RONIN - Access AWS

Academic Staff

RONIN access is designed for Researchers to conduct approved University of Adelaide research data processing. It is a quality solution for research that can not be conducted within Phoenix. There is a cost to each user that uses RONIN. Please note, you may be eligible for a quota of up to US$330 per project per year. 

HDR Students

High Degree Research Students can utilise RONIN under the approval and supervision of their supervisor, as there may be costs associated with using this service.

Teaching Purposes (students)

There may be situations where a Undergraduate student may need to use RONIN for their university learning. This would need to be approved by the faculty finance team prior to access being granted as there would need to be supervision and costs covered for the usage.

There are multiple layers of responsiblity for RONIN.

Users of RONIN

When using RONIN, you need to ensure everyone in your work group uses it for approved University of Adelaide purposes. All users of RONIN are responsible for monitoring their own usage of RONIN and to remove data when you are finished, as it will continue to incur costs even if you are not actively using it. If you are new to RONIN you may want to arrange a time with the HPC specialists within the University. This can be arranged by logging a ticket with ITDS via the MyIT Portal.

Tel: +61 8 8313 3000  

Business Owner

For governance, approvals, investment in or feedback on RONIN, please contact the Division of Research and Innovation.

Service Owner

If you are having issues with the technology infrastructure of RONIN, eg if it is not working, you can contact the ITDS Service Desk. You can also visit our RONIN wiki page or the RONIN webpage for further information.

RONIN is specifically designed for researchers to easily access the scale and flexibility of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platforms without having highly specialised computing and technical skills. Using RONIN, researchers launch their own specific complex compute and/or storage resources within minutes, not months. There is no wait for wall-time, there is no queuing or sharing of the resource as they create their own auto-scaling cluster and shut it down when they are done.

RONIN provides researchers with:

• The ability to easily unlock and access the scale and flexibility of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platforms without needing to have highly specialised computing and technical skills.
• The ability to accelerate the pace of computational research as it is an on demand environment and releases them from having to wait in the Phoenix queue particularly when there are tight deadlines - however this may come at an additional cost. Please note, you may be eligible for a quota of up to US$330 per project per year. 
• A readily accessible test environment without the need to purchase or wait for the availability of additional shared hardware (High spec workstations).
• The ability to optimise and review compute jobs prior to submitting them for processing on Phoenix or AWS.
• Access to a compute environment for researchers whose job size may exceed Phoenix limitations.
• Access to additional cloud web services and computational research tools, whilst facilitating external collaboration.
• Tools with the capability to manage spend preventing potential bill shock.

RONIN is ideal for running jobs that are transient and short term in nature. In particular, researchers who:

• Need to process complex data or perform simulations in short timeframes.
• Have data processing or simulation needs which vary significantly over time.
• Need an environment to experiment, fine-tune and test their code.
• Have specific hardware requirements for their data processing and simulation software not catered for on premise.
• Want to increase and decrease (right-size) your storage and compute platforms as required.
• Need to know how much storage costs.
• Want to select to use and pay for AWS machines only when needed.
• Want to closely manage the financial costs of their computational research.

RONIN is one of a number of different research computing options available to researchers at the University. Before registering for RONIN you may want to look at the High Performance Compute Options page to assist you in selecting the most appropriate compute option for your research. 

To find out more about RONIN and the technical details, visit our RONIN wiki page or the RONIN webpage for further information.

The RONIN web application is a conduit between University researchers and Amazon Web Services cloud computing and storage capabilities. The application makes it easier to use cloud computing and storage capabilities to process your data, providing a simple dashboard through which you can create and manage machines with your choice of operating system and hardware, from small servers to high performance compute clusters.

RONIN makes visible, in US dollars, the current and future costs to researchers who use AWS. This means that you know how much your storage costs. This visibility enables you make decisions about your data storage. You can use and pay for AWS machines only when you need them and can increase and decrease (right-size) your storage and compute platforms as required.

Licensing costs for RONIN are covered centrally by ITDS. However, costs for all AWS services used within RONIN may be charged back to research projects each month.

Services are charged at standard AWS rates. RONIN clearly displays the cost of the services you are using and provides tools to allow you to track and manage this. Note that all costs displayed within RONIN are in US dollars.

When setting up your project in RONIN, you will be asked to confirm the budget you have available and the codes to charge costs back to.

