JESS Online of ENSIMS is a reliable and easy-to-use service that offers you a cost-effective solution to your simulation computing needs. Here is a summary of the main features.

Simulation speed

During our research and development, we have made every effort to optimize the hardware and software platform in order to achieve the best simulation speed. As you can see in the performance tests, our system consistently outperforms the best instance available on the public clouds (Amazon AWS EC2 as tested). This means you can get the results back quicker from JESS Online than anywhere else.

Easy to use

Using JESS does not require any special knowledge about networking, remote simulation or cloud computing. With the building simulation tools have already JESS support implemented, the process is as simple as getting an account (or using a free trial account) and log on. All your existing workflows may remain the same. Unlike most of the cloud services, you do not need to worry about setting up keys, starting and terminating computing nodes, or managing separate accounts. Usage of JESS Online is charged by the actual computing time of the simulation jobs. You can check your usage and the progress of the on-going jobs with the online user's portal.  

Compatibility and support

JESS Online does not tie you to one building simulation tool. In fact, we are working to support as many building simulation tools as we can. At the present, this service supports only EnergyPlus, Radiance and Daysim simulations. More simulation engines will be added in the future. Our support team is friendly and eager to help you with your problems and requests.

New opportunities

Another significant advantage of JESS is its native support for jEPlus projects. This provides an ideal solution for consultancy and research works where large-scale parametric analysis, uncertainty/sensitivity analysis and optimisation are used. We are here to support your development and help you create customized solutions for your particular tasks. 

The Java EnergyPlus Simulation Server, or JESS, is a software system supports running simulations remotely on a high-performance computer grid. JESS Online is the service we provide at ENSIMS, using our own in-house cluster and the public cloud service.

The history

The development of JESS started in 2011. During the early years, it was deployed on the computer cluster at De Montfort University, which allowed us to carry out extensive testing, private trials and public trials. In total over 200 user accounts have been created and over 150,000 computing hours consumed during the trials. In summer 2014 we started to build our own high-performance cluster for bringing JESS Online to the public. It has been evolving ever since and is now one of the most reliable and mature services available for EnergyPlus users.

How does it work?

The principle of JESS Online is very simple: you put the simulation input files in a folder; the JESS Client (a small software package) sends the contents of the folder to the JESS server over internet; after the simulation is done, the results will be collected by the JESS Client and put into your local folder. The whole process is very similar to running simulations locally and can be made transparent to the calling building simulation tool. However, you can now fire off 20 or 100 simulations at once without worry of burning out your laptop.

What does JESS support?

Currently, JESS supports EnergyPlus (all versions from 7.0), Radiance (rtrace and rpict), and Daysim simulations. EnergyPllus is the simulation engine for many building simulation tools. If you are using or developing a tool that uses EnergyPlus, we will be happy to help you get it connected with JESS. We are also working to support more simulation engines in the future.