Background
High-performance computing (HPC) is a cornerstone of innovation in the energy sector. As data volumes grow and geophysical workflows become more compute-intensive, the energy industry is moving beyond traditional on-premises systems toward flexible, cloud-hosted HPC solutions. However, managing sprawling environments across cloud and on-premises platforms can become an operational burden. Teams must balance performance and cost while managing user access, provisioning virtual workstations on demand, and maintaining a high level of security. Admins often struggle to onboard new users quickly or provision compute resources dynamically. Without the right orchestration layer, these environments can quickly become fragmented, expensive, and difficult to manage. A modern HPC architecture doesn’t start and end with compute—it also requires efficient HPC cluster management, granular access control, and dynamic infrastructure provisioning. That’s where Leostream comes in. Acting as the connection and control layer between users and AWS hosted high performance compute environments, Leostream simplifies how enterprises deploy and manage virtual desktops and HPC GPU resources at scale.
Leostream on AWS
Leostream is a leading AWS Partner specializing in remote access solutions and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) management. Leostream platform provides enterprises with a vendor-agnostic solution for managing and connecting users to workloads running in AWS environments, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and Amazon WorkSpaces. Leostream enables organizations to implement hybrid cloud strategies by centralizing the management of on-premises and AWS-hosted resources through a single administrative interface. These solutions are particularly valuable for industries requiring high-performance remote access to graphics-intensive applications, such as media production, engineering, and healthcare. As an AWS Partner, Leostream helps customers optimize their AWS deployments for remote work scenarios while maintaining security, compliance, and cost efficiency.
Leostream in Action: Enabling Cloud-Native HPC for a Global Energy Company
To support a growing demand for agility in its geophysical modeling workflows, a global energy company adopted Amazon EC2 as the backbone of its cloud-based HPC strategy. Amazon EC2 provided the essential compute infrastructure needed for complex engineering simulations and modeling workloads. As the company’s success with Amazon EC2 grew and usage expanded across multiple projects, teams, and global locations, they recognized an opportunity to further optimize their operations through enhanced orchestration capabilities. By adding a centralized management layer with Leostream, the company streamlined access, automated resource provisioning, and gained full visibility into every session—solving the complexity of user orchestration across its entire cloud HPC environment.
Challenges Addressed and Results
Prior to this transformation, the energy company faced several common pain points:
- Underutilized on-prem infrastructure and increasing hardware costs
- Manual provisioning delays for new geoscientists and projects
- Security concerns related to unmanaged access and legacy tools
- Difficulty scaling for peak workloads without waste during idle periods
Leostream deployment on AWS addressed the above challenges by
- Improved Cost Efficiency – Virtual desktops are spun up only when needed, maximizing utilization of AWS EC2 capacity and minimizing idle runtime.
- Faster User Onboarding and Access – Geophysicists and engineers connect to high-performance workstations in minutes, with no manual provisioning or delays.
- Stronger Security Posture – Centralized policy enforcement and federated identity management enhanced access controls across projects and teams.
- Operational Simplicity at Scale – Leostream eliminated the need for custom scripting or homegrown management tools, reducing overhead and streamlining IT workflows.
The architecture of the Leostream deployment on AWS is shown in Figure 1. This architecture highlights the following Leostream features at work:
- SAML-Based SSO Authentication
Integrated with the organization’s existing identity provider, enabling secure, centralized login and improving compliance with internal access policies.
- Dynamic Pooling & Provisioning
Leostream automatically provisions virtual desktops based on user role and workload requirements, scaling resources in real time as demands shift.
- Automated Power Management
Instances are intelligently powered on and off depending on usage, significantly reducing cloud spend without compromising access to compute resources.
- Fine-Grained Access Policies
Users are assigned access based on group membership and project role, ensuring least-privilege access and eliminating risk from legacy credential sprawl.
- Centralized Admin Console
IT administrators manage all sessions, pools, and provisioning rules from a single interface, improving visibility and response time for support.
Conclusion
This organization’s move to a fully cloud-hosted high performance computing environment with AWS and Leostream demonstrates what’s possible when flexible infrastructure meets intelligent access management. With support for SAML authentication, automated provisioning, and real-time session orchestration, Leostream empowers teams to maximize performance while maintaining security and cost efficiency.
For energy companies modernizing their HPC workflows, Leostream delivers the missing link—ensuring seamless, secure, and high-performance access to cloud-based compute resources built for the demands of the industry. Leostream solutions are available through AWS Marketplace: Leostream Connection Broker and Leostream Gateway enabling streamlined procurement and deployment on AWS.