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Presenting Artemis, a modern cloud-native computing platform established by the University of Sussex to replace its aging infrastructure. Built in collaboration with StackHPC, the system utilises OpenStack and Kubernetes to offer a flexible, software-defined environment for high-performance research. The architecture integrates robust and high-performance Ceph storage (even out-performing the existing Lustre back-end), high-speed networking, and automated management via Infrastructure as Code to ensure reliability and scalability. Artemis serves a wide array of academic disciplines, ranging from artificial intelligence and life sciences to the humanities, by providing a secure and sustainable foundation for diverse workloads.
A central feature atop of the IaaS, which is currently in the process of being fully commissioned, is the Azimuth Cloud Portal. Once complete, it will further empower researchers through self-service provisioning of specialised compute platforms and customised virtual environments.
Modernisation of the HPC Infrastructure
For years, the University of Sussex relied on its Apollo2 cluster to anchor its HPC capabilities. However, the higher education sector reached a collective crossroads in the summer of 2024 with the demise of CentOS 7. With the discontinuation of support for the industry-standard operating system, the University faced more than a maintenance hurdle; it faced a strategic ultimatum.
Rather than merely refreshing hardware to service existing technical debt, the University orchestrated a profound paradigm shift. The result is "Artemis"—a transition from the rigid, high-touch constraints of legacy bare-metal systems to a cloud-native future. Artemis is not just a hardware replacement; it is a fundamental democratisation of compute power, moving the institution from a traditional siloed model toward a software-defined research ecosystem.
Democratising Discovery through Self-Service
While OpenStack provides the infrastructure as a service element providing an interface to Research Computing Infrastructure specialists, at the heart of Artemis lies the Azimuth Cloud Portal, a cornerstone of the modernisation effort that effectively decouples complex infrastructure orchestration from the research process.
Historically, provisioning a high-performance environment was a manual, administrative-heavy task that often acted as a bottleneck to scientific momentum. With Azimuth, the University will empower its researchers to bypass traditional gatekeeping. Researchers will be able to provision their own bespoke environments—from ephemeral Slurm clusters with Open OnDemand to Kubernetes, JupyterHub instances, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for Linux and Windows—on demand. This shift to self-service transforms IT departments from a reactive support function into a proactive provider of high-performance services, radically accelerating the "time-to-science".
A Polyglot Platform: Bridging Particle Physics and the Humanities
Modern research infrastructure must speak every academic language, and Artemis was engineered as a "Swiss Army knife" to accommodate a startlingly diverse range of departmental requirements. The platform effectively synthesises the needs of traditional high-energy physics simulations with the burgeoning demands of AI and data science. The contrast in workloads is a testament to the platform's versatility. In Life Sciences, Artemis manages the significant "data gravity" of 5TB CryoEM simulations and provides the GPU-intensive resources required for AlphaFold protein folding. Meanwhile, the Humanities Lab utilizes a massive 400TB capacity-optimised HDD Ceph cluster for text analysis and resilient WordPress hosting. From supporting the ring-fenced resources and IPv6 requirements of GridPP’s Monte Carlo simulations to providing the raw GPU power for Large Language Models (LLMs) in Engineering Informatics, Artemis proves that a single software-defined platform can serve both the particle physicist and the digital historian with equal precision.
The Walled Garden: Engineering Sovereignty for Sensitive Science
In an era of increasing data scrutiny, Artemis adopts a "walled garden" architectural philosophy to ensure absolute data sovereignty. This is particularly critical for the University’s work in Life Sciences, where the platform must function as a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for processing sensitive MRI data. The security posture is uncompromising. The OpenStack control plane servers are entirely isolated with no direct internet access, reachable only via a hardened admin gateway. Security is further bolstered by a rigorous encryption strategy: External, Internal, and Back-end TLS are enabled across all OpenStack APIs, RabbitMQ, and Ceph storage traffic. Combined with Wazuh for continuous vulnerability detection and security monitoring, this architecture ensures that flexibility never compromises compliance, providing a secure sanctuary for the University's most sensitive intellectual property. “Wazuh is so simple to then integrate with our institution SEIM and provides cost saving by filtering alerts/logs locally, reliably and providing a fantastic automated threat/risk detection platform”.
Software-Defined Resilience: The Infrastructure as Code Philosophy
The technical agility of Artemis is a direct result of its "Infrastructure as Code" (IaC) foundation. Moving away from the manual configurations of the past, the Sussex team, in partnership with StackHPC, manages the entire environment—from low-level BIOS settings to containerised services, using Ansible and GitHub CI/CD workflows. This shift is most evident in the replacement of their legacy workload scheduler with the modern StackHPC Slurm Appliance. Running Slurm on Rocky Linux, this appliance offers a highly orchestrated, scalable workload manager that integrates with the University's Microsoft AD LDAP service. To ensure the platform can handle the throughput requirements of modern AI, the infrastructure features a multi-layered network design with high-speed operations and storage running on 2x100GbE links. By utilising OpenStack Kayobe and Kolla for containerised service orchestration, the University has built a system that is not only resilient but inherently agile, capable of evolving at the speed of the software that defines it. This provided the University’s first ever staging→production workflow with real testing on the same hardware without impacting users.
The Expert Voice: A Partnership for Innovation
The successful delivery of Artemis was made possible through a strategic collaboration with StackHPC. This partnership translated complex institutional requirements into a high-performance reality, ensuring the University moved beyond a simple upgrade to a total modernisation of its research capabilities.
“From initial design to ongoing service improvements, StackHPC have become an essential partner for Sussex in delivering a modern, flexible and secure research computing platform to our academic community, built on a deep understanding and appreciation of our strategic drivers and operational needs.” Clare Gryce, Associate Director Digital Research Services at the University of Sussex.
Conclusion: A Research Infrastructure Fit for the Future
Artemis represents a definitive leap forward for the University of Sussex, turning the "CentOS 7 Cliff" into a launchpad for future innovation. By embracing cloud-native principles and a software-defined philosophy, the University has secured its place at the forefront of global research, ready to support the next generation of breakthroughs in AI.
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