Guidance Notes for Cloud Research Users

Abstract

There is a rapidly increasing range of research activities which involve the outsourcing of computing and storage resources to public Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), who provide managed and scalable resources virtualised as a single service. For example Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) are two widely adopted open cloud solutions, which aim at providing pooled computing and storage services and charge users according to their weighted resource usage. Other examples include employment of Google Application Engine and Microsoft Azure as development platforms for research applications. Despite a lot of activity and publication on cloud computing, the term itself and the technologies that underpin it are still confusing to many. This note, as one of deliverables of the TeciRes project1, provides guidance to researchers who are potential end users of public CSPs for research activities. The note contains information to researchers on: •The difference between and relation to current research computing models •The considerations that have to be taken into account before moving to cloud-aided research •The issues associated with cloud computing for research that are currently being investigated •Tips and tricks when using cloud computing Readers who are interested in provisioning cloud capabilities for research should also refer to our guidance notes to cloud infrastructure service providers. This guidance notes focuses on technical aspects only. Readers who are interested in non-technical guidance should refer to the briefing paper produced by the “using cloud computing for research” project.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Gary Wills: orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-4088

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