A decade of empowering scientific research: the EGI Federated Cloud marks 10 years of operations
EGI recently celebrated 10 years of operations of its Federated Cloud.
What is it?
The EGI Federated Cloud is designed to address the computational needs of researchers across Europe, offering them a flexible and scalable cloud infrastructure. The service includes access to advanced computing capabilities, virtualised resources, and dedicated support from EGI and its partners.
The Federated Cloud pools resources from various public and private partners across Europe, providing a single point of access for researchers. This collaborative effort offers:
- Cutting-edge computing power for complex research tasks.
- Customisable virtual environments for specific project needs.
- Dedicated support services to ensure application efficiency.
- Total control over deployed applications.
- Immediately processed workloads.
- Service performance scaled with elastic resource consumption
The EGI Federated Cloud is widely used by numerous scientific communities, with Environmental Sciences being the most prominent. The cloud enables the utilisation of resources in novel ways, and many of these communities already have experience in using services from commercial cloud providers.
Some Background History
The EGI Federated Cloud was initiated with EGI-InSPIRE and further refined during EGI Engage.
This cloud platform was developed in partnership with various European research communities, serving a diverse set of scientific fields. Launched in 2014, it initially explored different cloud technologies and eventually settled on OpenStack. The subsequent integration with the EGI Check-in service was highly appreciated by users, representing a valuable enhancement to the service utilization. Over time, the EGI Federated Cloud has evolved into an IaaS-type cloud, encompassing academic, private clouds, and virtualized resources constructed around open standards. Its development is steered by the specific needs of the scientific community.
Future developments
The EGI Federated Cloud service brings together the expertise of nearly 30 providers across Europe and will continue to significantly impact European research efforts.
The service's future plans include expanding capacities and capabilities by integrating commercial cloud providers to meet the needs of larger research projects and use cases.
Additionally, there are plans to streamline integration with other technologies, such as Kubernetes.
Lastly, the EGI Federated Cloud software repository is set to be upgraded to facilitate software sharing for both providers and users according to the FAIR principles.
