Folding@home on Google Cloud? Free 60 day trial

[3D_Now!!]

Hi all,

I wrote this post on the rosetta@home forum:

Does anyone know how easy it would be to get folding running on this platform (Ubuntu) using the free 60 day trial?

Also, it's freaking cool you can do this!

Matt

[7im]

See the equivalent Amazon Cloud post for relevant background.

[3D_Now!!]

I've read the following threads:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=27220&p=272816&hilit=Amazon+cloud#p272816

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=26620&p=267593&hilit=Amazon+cloud#p267593

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=26987&p=270993&hilit=Amazon+cloud#p270993

And none provide any detail other than the conclusion that AWS free is not very good for folding.

My post is concerned with highlighting that Google is offering free 60 days of high performance cloud compute. And also enquiring if anyone has experience of how to get folding@home in particular working on it.

If every donor utilised this resource it would provide a significant boost for the project.

[7im]

Since I read your post, I signed up, created a 8 CPU Ubuntu 14.04 VM, and install the FAHClient via command line. CPU usage in the trial app shows 99.8% CPU usage.

[mmonnin]

I signed up for a t2.micro VM on AWS and it's pulling a whopping 1,531 PPD on a p9032.

Edit: Google 8 threads and low mem is getting 18k PPD on same WU.

[3D_Now!!]

Great news 7im! I'm curious why you went for 14.04, as i thought that 15.10 was the same price in credits. But either way good work!

And thanks for the report mmonnin, 18k ppd is respectable for $0.00 cost. If even only the top 1000 donors did this (which to be in the top 1000 anyway requires more effort than it takes to set one of these up!) then that would be 18m ppd for a couple of months...tidy.

[mmonnin]

With the free credits from google and that server choice I will get like 5-6 weeks of compute time at 18-19k PPD. I turned in 4 WUs since I made the post above for 1.6k to 1.7k points each.

[foldy]

And none provide any detail other than the conclusion that AWS free is not very good for folding.

I think not very good for folding means you do not get fast GPUs in the cloud for free but only CPUs.
If they would offer a GPU e.g. similar to GTX 970 then that would be 250k PPD which is 15 times the CPU amount.
But for free why not take the CPUs

[3D_Now!!]

I think the conclusion that most people drew with regards to the free Amazon service was that you only get spare capacity and this can fluctuate. Furthermore, most workunits passed their deadline before submission and so it was actually less beneficial to the project than not running them at all!

However the google one gives you more consistant and powerful CPU time and so as mmonnin mentioned, it completes a WU every couple of hours.

[bruce]

I think the conclusion that most people drew with regards to the free Amazon service was that you only get spare capacity and this can fluctuate. Furthermore, most workunits passed their deadline before submission and so it was actually less beneficial to the project than not running them at all!

However the google one gives you more consistant and powerful CPU time and so as mmonnin mentioned, it completes a WU every couple of hours

These cloud services are designed to make money (one way or another). When they're new, offering a free trial is a good way to find clients, many of whom will stay once the trial is over.

The other side of the coin is that a service with few clients is invariably very fast but the service can only maximize profits by increasing the load factor (and thereby slowing everybody down).

Enjoy it while it's free and fast. When it stops being fast, consider other alternatives. ("fast" means "fast enough for FAH to earn bonus points")

[7im]

Fine print says running Crypto Currency software is prohibited. Interesting to see how far a stretch it is to killing a VM running FAH?

[foldy]

I think Crypto Currency software is mentioned because you earn money with it. This is not the case with FAH.

[toTOW]

It is usually a matter of time before FAH and BOINC also get kicked out this kind of service ...

[3D_Now!!]

I saw that crypto currency is banned, but that will be because you are using it for personal gain I guess.

I think that if a user wants to spend $$$ running a distributed computing program on a cloud service then I don't see why Google or Amazon or any other service would have a problem with this. You pay for what you use and this would be legit business for them. It doesn't make sense from a user perspective, it's cheaper in the long run to build and run a local system for this sort of thing. But for a free short term thing....winning

[7im]

Kicked from the free trial, not as a paying customer.