The WASP Research Arena for Operational Data (Ops) is an ambitious research arena that seeks to bring together Swedish industry and academia to solve state-of-the-art challenges in data-driven operational research.
About the Arena
WARA Operational Data (Ops) develops an advanced data storage and processing infrastructure that enables users to interactively store, annotate, process, and visualize large operational datasets, and – importantly – provides a collaborative environment that will allow users to interact, share data and results, and set challenges and research questions. WARA Ops aims to actively enable and encourage a significant increase in research collaborations between WASP community members, through a unique national resource.
Research Focus Areas
The initial focus of WARA Ops is in two key areas:
We collect and provide datasets and their associated research challenges, e.g., intrusion detection, denial-of-service attacks, etc. Examples of data include system/software log files, lists of access requests, etc.
We provide and generate datasets that can be used to drive research into next-generation autonomous management systems that can proactively predict future demand, detect, and react to changes in user/network/hardware behaviour, etc. Examples includes power reduction use metrics such as CPU/Disk/Network/Memory usage over time, and power consumption data.
Research Possibilities
The above research results are applicable across a wide set of application domains, including most online services, communication systems, automation services, energy management, financial and bank systems, online retail, and cloud/edge data centres. The application areas also include software build systems and CI/CD-pipelines.
With a strong focus on data storage and cataloging, combined with the provision of a scalable CPU-based environment for interactive data querying, processing, and visualisation, Ops is a natural complement to the Berzelius service (which focuses on GPU-intensive AI/ML workloads).
WARA Ops is a continuation of WARA Common. It will be professionally managed by Ericsson Research and significantly extends the current service. Additionally, Ops will include access to a live 5G network and full-scale cloud service, plus access to the monitoring data they generate. In addition to data generated within the Ops arena, the ambition is to also solicit data set through our partner network.
The expected research outputs of Ops are:
- data collection tools (including scalable storage, cataloging, and annotation services)
- methods for online processing (including auto-scaling resources for interactive data queries, filtering, and visualisation)
- a collaborative environment to facilitate interaction between researchers and partners (including ability to set research challenges on datasets, allow commenting and communication across researchers, etc.)
- and ultimately, self-learning anomaly detection mechanisms, root cause analysis strategies, and system theory for the control of large-scale systems.
Ericsson Research Data Center
Ericsson Research Data Center (ER DC), is a research facility used by thousands of developers in different internal and external collaboration projects. ER DC provides a free cloud environment for WASP researchers. On top of the cloud environment AI frameworks and CI/CD pipelines are offered.
ER DC is equipped with over 1000+ x86 servers and around 200 Nvidia GPUs, which are connected over a 100 Gbps Mellanox network fabric. The data hall is almost 400 square meters and designed at a max power supply of 1.5 MW. It is fully redundant with diesel generators for back-up power, double power lines, fire protection and redundant external connectivity at 10 Gbps. In addition, a bare metal lab environment is available for custom design configurations. The data center is connected to several edge nodes and thus providing an experimental platform for applications on the continuum. The data center and the cloud deployments are heavily instrumented and provide lots of operations data.
To get an account, just reach out to the ER DC support desk: erdc.support@ericsson.com