Calculation that require less than 0.5 GB can be run on the host. This is faster than booting up a new node However, to keep the host from being bogged down, it will terminate any calculations that takes longer that 3 minutes. How much can be done in 3 minutes really depends on the system load. For longer execution times, check the box "run on a new node". This will invoke a new computing node which can run for signicantly longer.
For calculations that require more than 0.5 GB, a new computing node with the appropriate memory will be created, regardless of the checkbox indication. A computing node is a cloud computing platform on Amazon EC2. The new node will need about 4-5 minutes to boot and initialize. The console output will display the initialization messages every 10 seconds. Then the calculation will be started automatically. The new node will stay alive for some time even after the calculation has been completed, so subsequent calculations could use that same node.
A node can only execute one calculation at a time. When a new job is submitted, it searches all the currently active node if they are idle. If they are all busy executing a calculations, a new node will be automatically created. This allows multiple calculations to be run in parallel on different machines without a CPU load penalty.
Instances will automatically shutdown after a pre-defined idle time (typically 15 minutes).
All files are purged after 30 days. If you need the data, please download and save the datafile. This can be uploaded later to read the data.