructed by using many-core machines that
form the cloud platform for running parallel applications. Finally, as an example of cloud-
based water distribution optimization, a pump scheduler has been deployed onto the HPC
cloud with web-based user interface, through which a user could submit, execute and
retrieve optimization analysis jobs.
Keywords: Cloud computing, high performance computing, parallel optimization and
water distribution system

INTRODUCTION

Applying optimization techniques in water distribution system analysis spans a wide range
of topics, including but not limited to model calibration, design, asset management,
operation and water security-related research as well. Due to the size of water distribution
systems and the nature of solving each of water distribution system optimization problems.
It always requires for evaluating a large number of trial solutions, each of which needs to
run hydraulic and/or water quality simulation model. To obtain a competitively good or
near-optimal solution, one optimization run can take many hours or even days for a large
system. Therefore, improving the computation efficiency is essential for efficiently solving
for a water distribution system optimization, especially for the real-time modeling
applications where a good quality solution is expected to be obtained in a faster manner.
Over last few decades, the computing efficiency counted on Moores law, which predicts
the doubling of transistors every 18 months, thus faster computer processors.
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Consequently, the faster the water distribution optimization applications run. However,
Moores law has failed to result in the faster processor in single core (thread) speed at
about 3 GHz. To increase compute speed, transistors are used to add many cores into the
same CPU socket, which yields dual-core and many-core machine. Therefore,
implementing the parallel optimization model, such as pump scheduling, is crucial to take
advantage of the many core machines (Wu and Zhu 2009).
Apart from parallelizing an optimization application, the efficiency of optimization
modeling can be further enhanced by employing cloud computing. Wu, Butala and Yan
(2010) demonstrated a prototype of conducting high performance optimization of pump
scheduling on a private cloud. It was constructed by using Microsoft HPC cluster where the
parallel pump scheduling application is hosted for secured access over internet. Liu, Xu and
Ye (2010) presented a prototype of on-demand groundwater modeling using Microsoft
Window Azure cloud computing platform.
In this paper, we present a general architecture of HPC cloud computing for high
performance optimization of water distribution systems. An example of a real water system
pump scheduling is demonstrated for HPC cloud application.
CLOUD COMPUTING
The concept of cloud computing can be traced back to ideas such as utility computing,
which envisioned a future where packaged information technology services would be
metered and delivered to customers much like electricity, gas and water. Cloud is a number
of connected servers that are accessible for users over internet to perform the desired
computing tasks. Cloud computing is defined as a style of computing in which dynamically
scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the internet. Users do
not need to have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in
the cloud that supports them.

A cloud environment enables users to run applications by deploying them over a secured
web portal to the cloud, which acts like a virtual datacenter. The physical cloud resources
may reside in a number of locations, the details of which are not typically known to the
users. Cloud resources are offered as a service on an as-needed basis, and delivered by IP-
based connectivity. The concept of cloud computing generally incorporates combinations
of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a
Service (SaaS) (Appistry 2009). Table 1 summarizes the offerings of top cloud computing
vendors. Due to the fast pace of the cloud computing marketplace, the services may change
since the survey.
Cloud computing aims at leveraging the shared computing resources and offering many
advantages of reliability, agility and shared multi-tenancy. It allows organizations and users
to deliver highly-scalable and reliable applications cost-effectively. This yields tremendous
advantage for enterprises that depend on or benefit from either large-scale or bursty
applications, whose load tends to arrive in short spikes such as executing computational
intensive optimization runs. With cloud-based applications in place, these enterprises are
freed to deliver new products to their customers more rapidly. Because they are able to
think out of box and unencumbered by the constraints of scale, they are able to make better
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business decisions by applying sophisticated analyses to the wealth of data available for
them. At the same time, the dramatic reduction in the complexity of the IT environment,
the reduced provisioning times, and the ability to shift the allocation of cloud resources in
response to changing market conditions creates a more flexible IT organization and a more
agile enterprise. Because the enterprise is empowered to align IT infrastructure investments
with project benefits, overall risk is reduced and the enterprise is able to invest in more
strategic initiatives.
There are two types of cloud, private cloud and public cloud. Private Cloud computing
environment exists within the boundaries of an organization, typically for internal specific
usage. It aims to provide the usage of the internal IT resources and applications more
efficiently and cost effectively. Applications that are computation intensive can be easily
deployed on this private cloud and then can be provisioned for use within the boundaries of
the organization. This helps in saving time and resources for configuring the applications
for all the users in the organization. As the name implies, public cloud is open for general
public, which could include individuals, corporations or other type of organizations. Our
prototype of HPC cloud computing can serve as either a private or public cloud
infrastructure that enables users to undertake high performance optimization without
investing the IT capital.
Table 1 Top Cloud Computing Vendors
Names Service Security Pricing HPC
Amazon EC2 IaaS Firewalls with user
control
Pay per use Yes
Microsoft
Windows Azure
PaaS, SaaS Access Security policies Pay per use or
contract
Yes
Google App
Engine
PaaS (for Java
and Python only)
Limited access to
underlying OS
Free till 10 apps up
to 500MB storage
No
VMWare
vCloud
IaaS Not Clear Pay per use No
Rackspace IaaS and PaaS Not Clear Pay per use No
GoGrid IaaS Firewalls and VPN Pay per use No
Salesforce SaaS SSL, firewalls, intrusion
detection systems
Not Clear No
IBM IaaS Not Clear Beta and free at
survey time
No
OpSource SaaS VPN Access, firewalls Pay per use No
Hosting.com IaaS Not Clear Depends on user
configuration
No

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HPC CLOUD ARCHITECTURE
HPC cloud prototype consists of a number of quad-core machines. A cluster of the
machines is formed using the Microsoft HPC Server 2008 platform and HPC Pack. It
provides secure, scalable cluster resource management, a job scheduler, and a Message
Passing Interface (MPI) stack for parallel programming. Microsoft HPC Pack SDK is used
to write client applications that interact with the job scheduler, which schedules jobs on
Microsoft HPC Server 2008.
Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of the HPC cloud. The Head node and the Compute
nodes have MS Server 2008 installed with HPC pack. As shown in the figure the HPC
Cluster is on the secured network. No user can access the head node. Head node can only
be accessed by the Broker or the web portal. Head node is the manager for the cluster and
manages scheduling of all the jobs on Compute nodes. Head node can also act as a
Compute Node.
The web portal or the broker is an ASP application server which is hosted on the secured
network and hence can access the Head Node. Broker provides a web interface for the job
scheduler and it interacts with the Head Node. One can specify parameters like Job Name,
Job priority, Number of Nodes, Number of Cores for the job to be run on the cloud. Input
files can also be provided to the scheduler and the corresponding output is retrieved and
displayed within the portal. One can change the input file on the fly and submit it for next
run. It allows a user to upload input files for multiple optimization runs. A user can run a
job only using the web portal thereby ensuring the network security.

Figure 1 High Performance Computing Cloud
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HPC CLOUD COMPUTING PORTAL
HPC cloud computing portal, as shown in Figure 2, serves as an interface for a user to
submit a job, namely a optimization run, view job status and retrieve the run results. This is
secured web portal that only authorized user can access the portal.
As illustrated in Figure 2, various job parameters including Job Name, Job Priority, Time to
Live, Resource type and number of computing cores or processes can be specified by the
user. An analysis model file and an optimization model file must be uploaded for a job, the
former is the hydraulic simulation model and the latter is the model specifying the
optimization task. After the job is submitted, the input files are displayed under the
corresponding tab. Once uploaded, the model files can be edited and submitted for new run.
Thus the web portal provides a good environment for submitting and managing the
optimization runs.


Figure 2 HPC Cloud Web Portal Interface
Once a job is submitted, user can view the status of the submitted job under Job Status. It
provides the run time status. When completed, the results are retrieved and displayed under
Output tab. User can analyze the results and resubmit the new runs as desired.
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As an example, pump scheduling optimization is hosted on the HPC cloud. The
optimization model was previously developed by Wu (2004). It optimizes the operation
policy for both fixed and variable speed pumps so that energy cost is minimized while
meeting system hydraulics and water quality requirements. The optimization formulation
divides the operating period into a series of control time intervals. Each time interval is
assigned a scheduling variable, indicating the pump operating status and/or the operating
speed (if a variable speed pump is concerned), for each pump. An operating strategy is
composed of the combination of pump operation sitting over the control time intervals. To
speed up the computation performance, a parallel version of the scheduler (Wu and Zhu
2009) has been implemented using Message Passing Interface (MPI), it runs on multi-core
machines. As the first application of the secured HPC cloud computing, a prototype has
been developed to deploy this application onto the secured HPC cloud as prototyped as in
Figure 2.

APPLICATION
To test the pump scheduling optimization on the HPC cloud, the pump operation
optimization of Oldham demand monitoring zone (DMZ) in UK has been undertaken by
submitting the runs to the cloud over the portal. As shown in Figure 3, the system supplies
about 57 Ml/day with 11 pump stations and 9 tanks. The annual energy cost is about
330,000 and daily cost of 983. The details of the optimization model for this system were
given by Wu, Woodward and Allen (2009). With the same dataset and the similar
constraints, the optimized pump operation results in a daily energy cost of 883. It
represents more than 10% saving in pumping energy cost.
A number of optimization runs have been conducted by using different cores on the HPC
cloud. Figure 4 illustrates the CPU time used for running the pump scheduling optimization
from 1 core to 12 cores. The computing time has been reduced from 13 hours to about 1
hour. A good performance speedup has been achieved with the HPC cloud for this study.
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Figure 3 Oldham Demand Monitoring Zone System


Figure 4 Perfoeamnce of HPC Cloud for Pump Scheduling Study
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CONCLUSIONS
Cloud computing evolves from a buzzword to an important theme of information
technology innovation. It delivers cost-effective services of various computing tasks. This
paper demonstrates that high performance computing can be achieved via cloud computing.
Good performance speedup is achieved for pump scheduling. It has illustrated that the
near-optimal solution of pump scheduling for a large water system is obtained in an
efficient manner (within an hour), which promises the possibility of online or real-time
optimization of system operation using HPC cloud. In addition, the implemented HPC
cloud serves a cost-effective approach for undertaking various optimization studies in water
distribution system analysis.
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