Along with some minor improvements and bug fixes the major contributions of this release are:

• Users can now associate meta data describing a virtual machine image along side of their image in the Cumulus repository.
• Users can query the cloud for detailed information about the hardware on which their VM is running. Determining the specific location of VMs has enabled FutureGrid researchers to study scientific computation in infrastructure clouds. In order to use this feature the infrastructure cloud administrator must enable it.

The new release can be found on the Nimbus downloads page.

The major additions in this release are support for Availability Zones, configurable EC2 multi-core instances, more robust support for LANTorrent and new administration tools which allow administrators to easily control VMs running on their cloud. The administrators can also choose to give more information to the user, e.g., allow them to inspect on what physical machines a their virtual machines are running.

In addition, the release also includes bugfixes and additions to documentation. Check out the changelog for full details.

As always, we want to express our gratitude to our open source community for their contributions to this release. We would like to particularly acknowledge the work of Rob Rusnak who contributed the administrative tools as part of the Google Summer of Code project and Shao, Hsin (Jeff) who helped with LANTorrent testing. The features in this release were supported by the GSoC, OOI, and FutureGrid projects.

The Nimbus Infrastructure 2.9 release is available for download at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/downloads/

Documentation is available at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/docs/2.9/

The major additions in this release are support for availability zones, configurable EC2 multi-core instances, and new administrative tools which allows administrators to easily control VMs running on their cloud. The administrators can also choose to give more information to the user, e.g., allow them to inspect on what physical machines a their virtual machines are running.

In addition, the release also includes bugfixes and additions to documentation. Check out the changelog for full details.

Much of the effort for this release came from our open source community. We would like to particularly acknowledge the contributions of Rob Rusnak who contributed the administrative tools as part of the Google Summer of Code project. The features in this release were supported by the GSoC, OOI, and FutureGrid projects.

The Nimbus 2.9 RC2 is available for download at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/downloads/

Documentation (still in progress) is available at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/docs/2.9/

We appreciate help from all who are willing to 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.

The major additions in this release are support for availability zones, configurable EC2 multi-core instances, and new administrative tools which allows administrators to easily control VMs running on their cloud. The administrators can also choose to give more information to the user, e.g., allow them to inspect on what physical machines a their virtual machines are running.

In addition, the release also includes bugfixes and additions to documentation. Check out the changelog for full details.

Much of the effort for this release came from our open source community. We would like to particularly acknowledge the contributions of Rob Rusnak who contributed the administrative tools as part of the Google Summer of Code project. The features in this release were supported by the GSoC, OOI, and FutureGrid projects.

The Nimbus 2.9 release candidate is available for download at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/downloads/

Documentation (still in progress) is available at: http://www.nimbusproject.org/docs/2.9/

We appreciate help from all who are willing to 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.

If you are attending SC11 and interested in the clouds role, potential, and challenges to the scientific community please attend our tutorial. You will gain hands-on experience using the FutureGrid clouds and administering your own cloud as well as learning about the surrounding tools and ecosystem.

The tutorial will be held on Sunday November 13th at 8:30AM.

For more information see the SC page.

Nimbus Infrastructure 2.8 contains new features that significantly improve VM deployment performance, flexibility of administration and improve compatibility with EC2. In addition, it also contains minor enhancements and bugfixes, see the changelog.

While Nimbus Infrastructure contains tools that allow providers to build clouds, Nimbus Platform focuses on tools that leverage them: provision resources across different infrastructure cloud providers and contextualize them. To achieve this, Nimbus Platform tools are compatible with leading infrastructure cloud implementations. The current release contains two such tools:

• Nimbus Platform Context Broker 2.8: repackaging of the Nimbus Context Broker facilitating its independent use.
• Nimbus Platform cloudinit.d 1.0: a tool for coordinating, monitoring and repair of complex launches over infrastructure cloud providers.

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

Documentation is available:

• Nimbus Infrastructure
• Nimbus Platform Context Broker
• Nimbus Platform cloudinit.d

In addition to the committers, we would like to acknowledge the contributions from Jamie Chen, David Foster, Kyle Fransham, Adam Smith, and Dan Yocum.

In this second release candidate we made the code more robust by fixing bugs in the cloudinit.d tool as well as the Nimbus IaaS layer.

At this time we are also releasing the Nimbus Cloud Client version 20 with increased support for common and shared VM images.

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

Documentation is available at:

• Nimbus Infrastructure
• Nimbus Platform cloudinit.d
• Nimbus Platform Context Broker
• Nimbus Cloud Client