What are the Science Clouds?
The Science Clouds are an informal group of small clouds made available by various institutions on a voluntary basis. The Science Clouds started in mid-2008 and have, roughly speaking, two goals: (1) to make it easy for scientific projects to experiment with IaaS-style cloud computing, (2) to enable projects developing infrastructure for such clouds to learn from user requirements.
Science Clouds provide compute cycles in the cloud for scientific communities using Nimbus. If you use any of these clouds, and have requests, comments, or suggestions please send them to us at workspace-user@globus.org (subscribe). We will very much appreciate your feedback.
See the available science clouds page for information about obtaining access.
Science Clouds Software
Use the science clouds as a client: In a typical session you will make a request to deploy a workspace based on a specified VM image. You can either use one of the VM images already available on a cloud (the workspace cloud client provides a command that allows you to see what’s already there) or upload your own VM image. On deployment, the image will be configured with an ssh public key you provide — in this way once the workspace is deployed, you will be able to ssh into it and configure it further, upload data, or run your applications. Follow the quickstart for specific instructions.
Launch one-click, auto-configuring clusters: Once you have gotten a feel for things with one VM, head over to the clusters page. Launch virtual clusters with one command! And no need to go configure anything: cluster configurations are automated with the workspace context broker. Each VM launches a very lightweight agent that greatly simplifies dealing with changing cluster topologies, identities, and credentials (no secrets need to reside on the image before booting). Useful sample clusters await you.
Build your own EC2-like cloud using Nimbus: Download Nimbus to configure your own resources into a cloud. It accomodates a wide range of pre-existing cluster and network setups. See the current version’s Cloud Guide.
Watch this space!
Be aware: Science clouds are a beta project deployed on a modest allocation of resources. Over the next few months we will be evolving the software in response to your requests and comments.
Therefore, be aware that the client code may change frequently as new features, services and clouds become available.
Each change will be announced on workspace-user@globus.org (subscribe) and via RSS: keep an eye on those announcements to ensure that your client is up-to-date.