Installation scripts for SURF ResearchCloud catalog components
View the Project on GitHub UtrechtUniversity/researchcloud-items
Surf ResearchCloud (SRC) is a service that allows you to use the vast computational power offered by datacenters with almost the same ease-of-use as using your own laptop. The complex infrastructure behind the scenes is presented to you as a workspace. Think of a workspace as a laptop-in-the-cloud that you access using your web browser or another application (for instance “Remote Desktop” or “ssh”). Your web browser displays the screen content of this workspace and allows you to interact with it using your keyboard and mouse.
Workspaces are preconfigured with one or more applications, ranging from RStudio, Jupyter Notebooks, Matlab, to plain Windows or Linux virtual machines where the user installs their own software. Workspaces are also scalable: computational power, GPU drivers and extra storage can be ordered with a single mouse click. You can select a workspace type that suites your needs from a catalog in the SRC web portal. Workspaces are preconfigured for the user by support staff and can be extended on request to suit a variety of research domains and analysis methods. Should analysis applications for your domain not yet be covered, the support staff is happy to assist and to make additions to the catalog.
Ordering a workspace is easy. In the SRC portal, just click on a workspace type to order it. The datacenter service will set aside some compute power for you. The datacenter subsequently creates a workspace and prepares it for you with applications preinstalled. This whole process takes approximately 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the type of workspace.
A workspace is offered on-demand and on a pay-as-you-go basis. It saves you much hassle: no need to buy and maintain computer hardware and your favorite applications come conveniently preinstalled for you. This resource leasing concept is a cost effective solution if you plan to use it part-time, or if you seek to avoid to invest in expensive computer hardware, software or related IT-skills. Once you are done with using your workspace, just dispose of it in the SRC web portal.
Example workspaces
Resources available for a single workspace
Often, workspaces will need to be used by research staff from different institutes. The organizational structure may vary from an ad-hoc project team to a legal entity representing a consortium. Solutions such as guest accounts for staff from other institutes could lead to scenarios where the guests are deprived from important features.
To overcome such limitations, SRC instead uses the concept of a collaboration.
A collaboration may be viewed as a virtual organization, with members that can originate
from different research institutes, or from the private sector. Members may also have joined
on a personal title.
It is important to understand that SRC assumes all members of the collaboration to be
contractually or otherwise bound to work together.
Hence the costs related to a workspace ordered by a single member of the collaboration are
effectively charged to the collaboration. In addition, the workspace is automatically accessible
to all members of the collaboration.
A collaboration can accommodate a virtual organization the size of a European research project consortium. In contrast, it might also consist of just a single member, a researcher in need of a private workspace. Managing membership is done via a self-service portal (called SRAM, short for SURF Research Access Management.
As an Utrecht University employee or student, you can be invited by a colleague to an existing SRC collaboration. Alternatively issue a request via the University Servicedesk to have a new SURF ResearchCloud collaboration set up for your project. Once you are a member of a collaboration, you can start using any of its already running workspaces. NB: Allow upto 5 minutes for running workspaces to learn about and give access to newly added members.
You need a wallet if you want to create new workspaces. A wallet is usually linked to the collaboration budget. It authorizes you to perform actions with financial implications. You can request a wallet via the SRC Web portal. We recommend that you always request a wallet as soon as you start using SRC.
To minimize the administrative burden on researchers and to promote the use of SURF ResearchCloud, Utrecht University can accommodate your first (or modest) use of SRC with credits from its annual Research-IT budget. Should you wish to draw from this budget, please mention this in your wallet request.
The SURF ResearchCloud Wiki pages provide an elaborate introduction on concepts related to this cloud service.
Practical instructions to get started on SRC can be found here.