An overview of what changed at PW in the third quarter of 2023
August
News
AWS Solutions & FTR
AWS has a process called the Foundational Technical Review (FTR) that determines whether software can be listed in the AWS Solutions Library. The FTR includes high standards for security, usability, documentation, and reliability, among other criteria.
Recently, we passed the FTR! Now the Parallel Works platform is listed in the AWS Solutions Library under Cross-Industry Solutions > Engineering & Design > Analysis & Optimization. You can find our page here.
Azure Marketplace
We’ve also recently been listed in the Azure Marketplace in the Compute category. You can find our page here.
Google Cloud Blog
Google recently published a blog post about their new H3 virtual machines, and Parallel Works was featured with a highlighted quote. These H3 instances are now available for use on the PW platform. You can read more about these instances on Google’s blog here.
Recent Changes
User Guide URL Migration
To make our documentation easier to access, we’ve moved the user guide to parallelworks.com/docs. The old URL docs.parallel.works redirects to the new site.
Platform UI Changes
We’ve recently updated the blue navigation bar at the top of the platform. The Resources page has been renamed to Compute, and the old Compute page has been renamed to Home. The user guide has been updated to reflect these changes.
The Computing Resources module on the Home page has been split into My Computing Resources and Shared Computing Resources, making it easier to monitor running clusters at a glance.
Short-Term Credentials
On the PW platform, AWS resources make use of short-term credentials. This means that the platform rotates secret access keys immediately after they’re entered into our system. Then, the platform uses the rotated secret access key to generate short-term credentials, which are used by all PW platform services. Now, Azure and Google resources support short-term credentials too.
We’ve also added a feature to generate short-term credentials for bucket storage resources. Now you can click the key icon in the Storage Resources module on the Home page and you'll be given short-term credentials, which can be used to transfer objects into the cloud bucket. Documentation for these changes will be published in our user guide soon.
Bucket Creation and Sharing
You can now provision AWS S3 and Google bucket storage resources on the PW platform. Azure Blob provisioning support will be added soon. Please see Creating Storage for more information.
Previously, bucket storage resources could only be used in the account where they were created. Now, you can share buckets with other users in your organization. Please see Sharing Storage for more information.
Capacity Reservations
When configuring AWS clusters, you can now add capacity reservations to partitions. When you toggle Capacity Reservation to Yes, two new fields will appear: Reservation ID and Placement Group.
Please note that capacity reservations must first be set up on AWS by an administrator in your organization.
Cloud Account Keys
For Administrators
As a security feature, we’ve changed the process for adding a CSP key to users’ accounts. Previously, this process was completed through Account > Cloud Accounts on the PW platform. Now, only administrators can add CSP keys through the Organization menu. For more information about this process, please see Adding a Cloud Account.
Upcoming Changes
User Workspace Migration
We'll be changing how we store and configure home directories in user workspaces: they will now be stored on persistent disks on the cloud, allowing for easier back-ups and management. This change will also allow us to easily change workspace configurations, including CPU and memory allocations.
This change is not user-facing, so users shouldn't expect anything to change in the UI or platform functionality. We'll be pushing this change live on September 11, 2023.
Automated User Workspace Scaling
We are working on support for automated scaling on user workspaces. This means that if a PW user is inactive, their user workspace will automatically shut down, reducing costs for organizations.
Please note that this will only affect user workspaces, which is what runs the IDE users interact with, not any running clusters or storage resources.
Redesigned Marketplace
Users will soon be able to share configured clusters and storage resources, in addition to configured workflows. We expect these changes to roll out later in September.
SSO Login
We’ll be introducing single sign-on (SSO) to the PW platform. When you log in at cloud.parallel.works, you’ll be asked to enter your organization before you’re presented with additional login options. We’re adding SSO because some organizations have different login methods (for example, password only versus Azure Active Directory login options).
We expect to release this change later in September. This change will not affect platforms deployed on-premises or in your organization’s cloud account.
New Storage Resources
We'll be adding two new storage resources to the platform's Storage page: Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) and Google Filestore. We expect to make these options available later in September.
Extended Notifications
Currently users are notified when they exceed an allocation budget or when clusters are running longer than a configured period of time. We plan to extend this notification system so users will be able to set up their own email notifications about completed jobs and workflow runs. We expect to release this feature later this month. Additionally, users will be able to decide which types of events they are emailed about through a new notification settings page.
September
Recent Changes
Redesigned Marketplace
We’ve overhauled our Marketplace’s user interface and functionality. In addition to workflows, now you can create and share compute resources and storage resources with other users in your organization.
For more details about these changes, please see Navigating the Marketplace in our user guide.
SSO Login
We’ve introduced single sign-on (SSO) to the PW platform. When you log in at cloud.parallel.works, you can enter your organization and see additional login options.
We made this change because some organizations have different login methods (for example, password only versus Azure Active Directory login). This change does not affect platforms deployed on-premises or in your organization’s cloud account.
Extended Notifications
We’ve expanded our notification system to include email notifications about completed jobs and workflow runs. Now, users can decide which types of events they want to be notified about both on the platform and via email.
To learn more about using the Notification Hub, please see Managing Notifications and this section of Submitting Jobs via Slurm.
Upcoming Changes
New Storage Resources
We'll be adding two new storage resources to the platform's Storage page: Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) and Google Filestore. We expect to make these options available later in October.