Conveners
Bridging HPC and Accessibility: An Open OnDemand Deployment for Diverse Research Communities
- Flavio Calvo (University of Lausanne)
Description
Open OnDemand (OOD) is a web-based platform that democratizes access to high-performance computing resources through any browser-enabled device.
At the University of Lausanne (UNIL), we deployed and extensively customized an OOD instance to serve a diverse research community with varying levels of technical expertise. Our deployment addresses the challenges of a highly heterogeneous cluster environment, integrating SLURM scheduling and complex software stacks managed through Spack and Apptainer/Singularity containerization.
We present our deployment strategy, including integration of custom tooling for large-scale data movements between on-premise and cloud storage systems, as well as interactive web applications targeting scientific computing and teaching (Jupyter, RStudio, containerized desktop environments).
We conclude with community feedback and adoption metrics that highlight both successes and ongoing challenges in supporting non-technical users on shared HPC infrastructure.