PiCloud Platform
PiCloud is a cloud-computing platform that integrates into the Python Programming Language. It enables you to leverage the computing power of Amazon Web Services without having to manage, maintain, or configure virtual servers.
PiCloud integrates seamlessly into your existing code base through a custom Python library,
cloud. To offload the execution of a function to our servers, all you must do is pass
your desired function into the cloud library. PiCloud will run the function
on its high-performance cluster. As you run more functions, our cluster auto-scales to meet
your computational needs. Getting on the cloud has never been this easy!
PiCloud improves the full cycle of software development and deployment. Every function run on PiCloud has its resource usage monitored, performance analyzed, and errors traced. This data is further aggregated across all your functions to give you a bird's eye view of your service. PiCloud enables you to develop faster, easier and smarter.
Service Highlights
Easy to Use
We offer a superior cloud experience encapsulated entirely within your programming language. With as few as 3 lines of code, PiCloud will leverage the computational power of a cluster of servers for you. We also offer a streamlined web interface for customization and monitoring on-the-go.
Elastic
PiCloud is always ready to accept and process your function. Behind the scenes, we are automatically scaling our service to match your computational needs from almost no load to your peak usage. Code in full confidence that your service will scale.
Robust
PiCloud brings a highly robust computing environment to the cloud. Amazon and other cloud providers explicitly state that their servers can and do go down without notice due to hardware and network failure, and that it is your responsibility to build robustness into your systems. PiCloud has built redundancy and reliability into every corner of its service. The PiCloud Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.9% availability.
Secure
PiCloud employs industry-standard security techniques. All communication with PiCloud is encrypted using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. Your code and data on our cluster is protected by multiple layers of security including POSIX permissions, AppArmor, and Kerberos. In addition, PiCloud deploys the latest security patches to give you maximum protection.
Inexpensive
PiCloud passes the financial benefits of its multi-tenant environment to you. On Amazon, you'll be paying for servers by the hour whether you use them or not. PiCloud only charges you for the exact amount of computation time you use, giving you the ability to parallelize your computation cheaply. Never again will idling servers drive up your infrastructure costs.
Features
Tunable Parallelism
PiCloud will run your functions in parallel. If you require greater degrees of parallelism, simply tune your account settings and we'll automatically employ more servers for your workload.
Real-time Computing
PiCloud makes processing an incoming stream of data in real-time easy. We give you the option to guarantee that your computation begins execution within one second of your request, assuming that you have not reached your parallelism limit. Usually, your computation will begin much sooner.
Performance Analytics
As a language-integrated platform, PiCloud analyzes your running code and reports its resource usage on a per function basis. The information is accessible via PiCloud's web interface exposing inefficiencies quickly. Statistics are aggregated and charts are generated every hour showing you a range of big picture and granular views of your resource usage.
Monitoring and Error Handling
PiCloud consolidates your computation history into one simple interface. You can examine the innermost details of any function including critical information such as standard output, standard error, profile, and even an exception traceback.
Scientific Computing Ready
PiCloud has partnered with Enthought, Inc., the market-leader in scientific computing with Python, to bring rigorous data analysis and visualization tools to the cloud. PiCloud supports and has optimized the use of packages included in the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD). A full list of libraries is available here.
Clouds and Programming Languages
Clouds
PiCloud runs exclusively on top of Amazon Web Services. If you are seeking to use PiCloud on Rackspace, or deploy on a private cloud, please contact us.
Programming Languages
Currently, PiCloud supports the standard implementation of Python, CPython, specifically versions 2.5 and 2.6. Support for version 3.0 is coming soon.
Pricing
Please see our pricing page.
System Details
Performance
PiCloud guarantees that every running function will be allocated at least 1 EC2 Compute Unit. A compute unit is defined by Amazon to be equivalent to a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. Your function may be allocated up to 2.5 EC2 Compute Units.
PiCloud has eliminated the overhead of spawning new Python Interpreter's and importing standard Python libraries meaning your functions will run instantly.
Bandwidth and Latency
If you are already on Amazon Web Services in the US-EAST Region, communication latency is minimal and is equivalent to the latencies between any two Amazon EC2 hosts. Likewise, PiCloud's bandwidth is equivalent to other hosts on Amazon Web Services. For those elsewhere, it is important to measure the latency and bandwidth between you and PiCloud to properly gauge PiCloud's effectiveness. You can measure your latency by pinging picloud.com.
Transfer of Code and Data
PiCloud's programming library, cloud, automatically transfers the necessary source code, byte code, execution state,
and data to run your function on our cluster. Our library is careful to only transfer the code and data it needs,
and all information is encrypted using SSL before transmission. Caching is present in both the client library and
our cluster so that future requests do not transfer redundant information. Our library can also be configured
to log what information is being transferred for your inspection.
Documentation
Please see our Python cloud library documentation.