Virtual Workspaces

Introduction to Nimbus @ UC

The University of Chicago Science Cloud, codenamed "Nimbus", provides compute capability in the form of Xen virtual machines (VMs) that are deployed on physical nodes of the University of Chicago TeraPort cluster (currently 16 nodes) using the workspace service.

Nimbus is available to all members of scientific community wanting to run in the cloud. To obtain access you will need to provide a justification (a few sentences explaining your science project) and a valid grid credential (If you don't have a credential, email us. We can help). Based on the project, you will be given an allocation on the cloud. Send your requests to Nimbus administrators at nimbus@mcs.anl.gov.

In a typical session you will make a request to deploy a workspace based on a specified VM image. You can either use one of the VM images already available on a cloud or upload your own VM image. On deployment, the image will be configured with an ssh public key you provide so that you can log into your VM once it is deployed. Instructions on how to use the cloud are available at here. Have fun!

Important Configuration notes:

• Nimbus provides public IP addresses for user's VMs. Thus, you will not need private network software to work with Nimbus.
• Nimbus works with version 9 of the workspace cloud client (see instructions for download).

To start using Nimbus download the workspace cloud client and follow the setup instructions. You will need the following:

• Nimbus configuration file
• A valid PKI X509 certificate