Is Matlab with DCS suitable for supporting an optimization application deployed on cloud with interactive queries ?

We are considering Matlab for an analytics application (an Optimization engine), which is mostly composed of a bunch of vector calculations , and is cpu intensive . Since the computations can take even minutes to complete , we use parallel toolbox for utilizing multiple cores of the cpu. We are considering DCS to extend that to a cluster to speed up things further. The user facing application is a website (.NET/IIS mostly), and may need to launch realtime requests as well . Has anyone used Matlab in a similar setup ? Can anyone share their experience ?

Im looking for remarks mostly along the following lines :

1) Ease of deploying

2) Distributed Computing Server (DCS) : Is it easy to setup ? What about Load balancing / failure recovery etc ? Is it a scalable / feasible solution , given its licensing restrictions wrt. number of nodes etc ?

3) How well does it play for a Cloud deployment (like Amazon) ? Auto scaling ? Is it easy to spin up new servers with Matlab runtime / DCS worker nodes ? Is the setup process completely automatable (with chef for example) ?

4) Does the licensing restrictions cause any issues for deployment / scaling ?

5) Parallel Pool : Does it have any peculiar issues w.r.t to users / admin rights etc ?

6) Matlab Compiler : We use it to create dlls to integrate with the .NET website .

7) Does it work well in a hosted environment (like the compiled dll hosted under an IIS website )

Some of these questions may seem basic , but we are pretty much new to Matlab , and are evaluating other options like Python with Numpy/Scipy as well . Any help is much appreciated .

Answer 1

[Chetan Rawal]

Dear Sree hari,

The MATLAB product stack provides MATLAB Production Server (MPS) which allows straightforward packaging and deploying of MATLAB applications. Once you pay for the server product, the deployment of applications itself is royalty-free, so that should take care of your licensing concerns. With the .NET client, or JSON/RESTful API in MPS, you can build your website with interactive calls to MATLAB programs.

Compute scaling of your applications can be done via MATLAB Distributed Computing Server. I'd recommend talking to an application engineer at MathWorks who can educate you on the options, depending on your architecture. Email them via [e-mail], or [e-mail], or call them on the phone number listed on your local mathworks website (In USA - 508-647-7000).

Chetan

MATLAB for Enterprise Scale Applications