News

2010

  • Nimbus 2.3 Released

    We are happy to announce the final Nimbus 2.3 release!

    This release contains support for EC2 Query API as well as support for KVM via a new, refactored, workspace-control based on libvirt. This is also the first release of the refactored design of the Nimbus context broker. Another major addition is an administrative web interface that supports securely distributing user credentials. In addition, this release contains improvements to the cloud client, numerous small features, and bug fixes. Check the full changelog for more information.

    The Nimbus 2.3 release is available for download at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/downloads/

    We would like to acknowledge the contributions of all who volunteered their effort to help with testing and submitted patches to this release. Our sincere thanks go to Pierre Riteau, Alex Clemesha, Kevin Wilson, Adam Bishop, Kyle Fransham, and Patrick Armstrong.

2009

  • Nimbus 2.3RC1 Released

    Happy New Year from the Nimbus Team!

    After a year devoted primarily to working with users and experimentation, we are back to packaging our work off in releases. We are happy to announce release candidate 1 (RC1) of the Nimbus 2.3 release. For the Nimbus workspace service, this RC1 contains support for EC2 Query API as well as support for KVM via a new, refactored, workspace-control based on libvirt. This is also the first release of the refactored design of the Nimbus context broker. Another major addition is an administrative web interface that supports securely distributing user credentials.

    In addition this RC1 contains improvements to the cloud client, numerous small features, and bug fixes. The full changelog information is available here.

    The RC1 is available for download here.

    We appreciate help from all who volunteered to alpha test this release. To help provide an easy vehicle for feedback and resolve issues quickly we offer real-time access to a Nimbus RC chatroom for serious alpha testers. If you would like to participate, please contact us for access.
  • Nimbus Project Update

    Exciting things are happening in the Nimbus world! The development team is growing and so is our user base. We have several developments to report from the past few months:

    • The Nimbus codebase has been moved to GitHub which we are very happy about. Collaboration is easier than ever and it is simple to track development progress. Check it out.
    • We’ve just launched a new website at a new address: http://www.nimbusproject.org
    • We have also recently moved our Science Clouds pages into a separate site accompanied by a blog. Check it out at http://www.scienceclouds.org
    • Heavy software development has been underway and we are preparing a Nimbus 2.3 release candidate which is expected to be available within a couple of weeks. Highlight features include initial EC2 Query API support, an administrative web application, and integration with libvirt.
    • We are committing to a more regular release schedule and have a lot of great features forthcoming in the next few months.
  • Where to find Nimbus at SC09?

    On Monday, November 16th, Kate Keahey will talk about Nimbus in the afternoon at the SC09 Cloud Computing for Systems and Computational Biology workshop. See the workshop page for details.

    On Tuesday, November 17th, Kate Keahey will give a talk at the AIST Booth on the SC show floor at 9 AM. The talk will be followed by a discussion.

    There will be an ongoing display of a Nimbus poster in the ANL booth.

  • OGF27 talk (Oct 13, 2009)
    Kate will giving a talk "Infrastructure-as-a-Service - Cloud Computing for Science" tomorrow at the Banff Centre, 9am PT. Details can be found here. Update: download the talk here.
  • XtreemOS talk (Sep 7, 2009)
    Kate will be giving an invited lecture at the XtreemOS Summer School 2009 at Wadham College, Oxford, UK on September 7th. Details can be found here.
  • TG09 student poster winner (Jun 29, 2009)
    A poster by Xiaoming Gao on the Virtual Block Store won the Best Student Poster award at TeraGrid 2009.
  • CERN workshop talk (Jun 26, 2009)
    Kate will be giving a talk at CERN on Friday, June 26th, get the details from the workshop page.
  • Nimbus Cloud Client 12 released (Jun 03, 2009)
    A new version of the Nimbus cloud client is available. It includes minor features and bugfixes as well as an experimental new meta-cloud-client which supports contextualizing across multiple clouds. Get it from the downloads page.
  • IU Talk: Cloud Computing with Nimbus (Apr 22, 2009)
    Kate will be giving a talk at Indiana University on April 22nd, 4pm Eastern in Lindley Hall 101. See you there!
  • Nimbus and cloud computing meet STAR production demands (Apr 02, 2009)
    See the press release!
  • Nimbus helps scientists run high energy physics experiments (Mar 24, 2009)
    See this press release for the details.
  • Nimbus at CHEP 09 (Mar 23, 2009)
    Nimbus at CHEP 09:

    Jerome Lauret from BNL will talk about Nimbus in his plenary on Wednesday March 25th and Artem Harutyunian will present a poster on how he integrated CernVM VMs running on the Nimbus cloud at UC into the ALICE testbed.

    See here for schedule details.

  • Nimbus at the OSG all hands meeting (Mar 02, 2009)

    Update: find the slides from the talk here.

    Kate will be talking about Nimbus at the Virtualization Workshop co-located with OSG All Hands Meeting in Baton Rouge, LA.

    At the same workshop, you will hear about how STAR scientists are using Nimbus in the "STAR & Virtualization" talk and Alex Younts will talk about his experiences running the Wispy Cloud at Purdue on TeraGrid resources.

  • BLAST virtual cluster available on Nimbus (Feb 12, 2009)

    Andrea Matsunaga and Mauricio Tsugawa have contributed a new image to the marketplace that lets you form a Hadoop/MPI cluster on the fly using Nimbus contextualization technology. The cluster is set up to run NCBI BLAST or mpiBLAST, see the marketplace description for all the details.

    On the Teraport cloud this has been linked into your personal directory, give it a go! You need to download the cluster XML file from the marketplace. If you've never launched a self-configuring virtual cluster before, the best way to learn is from this walkthrough.

  • Talk: Turn your cluster into a Cloud with Nimbus (Feb 11, 2009)

    Update: find the slides from the talk here.

    Kate will be in Silicon Valley on the 11th to discuss Nimbus and many cloud computing topics and trends.

    See this page for details. See you there!

  • Talk: Cloud Computing with Nimbus (Jan 29, 2009)

    Update: find the slides from the talk here.

    Computing Techniques Seminar

    Thursday, January 29, 2pm. Feynman Computing Center, Fermilab.

    Abstract:

    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing is emerging as a viable alternative to the acquisition and management of physical resources. But what exactly is cloud computing and to what extent can it be used to meet the needs of scientific applications?

    In this talk, I will give an overview of cloud computing and describe Nimbus -- a toolkit that provides an open source, EC2-compatible IaaS implementation as well as tools that enable, for example, the creation of tightly-coupled clusters such as are often used in science.

    I will describe how applications drove the development of various Nimbus capabilities and how they use these capabilities today on Amazon EC2 and the Science Clouds. Finally, I will discuss the emerging trends in cloud computing and discuss how they can benefit science.

  • VTDC 09 Call for Papers (Jan 21, 2009)

    The call for papers for VTDC 2009 is out. This is the 3rd workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing, taking place June 15th in Barcelona, Spain.

    See the homepage for CFP and other workshop details.

  • Nimbus TP2.2 released! (Jan 09, 2009)

    The main new features provided in this release are an EC2 metadata server (can be used with both EC2 and WSRF remote interfaces) and a standalone context broker that allows you to contextualize virtual clusters on both EC2 and Nimbus, and even virtual clusters spanning across virtual clusters.

    You can download the new release here

    The full changelog can be found here