MATLAB and Simulink
MathWorks Inc. | R2014b Dec 2014Linux/Unix, Ubuntu 12.04 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Better port to another language
It seems to be easier to port to another language than to run an AWS instance with MATLAB on it. It's 2016, MathWorks. Please try to get a handle on this cloud thing.
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Worked because we followed the directions
We tested MATLAB on EC successfully, using our lab's Standalone Named User license.
The directions from Mathworks "MATLAB on EC2 Instructions" are long and detailed, but worked, except for one or two points. We needed to restart nxserver on the server before we were able to connect with the client. Do that with this command via SSH:
$ sudo /usr/lib/nx/nxserver --restart
After that, we connected using the OpenNX client (Mac OS X). Another problem, the .pem key file imported by the OpenNX client had problems with spaces/extra carriage returns introduced by cut-and-paste (you can avoid that problem by generating the key pair on your local machine and uploading the public key to AWS).
Matlab cannot be launched from SSH, which is a shame (it seems like the GUI is needed to do the authentication part). Fixing this would be a very welcome improvement.
Our license did not include the parallel processing toolbox, which means we could not do real work. We'd have to upgrade the license to do anything useful.
On EC, we used c4.xlarge and t2.medium instances. We tried the 36-core c4.8xlarge, but unfortunately the instance never launched. MATLAB on EC2 cannot be used at the AWS's free tier.
Buggy Software
Very nice with an AMI ready for use with matlab, but when the activation is not working, it is not useful.
When I follow the installation steps, I can login, and activate my license. When I run matlab again, it says it's still not activated.
You dont paid from your own pocket for a licence, this would be pretty useless for u
tried to use my university licence, of course it doesnt work.
seriously, without the possibility of a on-demand licence, the ppl who could use it will be pretty limited.
Activation bug with academic licens
Very nice with an AMI ready for use with matlab, but when the activation is not working, it is not useful.
When I follow the installation steps, I can login, and activate my license. When I run matlab again, it says it's still not activated.
Didn't activate my Academic License :(
It's good to have an AMI with an updated MATLAB already configured. But unfortunately this one is not working for me.
License Label: Scientific Computing
Option: Total Academic Headcount Student
Activation Type: Standalone Named User
Use: Academic
Term: Annual
Release: R2014a+
When I follow the installation steps, I can login, find my license and even activate the license. Matlab returns success on activating, but when I finish installation and open Matlab, it says it's not activated.
Now, I'm using an Amazon Linux AMI and installing MATLAB from the downloadable I've received. Could install, and activate. Using it perfectly.
Why no Matlab license rental?
I would gladly buy this product by the hour (we know the yearly license cost for Matlab, I would gladly play multiples of that in hourly rate), but I am very reluctant to fiddle with my university licenses (and I am not sure the fine print allows it to be installed on AWS anyway).
So please, bring possibility of Matlab license rental. It would be a great product.
Does the job, and is super fast
Every time you start Matlab, you have to sign in with your Mathworks username and password, which is kind of a drag; it also means you need to run Matlab using the GUI instead of from the terminal with the -nodisplay flag (since, if you use -nodisplay, the prompt to enter your username and password doesn't appear and Matlab doesn't start). So minus one star for that.
Otherwise, when using the parallel computing toolbox, things can be blazing fast with a beefy EC2 instance, which is totally great. With matlab R2014a, they removed the 12-worker limit, so you can have as many workers in your parallel pool as you have (virtual) CPUs in the EC2 instance. Computing with 32 cores (via a c3.8xlarge instance) is simple and super quick.
In response to the other reviewers concerns that on-demand pricing isn't available, on-demand usage of the parallel computing toolbox on EC2 is available at http://www.mathworks.com/discovery/matlab-ec2.html. But you need to already have a Matlab and parallel computing toolbox license.
Not Useful
Don't waste your time with this. As the other reviewer pointed out, a lot of potential here but have to BYOL and must install 3rd party software to login. Get with the game Mathworks.
Does Not Support on Demand Licensing
This AMI release requires that you bring your own Matlab licence file (*.lic) with you.
There is no AMI to purchase a Matlab licence by the hour. Even though you purchase the AWS resources by the hour.
This is problematic for many users. For example
- The user who is new to Matlab who wants to experiment with running something on the cloud but does not want to commit to several thousand pounds of licences.
- The user who works at a large company/ university and whose licences are held on a licence server etc. Accessing the licence is not always very simple.
- The user who only wants to use matlab for a few hours a month, in line with AWS pricing. Why should he have to buy a full cost annual licence?
As a final note, the MATLAB Distributed Computing Server (MDCS) toolbox does include a pay as you go functionality. However, in our opinion the pricing model on this is very poorly executed. Two prime reasons are (1) You pay per worker. For 3,000 workers the cost is £300K (!!!!) per year. This is simply incredible - quite often people want to do simulations far in excess of 3,000 workers (eg Cycle computing used 30,000 cores for a pharma sim in Sep 2011, http://www.cyclecomputing.com/blog/new-cyclecloud-cluster-is-a-triple-threat-30000-cores-massive-spot-instances-grill-chef-monitoring-g/). (2) When you are a dealing with serious "big-data" it is VERY likely you will want to participate in the spot market, or have a very good idea about which instances you want to use for your task. MDCS does not allow this, as it only supports two/three instances and NOT the spot market. Hence increasing user costs 60%. Incredible. Mathworks say there are no plans to change this. We just wonder who uses these products at these prices....
In summary, for many users, Matlab does not support cloud computing and the user is better off going with R or Python.
If you would like the Mathworks dev team to change this and allow an on-demand licence, then please leave a review here.,