Transforming Scientific Research Platforms to Exploit Cloud Capacity

Abstract

Numerous user communities are trying to make use of the EGI virtualized infrastructure and its cloud-based offerings. However, many of their applications are not yet making use of cloud specific features, thus staying behind what would be achievable for them, if they fully exploited these capabilities. With cloud capacities, we refer to features such as scalable object storage, attachable block storage, and dynamic scaling, to mention a few. Another topic is the preparation of minimal base images to avoid extremely large images and at the same time allow for the maximal possible usability in all federated resource providers. Our project follows a two-fold approach. First of all, we will enable select applications to make use of cloud-specific features. Secondly, we will derive best practices from our activity and provide these as generic documentation tailored towards scientific applications in the EGI distributed cloud infrastructure