The Download: Tech Talks by HPCC Systems – An Interview with Ming Wang

Welcome to the fourth installment of the summer series of The Download: Tech Talks by HPCC Systems

This series focuses on information about the latest developments within HPCC Systems related to the cloud. HPCC Systems has been very active with projects over the past few months, getting better support for dynamic environments via container orchestration and other capabilities.

The fourth installment of the summer series of The Download: Tech Talks by HPCC Systems, features an interview with Ming Wang (Senior Consulting Software Engineer, HPCC Systems Development), and Flavio Villanustre (VP and Chief Security Officer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions).

The full recording of Flavio and Ming’s interview, “The Download: Tech Talks by HPCC Systems – An Interview with Ming Wang,” is available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel, under 2020 Tech Talks. The audio version is available on Soundcloud. 

Meet our presenters

Flavio Villanustre  – Flavio Villanustre is CISO and VP of Technology for LexisNexis® Risk Solutions. He also leads the open source HPCC Systems platform initiative, which is focused on expanding the community gathering around the HPCC Systems Big Data platform, originally developed by LexisNexis Risk Solutions in 2001 and later released under an open source license in 2011. Flavio’s expertise covers a broad range of subjects, including hardware and systems, software engineering, and data analytics and machine learning. He has been involved with open source software for more than two decades, founding the first Linux users’ group in Buenos Aires in 1994. 

Ming Wang  – Xiaoming Wang (Ming) is a Software Engineer and has been with LexisNexis Risk Solutions since 2013. Ming is responsible for various HPCC Systems projects and builds as well as installation and configuration of the HPCC Systems platform. He also works on several cloud solutions for HPCC Systems development, such as Instant Cloud for AWS, Cloud Formation Solution, Juju Charm, Docker/Kubernetes, and many other solutions.

This blog provides a brief summary of topics discussed in the interview, including:

• Latest Developments
• Current Projects
• Additional Information

Let’s begin by discussing the latest developments in the HPCC Systems “journey to the Cloud.”

Latest Developments

HPCC Systems is currently providing native support for public cloud environments. The new operating environment is comprised of Docker containers managed by Kubernetes, along with continued support for “bare metal” installations. Helm charts are used to deploy these containers on cloud platforms that support Kubernetes. 

The HPCC Systems cloud development team continues to make significant progress on the new “cloud native” platform. It is now possible to run an HPCC systems cluster inside an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Cloud (EC2). 

Running the HPCC Systems platform on the cloud allows for:

• Proof-of-concept
• Experimentation
• Learning
• Leveraging the platforming without incurring costs for hardware and administration
• Creating and using the HPCC Systems cluster without buying and installing new hardware.

It also provides more flexibility, as well as the ability to “rent” computing capacity.

Point releases are released weekly. The latest HPCC Systems version is available for download on the website. Version 7.10.4-1 includes the additions of an ESS (Enterprise Storage Server), for shared storage. 

The “cloud native” platform is not yet production-ready, but version 8.0, which is the “production” version, will be released in 2021. 

Current Projects

The cloud development team is currently creating Docker containers for HPCC Systems components, such as core HPCC Systems Platform components, machine learning libraries, as well as legacy VM and Client tools. There are several intern projects underway that are exploring the use of containerized HPCC Systems components in a Kubernetes environment. 

One of the current intern projects involves using Google Cloud as a cloud platform for HPCC Systems. Google Cloud has many great features. A new feature of Google Cloud is Anthos GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). This feature provides a single platform for the management of all Kubernetes workloads. Anthos GKE allows for the development, deployment, and operation of applications across various public cloud platforms, such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft Azure.  

For more information about HPCC Systems and the “journey to the Cloud” see the information below.

Additional Information

Videos

The following videos provide additional details about the HPCC Systems cloud development project:

“The Download, Tech Talks by HPCC Systems: An Interview with Shamser Ahmed” – available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel, under 2020 Tech Talks.

“The Download, Tech Talks by HPCC Systems: An Interview with Ming Wang” – available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel, under 2020 Tech Talks.

“The Download, Tech Talks by HPCC Systems: An Interview with Gavin Halliday” – available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel, under 2020 Tech Talks.

“The Download, Tech Talks by HPCC Systems: An Interview with Jake Smith” – available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel, under 2020 Tech Talks.

Blogs

More information about HPCC Systems and the cloud can be found in the following blogs:

“The Download, Tech Talks by HPCC Systems: An Interview with Richard Chapman” – This is the first installment of the summer series of The Download: Tech Talks by HPCC Systems, featuring an interview with Richard Chapman (VP Technology, HPCC Systems Development at LexisNexis Risk Solutions), and Flavio Villanustre (VP and Chief Security Officer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions).

“HPCC Systems and the Path to the Cloud,” by Richard Chapman: In this blog, Richard Chapman talks about the “journey to the Cloud” and demonstrates how to set up a simple test cluster using a default Helm Chart.

“Setting up a default HPCC Systems cluster on Microsoft Azure Cloud Using HPCC Systems 7.8.x and Kubernetes,” by Jake Smith: This blog outlines the steps required to set up and run the HPCC Systems Helm Charts using the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

“Persisting data in an HPCC Systems Cloud native environment,” by Gavin Halliday: This blog covers how to persist your data in an HPCC Systems cloud native environment.

Acknowledgements

A special thank you to Ming Wang and Flavio Villanustre for this informative update about the HPCC Systems cloud development project.