Bladed Knowledge Centre Help library Bladed Cloud
Overview
Bladed Cloud is a secure platform created and maintained by DNV to provide the capability for users to run simulations and calculations without needing to set up and maintain local IT infrastructure.
Bladed Cloud is hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform and uses the Amazon “Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)” as its computing backbone, allowing users to scale up/down their hardware requirement automatically and transparently.
This capability is delivered to users through the Batch Framework, which allows users to specify that jobs be run in the Bladed Cloud, as opposed to on Batch runners on a local network.
Features
Key features:
- Bladed Cloud is primarily intended for wind file generation, and for running dtbladed calculations/simulations.
- It is not possible to run post-processing jobs.
- Bladed Cloud allows up to 300 parallel jobs per unique cloud environment.
- The cost is based entirely on compute hours used.
- No inputs or results data is permanently stored in Bladed Cloud - data is saved temporarily in the cloud environment for each run, and the client machine controlling the batch downloads the data and deletes it from the cloud once the run has been completed.
Bladed Cloud environments can be set up to run in data centers in the following countries:
- Ireland
- Germany (Frankfurt)
- Japan (Tokyo)
Requirements and restrictions
- A Base module license on a standalone or network dongle (or cloud license server) is required.
- A valid Bladed support agreement must be in place for Bladed Cloud to be used.
- Jobs targetting Bladed versions older than 4.3.0.85 cannot be run in Bladed Cloud.
- It is highly recommended that the latest version of Batch (currently v1.6) is used for running jobs in Bladed Cloud.
- Jobs that require special setup cannot be run in Bladed Cloud. For example, if the job has a controller that requires communication with another program on the computer that models a subsystem or needs to check for a special license key, or a controller with runtime dependencies that cannot be satisfied by the cloud compute node.
Security
The security of your data is of primary importance:
- Bladed Cloud uses an encrypted workflow to ensure that customer data is protected, both in storage and in transit.
- Any time that input data or results data is stored in the cloud, it is encrypted.
- Only the Batch instance that submitted the job can decrypt results data after it has been downloaded from the cloud environment.
Find out more about data security in Bladed Cloud.
Pricing
Compute hours can either be purchased up-front in a Pre-Pay bundle of 10,000, 50,000 or 200,000 hours, or they can invoiced afterwards (Post-Pay). Pricing is available on request, and will be confirmed at the time of order.
For clarity, a "compute hour" refers to the compute resource for a single calculation. i.e. a 10,000 compute hour bundle would allow you to run 10,000 separate calculations each lasting 1 hour.
There is no cost associated with the provisioning or maintenance of Bladed Cloud environments themselves.
Further information
Further information about the practical use of the Bladed Cloud platform (including security considerations) can be found in the Batch Framework User Manual, which can be found in the Batch program folder, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\DNV\Batch 1.6 (search for "cloud" in the document).
Free trial
If you would like to evaluate the Bladed Cloud platform, please contact us to arrange a free no-obligation trial:
- If desired, DNV can first provide a presentation and demo over Teams at a mutually convenient time, to demonstrate the features and usage of the platform.
- You will be required to review and sign a SaaS (Software as a Service) trial agreement.
- Access will then be provided to a trial Bladed Cloud environment.
- The free trial period will run for the duration agreed at the time of order, or until 1,000 compute hours have been used (whichever occurs first).
After the trial, you can choose to purchase a Pre-Pay bundle of compute hours, or use Bladed Cloud on a pay-as-you-go basis with Post-Pay invoicing.
Contact us
If you would like to arrange a free trial, or if you have any questions, please contact your DNV Sales Manager, or email the Bladed support team.