Warning: This document describes an old release. Check here for the current version.

Major Features

  • Open Source IaaS (#)

    • Nimbus provides a 100% freely available and open source Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) system. Every feature our community develops is freely available, there are no add-on or upgrade costs.

  • Storage Cloud Service (#)

    • Cumulus is storage cloud service that is compatible with the S3 REST API. It can be used against many existing clients (boto, s3cmd, jets3t, etc) to provide data storage and transfer services.

  • Remote deployment and lifecycle management of VMs (#)

    • Nimbus clients can deploy, pause, restart and shutdown VMs.

    On deployment, the client presents the workspace service with:

    1. meta-data (containing a pointer to the VM image to use as well as configuration information such as networking)
    2. resource allocation (specifying what resources: deployment time, CPUs, memory, etc. should be assigned to the VM)

    Once a request for VM deployment is accepted by the workspace service, a client can inspect various VM properties (e.g., its lifecycle state, time-to-live, the IP address assigned to a VM on deployment, or the resources assigned to the VM) via WSRF resource properties/notifications or polling (such as EC2 describe-instances).

  • Compatibility with Amazons Network Protocols (#)

    • EC2 based clients written for EC2 can be used with Nimbus installations. Both SOAP API and the REST API have been implemented in Nimbus. For more information, see What is the EC2 frontend?

    S3 REST API clients can also be used for managing VM storage with the Nimbus system.

  • Supports X509 Credentials (#)

    Users interested in a strong PKI security model can make use of our web services interface which uses X509 certificates. While the main feature here is strong security, it can also be a great convenience for institutions that are already using DOE certificates or any other certificate authority.

  • Easy to Use Cloud Client (#)

    • The workspace cloud client allows authorized clients to access many Workspace Service features in a user friendly way. It is designed to get users up and running in a matter of minutes, even from laptops, NATs, etc.

    cloud-client is the easiest way to use both a storage cloud and IaaS. Even the uninitiate find this fully integrated tool easy to use.

    See the clouds page as well as a behind-the-scenes overview of the service cloud configuration.

  • Multiple protocol support / Compartmentalized dependencies (#)

    The workspace service is an implementation of a strong "pure Java" internal interface (see What is the RM API?) which allows multiple remote protocols to be supported as well as differing underlying manager implementations.

    There is currently one known manager implementation (the workspace service) and two supported remote protocol sets:

    • WSRF based: protocol implementation in longstanding use by previous workspace services and clients including the cloud-client.

    • EC2 based: clients written for EC2 can be used with Nimbus installations. For more information, see What is the EC2 frontend?

    These protocols happen to both be Web Services based and both run in the Apache Axis based GT Java container. But neither thing is a necessity:

    • There is nothing specific to web services based remote protocols in the workspace service implementation, the messaging system just needs to be able to speak to Java based libraries.

    • Workspace service dependencies have nothing to do with what container it is running in, they are normal Java application dependencies like Spring, ehcache, backport-util-concurrent, and JDBC (currently using the embedded Derby database).

  • Flexible group management (#)

    The workspace service can start and manage groups of workspaces at a time, as well as groups of groups ("ensembles") where each group's VM images, resource allocation, duration, and node number can be different. Groups and ensembles will be run in a co-scheduled manner. That is, all group/cluster members will be scheduled to run at same time or none will run, even when using best-effort schedulers (see the pilot section below).

    Support for auto-configuration of these clusters (see the cloud clusters page).

  • Per-client usage tracking (#)

    The service can track deployment time (both used and currently reserved) on a per-client basis which can be used in authorization decisions about subsequent deployments. Clients may query the service about their own usage history.

  • Per-user Storage Quota (#)

    Cumulus (the VM image repository manager for Nimbus) can be configured to enforce per user storage usage limits. This is an especially important feature for the scientific community where it is not convenient to directly charge dollars and cents for storage but where resources still need to be protected and rationed.

  • Flexible request authentication and authorization (#)

    Authorization policies can be applied to networking request, VM image files, resource request, and time used/reserved by the client. You can assign identities to logical groups and then write policies about those groups. You can set simultaneous reservation limits, reservation limits that take past workspace usage into account, and detailed repository node and path checks.

  • Easy user management (#)

    New in Nimbus 2.5 are a set of user management tools that make administering a Nimbus cloud significantly easier. The tools are both easy to use and scriptable.

  • Configuration management (deployment request) (#)

    Some configuration operations need to be finished at deployment-time because they require information that becomes available only late in the deployment process (such as network address assignments, physical host assignments, etc.).

    The workspace service provides optional mechanisms to carry out such configuration management actions. Configuration actions available are DHCP delivery of network assignments and arbitrary file based customizations (mount + alter image).

    Also see one-click clusters

  • One-click clusters (contextualization) (#)

    See the cloud clusters page for how auto-configuration of entire clusters (contextualization) is supported by the science clouds. This allows the cloud client to launch "one-click" clusters whose nodes securely configure themselves to operate in new network and security environments.

  • Workspace client (#)

    The workspace client allows authorized clients to access all Workspace Service features. The current release contains a Java reference implementation.

  • VM network configuration (deployment request) (#)

    The workspace service allows a client to configure networking for the VM accommodating several flexible options (allocating new network address from a site pool, bridging an existing address, etc.).

    In particular, a client can request configuring a VM on startup with several different NICs allocating different addresses from different pools (e.g., public and private, thus implementing the Edge Service requirement).

    There are mechanisms for a site to set aside such address pools for the VMs as well as tools intercepting the VM's DHCP requests to deliver the right addresses.

  • Local resource management plugin (#)

    The workspace service provides a local resource manager with the capability to manage a pool of nodes on which VMs are deployed to accommodate the service deployment model (as opposed to a batch deployment model).

    To use it, the pool nodes are configured with a lightweight Python management script called workspace-control.

    Besides interfacing with Xen, workspace-control maps networking requests to the proper bridge interfaces, controls file isolation between different workspace instances, interfaces with ebtables and DHCP for IP address delivery, and can accomplish local transfers (file propagation from the WAN accessible image node) in daemonized mode.

  • Xen and KVM plugins (#)

    The default workspace-control plugin is for the Xen hypervisor and with configuration you can enable KVM.

  • Non-invasive site scheduler integration (#)

    When using the local resource management plugin, (the default), a set of VMM resources will be managed entirely by the workspace service. But it can alternatively be integrated with a site's scheduler/resource manager (such as PBS) using the workspace pilot program.

    This allows a dual use grid cluster to be achieved: regular jobs can run on a VMM node that hosting no guest VMs; but if the node is allocated to the workspace service (at the service's request), VMs can be used. The site resource manager maintains full control over the cluster and does not need to be modified.

    Many safeguards are included to ensure nodes are cleanly returned to their normal non-VM-hosting state, including protection against the workspace service not being available, site (resource manager based) early cancellation, node reboots, and to provide a "worst case scenario" contingency it includes a one-command "kill 9" facility for administrators.

  • VM fine-grain resource usage enforcement (resource allocation) (#)

    The workspace service allows the client to specify (ask for) the resource allocation to be assigned to a VM and manage that resource allocation during deployment. In the current release only memory and deployment time are managed.



For more details, see the current release's documentation and the Nimbus FAQ.