Please note, you may be eligible for a quota of up to $330 USD per project per year. We will let you know if your project receives this quota based on the information you provide in your ticket. 

If a quota of US$330 is provided to your project, the following will apply:

• When your project has consumed 75% of the allocated quota, your VMs will be auto-paused and you will receive an automated e-mail informing you about this. 
• You will then need to submit a ticket via the MyIT portal to un-pause your VMs: 
  • If you require more computing than your allocated quota of US$330 , you must include a project code in your ticket. A chargeback to your department/project code will then be arranged and your VMs un-paused.
  • If the project will not exceed the budget limit of US$330, you will need to back-up the data you have in RONIN, and then raise a ticket for it to be restarted without providing budget details. 
• In the absence of a project code, your RONIN VMs will be automatically paused and their contents deleted when you reach 100% of your quota.
• Your RONIN quota of US$330 is allocated on a yearly basis. If you require another quota to be allocated to you for the following calendar year, you will need to submit a ticket via the MyIT portal by the end of the current year.

If you believe that Ronin is the best option for you to run your approved University research compute, you need to seek the following information from the lead researcher to setup or access a RONIN project. Please provide these details to the ITDS Service Desk by logging a ticket in the MyIT Portal.

The details you need to provide in your request are:

• Project/Group name
• Project Owner/Administrator
• Business Owner
• Project/Group description
• Project/Group members:
  • First and last name
  • Email address
• Project duration/timeframe
• Purpose, for example, computer, storage or both
• Name of the researcher responsible for the project code
• Project Code (department Identification code XXX, project identification code XXXXXXXX)
• RONIN project budget (this is for setting usage alerts, and can be adjusted on request)
• Description of the data
• Maximum data classification 
  • See the Protecting My Data web page for a comprehensive description of data classification
  • Please note we currently do not allow class 3 data and above to be hosted on AWS
• Is the project research-based or for teaching purposes?
• Does the Virtual Machine (VM) need access to internet? 
• Does the VM need to be accessed from the internet?
• Does the VM need to talk to/consume online services? 
• Is the data to be used in the VM unrecoverable and as such, needs to be backed up? 
• Type of compute: large, medium, small (X vCPUs, Y RAM, etc.)
• What is your estimation of the compute resources to be used, e.g., 1x GPU instance, or 20x CPU instances?
• Do you expect your compute/storage to be dynamic (that is, workload will vary over time) or static (workload will be relatively constant)? 
• What is the estimated data storage capacity required?
• Is this request a prolongation of an existing RONIN project started in a previous year?  
• Include as an attachment the e-mail approval from your Research Lead or Head of School/Branch to use RONIN

Please note, you may be eligible for a quota of up to $330 USD per project per year. We will let you know if your project receives this quota based on the information you provide in your ticket. 

If a quota of US$330 is provided to your project, the following will apply:

• When your project has consumed 75% of the allocated quota, your VMs will be auto-paused and you will receive an automated e-mail informing you about this. 
• You will then need to submit a ticket via the MyIT portal to un-pause your VMs: 
  • If you require more computing than your allocated quota of US$330 , you must include a project code in your ticket. A chargeback to your department/project code will then be arranged and your VMs un-paused. 
  • If the project will not exceed the budget limit of US$330, you will need to back-up the data you have in RONIN, and then raise a ticket for it to be restarted without providing budget details. 
• In the absence of a project code, your RONIN VMs will be automatically paused, and their contents deleted when you reach 100% of your quota.
• Your RONIN quota of US$330 is allocated on a yearly basis. If you require another quota to be allocated to you for the following calendar year, you will need to submit a ticket via the MyIT portal by the end of the current year.

You may need to allow a week to work through the process of obtaining an account in RONIN. If you have submitted an application for access to RONIN and have not received confirmation after one week, or for any other support, please contact the ITDS Service Desk via the MyIT Portal or Tel: +61 8 8313 3000.

RONIN

You can learn more about RONIN at https://ronin.cloud/. For additional support, please refer to our RONIN wiki page. RONIN has a very useful blog that provides guides and support for using the application. 

ITDS Service Desk

The HPC experts in ITDS can provide some basic level support in the use of RONIN. They can be contacted through the ITDS Service Desk:

Email: ITDS Service Desk via the MyIT Portal

Tel: +61 8 8313 3000

Technical Support for major incidents is available 24/7 via phone

Other technical support is available Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm