Institutions rely on High-Performance Computing (HPC) to accelerate discovery, run complex simulations, and shorten product development cycles. However, they also face challenges in managing costs, monitoring energy consumption, and reducing carbon emissions.
The Challenge of Hosting HPC Infrastructure
For many organisations, maintaining on-site HPC infrastructure is becoming increasingly unfeasible due to two key factors:
- Physical Demands – Hosting, powering, and cooling HPC clusters requires significant resource investment across technology and personnel.
- Management Complexity – Balancing current performance with long-term strategic planning is a continuous challenge requiring dedicated attention.
Each of these factors exerts different levels of pressure, making it difficult for organisations to strike the right balance. However, with these challenges come new opportunities for innovation and efficiency.
The Pressures on HPC Infrastructure
Organisations must ensure their HPC systems are hosted securely and efficiently while maintaining compliance, scalability, and transparency. Rising energy costs and cooling demands remain a primary concern, but additional pressures include:
- Infrastructure Depreciation – Both data centres and the hardware within them age over time, requiring continuous planned modernisation and reinvestment.
- Expanding Research Needs – Increasing demand for supercomputing resources means once-small teams now require systems and skillsets far beyond their current capacity.
- Operational Complexity – Effective administration, data interpretation, and deployment are critical to gaining and retaining strategic advantage in the field.
- Employee Burnout – IT teams face mounting stress and stretched resources in order to maintain performance, ensure security, and support growing research demands.
Transitioning to a sustainable and resilient HPC infrastructure not only enhances efficiency but also alleviates workload stress. By optimising operations, IT teams can focus on innovation and collaboration rather than infrastructure maintenance.
Enhancing IT Operations
Given the significant investment in HPC infrastructure, organisations must fully utilise their resources to meet growing research demands. However, increased workloads can compromise both system and user performance.
Alces Flight’s subscription offerings help IT departments optimise workflows, assess infrastructure, and monitor performance to support research scalability. Our solutions include:
- Resource Management – Ensuring optimal system utilisation.
- Real-Time Monitoring & Reporting – Tracking performance to enhance efficiency.
- Dedicated Support – Providing expert assistance to drive operational success.
Our vendor-agnostic approach ensures unbiased, tailored advice aligned with an organisation’s goals, delivering HPC solutions that evolve with their needs. Unsure of impact? Our recent collaboration with the University of York demonstrated what a complete HPC revamp can do in setting research on the future-forward pathway, earning recognition through the 2024 UCISA Award for Sustainable Digital Project.
Reducing Complexity and Increasing Efficiency
Shifting to subscription-based HPC significantly reduces complexity, minimises employee burnout, and lowers costs while improving efficiency. Subscribing to Alces Flight enables organisations to maximise resources by entrusting us with HPC infrastructure management, including hardware, software, and data services.
By leveraging our subscription platform, IT teams can focus on core responsibilities such as user training, application management, and performance enhancement. This results in:
- Improved Research Efficiency – Streamlined operations and faster computational processes.
- Accelerated Innovation Cycles – Enabling breakthroughs without infrastructure-related delays.
- Cost-Effective Scaling – Optimising resource allocation for evolving research demands.
With Alces Flight, organisations can transition to a sustainable, high-performing HPC environment that meets both present and future needs.