Stratus Protected Data Cloud
MSI built a local research compute cloud environment called Stratus (https://stratus.msi.umn.edu), which is designed to store and analyze some types of protected data. Stratus is a subscription-based infrastructure as a service that enables users to operate within their own self-service virtual machines on the spectrum between a low-level bare-metal HPC and a fully virtualized, shared-tenancy mode. Stratus is powered by the OpenStack cloud platform, and is backed by Ceph storage.
Stratus features functionalities not available on other MSI systems:
- The self-service portal allows users to create virtual machines and remote desktops on demand.
- Long-running jobs (i.e., > 30 days) are enabled by leveraging live-migration during maintenance windows.
- Virtual machines support Docker containers for self-service software management (e.g., to deploy local versions of Galaxy or JupyterHub).
- A secure storage platform provides the necessary isolation and protections for users to process some types of protected data.
The Stratus compute hardware currently consists of:
- Thirty HPE Proliant XL230a compute nodes, each with two Intel E5-2680v4 (14-core) CPUs, 256 GB of RAM, and 10 GigE networking to the outside world.
- An array of eight HPE Apollo 4200 storage servers, connected to compute nodes via redundant 40 GigE switches.
- Eight additional servers tasked with monitoring storage operations and orchestrating virtual machine lifecycles.
The current storage deployment on Stratus has 350 TB of Ceph block device storage for ephemeral VMs and data volumes
Access to Stratus is granted by subscription fee paid on an annual basis. Prices are subject to change with the University's fiscal year, and subscriptions automatically renew.
A breakdown of the FY24 costs for Stratus services is as follows:
| SERVICE NAME | UNIT | COST/year | COST/qtr |
| Stratus 32GB standard base subscription | Pkg | $272.03 | N/A |
| Stratus standard vCPU add-on (1 vCPU/2GB RAM) | vCPU/RAM | $4.12 | N/A |
| Stratus block storage add-on | TB | $103.02 | N/A |
The 32Gb standard base subscription gives users:
- 16 vCPUs and 32GB RAM for use on one or more virtual machines
- 2TB block storage for virtual machines and attached volumes
- access to a virtual machine image repository containing MSI-approved CentOS and Ubuntu images
- root access to install software on personal virtual machines
- Additional capacity may be purchased in single vCPU/2GB RAM increments.
- For Controlled-access Data Users:
- Sane default configurations for virtual machines, network, and storage that satisfy controls required by most data use agreements
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- Stratus services and subscriptions are currently restricted to University of Minnesota users.
- RAM is allocated to projects at a ratio of 2GB RAM per vCPU and is not an oversubscribed physical resource. Increase the available RAM in a project by scaling the number of vCPUs.
- Users can control how RAM and vCPU resources are independently assigned to virtual machines, but RAM and vCPUs are only sold as a single unit. Thus, allocating more than 2GB RAM per vCPU to a single virtual machine either implies less RAM per vCPU on another machine or unused vCPUs in the project.
- vCPUs oversubscribe the physical hardware 4:1 (i.e., 2x oversubscription * 2x hyperthreads per core). Some applications benefit from hyperthreading, but many do not; more than 28 vCPUs per virtual machine is guaranteed to leverage hyperthreading.
Contact the MSI helpdesk to enroll today:
Documentation and Frequently Asked Questions about Stratus can be found here
Publications about Stratus can be found below