OpenStack Summit November 2014 Paris

Australian researchers are reaping the benefits of access to an accessible, collaborative and scalable OpenStack-based cloud computing infrastructure provided through the NeCTAR project.

Modern research is increasingly collaborative in nature and dependent on access to large scale research data, sophisticated computational models and research domain-oriented software tools and services. The NeCTAR Research Cloud is providing a national computational infrastructure supporting the computational and collaboration needs of a rich diversity of research domains and scientific disciplines in Australia: from the hard sciences to the humanities and cultural studies.

This talk will tell some of those stories: of the research communities, large and small, who are using the NeCTAR Research Cloud as a platform to provide collaborative access to research data, scientific models and research computing tools. Stories to be covered will be drawn from Astronomy, Marine Science, Geophysics, Biology, Genomics, Environmental Science and the Humanities. We will show how cloud computing is supporting improved innovation, efficiency and productivity in research.

We will also discuss our interest and first steps in supporting interoperability and collaborative access with similar initiatives around the world.

The NeCTAR Research Cloud has supported Australian research since January 2012 and has helped to bring more and more Australian research into the cloud . The NeCTAR Research Cloud comprises 8 regional sites (nodes) operating as a federation of Cells within a single national OpenStack cloud fabric. The Research Cloud currently comprises over 15,000 CPU cores, and will grow to 30,000 CPU cores before the end of 2014.

The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) Project is an Australian Government project funded under the Super Science initiative.