A leading European energy research organisation partnered with nAG HPC Services to design and deploy a scalable cloud HPC environment to support advanced simulation workloads.

The Challenge

The customer is developing advanced simulations for next-generation energy systems, involving highly complex physical models and computationally intensive workloads. These simulations must evolve rapidly alongside cutting-edge research and engineering activity.

As the organisation’s research programme matured, the team identified an opportunity to formalise and scale their existing cloud-based simulation workflows. While their approach supported rapid experimentation and flexibility, it required close involvement from engineers and scientists to manage compute resources and data movement.

To support continued growth and increasing simulation demands, the organisation sought a production-grade HPC environment that could:

  • Standardise and automate HPC workflows
  • Improve efficiency and resource utilisation
  • Reduce operational overhead for end users
  • Allow scientists and engineers to focus more fully on research and development

The Solution

The nAG HPC Services team designed and delivered a cloud HPC environment, built end-to-end to support the customer’s simulation workflows.

 

The solution included:

  • A complete HPC architecture covering networking, compute, and storage
  • A Slurm-based scheduling environment to manage workloads efficiently
  • Integration with Ansys HPC Platform Services (HPS) to streamline job submission and data handling from the Ansys software environment
  • Custom configuration to ensure license-aware scheduling, preventing wasted resources
  • Extensive testing, validation, and documentation to ensure long-term stability

A key focus of the implementation was usability. Rather than requiring users to interact directly with the HPC scheduler or command line, the system was designed so simulations could be launched and managed entirely through a web browser and Ansys tools.

The Technical Challenge

Ansys HPS is a relatively new platform and therefore has limited real-world deployment examples. While reference architectures existed for some environments, there was no documented approach for integrating Ansys HPS with the customer’s chosen cloud platform.

nAG worked closely with both the customer and Ansys to:

  • Adapt Ansys HPS to the target environment
  • Resolve configuration and stability challenges
  • Ensure the system met both software and infrastructure requirements

This demanded deep expertise in HPC scheduling, cloud infrastructure, and ISV integration, combined with close cross-organisational collaboration — core strengths of nAG’s HPC solution architects.

The Impact

The delivered HPC environment removed significant operational barriers for the customer’s research teams.

 

Key outcomes include:

  • Scientists can now run large-scale simulations without managing infrastructure
  • Simplified the scientists’ HPC workflow 
  • No need for users to interact directly with Slurm or Linux
  • Reduced time spent on system administration and data movement
  • More efficient use of licensed software and compute resources

Most importantly, the solution enables the organisation to focus on its core mission: advancing next-generation energy research, rather than managing complex HPC systems.

Broader Value

The approach taken by nAG is applicable far beyond energy research. Any organisation running Ansys workloads — including Fluent, LS-DYNA, or Ansys Mechanical — can benefit from HPC environments that prioritise accessibility, automation, and reliability.

By abstracting away HPC complexity, nAG helps organisations unlock the full value of advanced simulation while lowering the barrier to adoption.

Why This Matters

HPC is often underestimated in its complexity. This project demonstrates that with the right design and expertise, HPC can feel seamless to end users — even when supporting some of the most demanding scientific workloads in the world.