Success Story: IOB
Enterprise Readiness and Cloud Security
12. November 2020
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19. November 2020
Success Story: IOB
IOB keeps an eye on capacity and costs with THE GCP VM Manager by Wabion
Founded in December 2017, the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) unites fundamental and clinical researchers. They work hand in hand to advance the understanding of eye diseases and to develop new therapies for vision loss. IOB started its operations in 2018, underwent a rapid growth and employs more than 100 people today.
As the prevalence of eye diseases is increasing worldwide – and there is no effective therapy available for most of them, IOB aims to implement the best technologies to fight disorders such as macular degeneration and glaucoma, the leading causes of disability and loss of independent lifestyle. Methods based on high performance computing play a crucial role in the development of therapeutic approaches for visual dysfunctions.
Applying High Performance Computing in biomedical research
In search of new ways to combat visual impairment and blindness, IOB relies on a variety of instruments such as genetic analysis and imaging tools. Many of the methods used require a high computing power in an irregular fashion. When choosing the optimal IT infrastructure, the focus was on meeting these requirements:
- How to build a basic, easy-to-deploy IT infrastructure, including High Performance Computing within a short period of time?
- How to provide the right resources for researchers without substantial upfront investment?
- How to operate an IT infrastructure which has to quickly adapt to growing demand?
- How do IOB researchers get simple and flexible access to a high performance computing infrastructure for their research?
- How can IOB-IT keep access authorizations, usage and costs under control at the same time?
To address a high level of resources, the IOB evaluated various on-prem and cloud options. Google Cloud won the race thanks to its robust infrastructure, scalability, and cutting-edge performance. To allow both user friendly and controlled access to the resources of Google Cloud, IOB chose to work directly with Wabion, the leading Google Cloud Premier Partner in the DACH region. Wabion, together with IOB developed a customized user friendly access portal to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
“With the GCP VM Manager by Wabion, we get a tailor-made IT infrastructure, thanks to which we can concentrate on our research irrespective of rapid changes in IT needs, while still keeping costs controlled. Our collaboration has proven very valuable so far, and we will be continuing to harness Google Cloud even more in the future, with the aid of Wabion.”
Arjun Bharioke
Central Visual Circuits Group, IOB
Simple user interface for VM deployment
After a successful introduction of G Suite as IOB’s new office solution and collaboration tool, Wabion led IOB through a Cloud Foundation in order to set up an IOB-specific GCP instance. This was followed by the development of a customized cloud-native user interface allowing non-technical users to easily access and deploy GCP resources.
1. Cloud Foundation
Wabion has tailor-made the Google Best Practices for the DACH region. Wabion GCP experts worked with the IOB stakeholders to define the basic configuration of the IOB GCP instance including Cloud Identity, Cloud IAM, Networking, Monitoring, Billing, Support, and Automation. As research at the IOB often moves sensitive data, cloud identity and security were of particular importance.
2. GCP VM Manager by Wabion (Self Service Tool)
For research on eye diseases and the development of new therapies using methods such as genetic analyses of retinal cells, researchers at the IOB require a flexible and direct access to high performance computing capacities without costs getting out of hand. Furthermore, given that users at the IOB were primarily non-technical, this access would have to be simple and straightforward.
Architecture of the GCP VM Manager by Wabion: The users access the web-based Angular application (frontend) with their G-Suite login. Google Firebase forms the backend. The “ordered” VMs are automatically deployed using Cloud Build and Deployment Manager and run on Google Cloud Compute Engine.
Wabion developed the cloud-native GCP VM Manager tool for the IOB. The GCP VM Manager tool offers a simplified user interface for deploying high performance resources, the flexibility in the provisioning of high performance computing resources, simplified administrative control, as well as automated cost control:
- After logging in to a dedicated portal, users can determine the configuration of their VM instances (number of CPUs, GPUs, RAM, operating system, etc.).
- All changes occur through a web front end, so users do not need to translate their requirements into specific machine types. Furthermore, restrictions and constraints are prompted to the user.
- A cost estimate is always available to the user.
- The VMs are then configured on GCP Compute Engine using scripts and are immediately available for researchers to use via remote desktop access, on the users’ local machines. .
- Google Compute Engine instances are continuously monitored for resource usage.
- Administrators have fine-grained access to define restriction policies for specific users and user groups, taking advantage of the hierarchical structure built into G Suite. They can use these policies to determine which users / user groups can select which VM categories, the amount of resources of each type that can be deployed by each group, as well as when idle VMs are switched off according to application monitoring.
UI of the GCP VM Manager: with just a few clicks, users order the required VMs, while a dynamic cost estimate is available.
“The reputation of Google as a cutting-edge company, working with cutting-edge cloud tools, and serving databases around the world speaks for itself. Further, the relatively low cost of Google Cloud Platform, and the knowledge that we would be working with a company whose primary expertise lies directly in cloud-based computing sealed the deal. However, as biologists, Google’s front-end, which was primarily designed for users with a computer science background, was tricky for us to use. Wabion’s GCP expertise was essential to allow us to utilize the resources of GCP. The ability of Wabion to work directly with us, and then to custom design an entire custom user interface to solve our specific technical difficulties was what allowed us to use GCP for all our high-performance computing needs.”
Arjun Bharioke
Central Visual Circuits Group, IOB
Fast research results
without expensive on-prem infrastructure
The GCP VM Manager by Wabion creates space for IOB to perform cutting-edge research without the use of an on-prem data center. It unlocks the power of Google Cloud in various ways:
- IOB biological scientists get the computing power they need for their research with just a few clicks – freeing up their time for the fight against eye diseases and eliminating the necessity for special training on special computing resources.
- Despite the more easily accessible high performance computing capacities, costs remain under control.
- Unused, unproductive, and unprofitable on-prem infrastructure is eliminated.
Organizations like IOB need unlimited and flexible computing power in order to advance their demanding projects. The scalability, power, and variable pricing of Google Cloud paves the way for faster, deeper innovation. Wabion paves the way to Google Cloud.
Learn more about the GCP products leveraged in this project: Firebase, Cloud Functions, Cloud Build, Deployment Manager, Compute Engine