STFC: Using Kubernetes to better understand climate change | SUSE Communities

STFC: Using Kubernetes to better understand climate change

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“The team at STFC were looking for a vendor-backed solution to help manage its Kubernetes estate. Working with SUSE Rancher, the Kubernetes architecture was easy to deploy, manage and scale.” Sheng Liang, President of Engineering and Innovation, SUSE.

The UK-based Science and Technology Facilities Council’s JASMIN supercomputer, running in SUSE Rancher, currently serves more than 1500 researchers, exploring a vast range of topics. With climate change high on the agenda for governments everywhere, climate-related projects have never been more important.

Whether it’s processing volume weather data, or modeling temperature changes in inner cities, STFC’s JASMIN platform powers these and other world-changing research projects. Kubernetes was the natural choice to provide the underlying infrastructure, removing data movement and data wrangling issues and allowing users to get insights more quickly.

SUSE Rancher answered the need for scale, flexibility, and open interoperability, allowing technology teams to flex compute resources faster, making the service resilient for the long term, no matter how complex or varied projects may be.

Advancing data science for the global good

Sarah Berk, a Ph.D. student at the University of East Anglia, is currently working with STFC’s JASMIN platform to analyze terabytes of data measuring the impact of climate change within cities all over the world.

Specifically, Berk uses the JASMIN platform to better understand rising inner-city temperatures, eventually, providing a framework for change in metropolitan planning and design — whether that’s the selection of building materials, the creation of new green spaces or other innovations that lead to more sustainable cities for future generations to enjoy.

The JASMIN platform has enabled Sarah to make rapid progress in her research, saving her time and compute resources without requiring her to learn new skills.

SUSE Rancher supports STFC’s unique needs and those of the global research community. It is easy-to-use but also interoperable and flexible enough to build, scale and transform on demand, enhancing the ability to deploy, manage and scale the services JASMIN offers to the user community.

Since JASMIN was first launched in early 2012, it has grown significantly in scale and complexity but also in the variety of projects it serves. This growth is likely to continue as the world increasingly turns to the research community to find innovative ways to combat the climate crisis.

Click here to find out more about how STFC is using Kubernetes to better understand climate change.

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