1. SYN122
Moving Australian national research into the
cloud
Nick Golovachenko

2. Session Abstract
To increase the productivity of their researchers,
Australian universities are leveraging cloud
architectures to deliver on-demand access to resources
with unprecedented agility and efficiency. This session
highlights NeCTAR, a Super Science project whose
lead agent is the University of Melbourne.
National Servers Project (NSP) provides a robust
cloud platform for hosting core NeCTAR services for the
Australian eResearch community that require high
levels of reliability and availability.

3. Our Goal
To provide a reliable, safe and secure environment for
Australian researchers to host their important research
applications which means they don’t have to worry
about anything except managing their research.

4. Moving Australian research into the cloud

5. Moving Australian research into the cloud

6. Introduction
Session Summary
1. Background
2. What is NeCTAR
3. What is eResearch
4. What is the NSP
5. How was it Built and Implemented
6. Challenges
7. Questions

7. Background – Melbourne

8. Background – Melbourne

9. The University of Melbourne

10. The University of Melbourne

11. What is NeCTAR
• The University of Melbourne was commissioned by the then
Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and
Tertiary Education (DIISR) deliver of the NeCTAR program.
• The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources
(NeCTAR) Program aims to enhance research collaboration and
research outcomes by providing Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure that:

12. What is NeCTAR
• Creates new information centric research capabilities;
• Significantly simplifies the combining of instruments,
data, computing, and analysis applications; and
• Enables the development of research workflows
based on access to multiple resources.

13. What NeCTAR has built
NeCTAR is delivering to Australian researchers:
• Virtual Laboratories that connect a range of resources of relevance to a specific research
community:
• eResearch Tools that support problem-oriented eResearch needs and further the
achievement of improved research outcomes;
• A federated Research Cloud Built for virtual machines that only run from minutes to months
with not so strict entry, security and maintenance criteria
• A National Server offering a secure and robust hosting service with strict entry, security and
maintenance criteria, Built for virtual machines that need to run continuously for years

14. What is eResearch
• What is eResearch:
• The term e-Research (alternately spelled eResearch) refers to the use of information technology to support
existing and new forms of research. E-research to other disciplines, including the humanities and social
sciences.
• Examples of e-Research problems range across disciplines and include:
• modelling of ecosystems or economies
• exploration of human genome structures
• studies of large linguistic corpuses
• integrated social policy analyses
• The main features of e-Research are that it:
• is collaborative
• uses grid computing technologies
• is data intensive
• E-Research includes research activities that use a spectrum of advanced information and communication
technology (ICT) capabilities. It embraces new research methodologies emerging from increasing access
to:

15. What is the NSP
• The National Servers Program is a cloud based Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS) service which hosts critical e-Research services for the
Australian research community. Uniquely Australian, the NSP provides
a robust national network of virtual servers and platforms to support
many eResearch services such as the operations for the Research
Cloud, virtual laboratories, tools and data.
• The NSP is currently free for Australian researchers. It provides a safe
and secure environment for Australian researchers to host their
important research application which means they don’t have to worry
about anything except managing their research.

16. What is NSP
Allocation Review Process
Applications to host services on the National Servers Program (NSP) are
reviewed by the NSP Allocation Committee. This committee consists of
representatives from around Australia, and they review applications
according to the following four criteria:
• The service underpins the integrated management or access to
collaboration, data, compute or analysis resources and
capabilities,
• The service is considered a core to other eResearch services and
activities,
• The service will support activities by researchers from multiple
institutions, and
• The service has suitable maintenance and user support resources
in place.

17. How it was Built
Research Community Consultation
• Requirements gathering Demand projections Architecture development
Provisioning
• Basic Access Phase Manual provisioning of VM Limited backup
Limited high availability
• VMs =10 to 50 at each site
Full Service Phase
• Built-in high availability and Self Service
• VMs =250 to 500 at each site

18. Full Service Phase Features
• The NSP provides an unmanaged service for
maximum flexibility.
• Advanced Self service features allow Researchers to
control all stages of their VM lifecycle.
• Researchers can build their applications to leverage
features such as failover and load balancing between
the two zones (Data Centres). Researchers can
utilise a Portal for Self Service account management
within their allocated Research Group, they can also
manage snapshots, templates and advance
networking, e.g., Firewall, NAT, DNS, DHCP, VPN
and load balancing.

19. NSP How it was Built and Implemented
Zone One
Queensberry
Street (QS2)
Data Centre
Zone Two
Noble Park (NP)
Data Centre
100
KM
Hypervisor
Clusters
Primary Storage
Secondary Storage
NFS storage with cross site
replication
Production VMsProduction VMsStaging VMs

20. NSP Management Stack
• CloudPortal
• CloudPlatform (Citrix supported version of
Apache CloudStack)
• OpenLDAP - for user Authentication
• MySQL – underlying database for both Portal
and Platform
• XenServer Hypervisors currently being used for
the Management Stack plus Virtual Machines

21. Snapshots, Templates & Volumes
Supported Operating Systems & template offerings
• Centos 6.x
• Ubuntu 10.x & 12.04
• Debian 6.x & 7.x
• Windows Server
Volumes can be either the standard root OS volume or an
additional data volume:
We can offer additional volumes:
• Small – 10GB
• Medium – 20GB
• Large – 40GB

22. Who is using the NSP

23. Who is using the NSP
IMOS is designed to be a fully-integrated national array of observing
equipment to monitor the open oceans and coastal marine
environment around Australia, covering physical, chemical and
biological variables.

24. IMOS – Use Case

25. Quadrant – Project Management Software for Researchers
Quadrant is a cloud-based project management and data
collection software tool that allows participant-based
researchers to work collaboratively and efficiently from a self-
managed centralised site.

26. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)
The Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) connects ecosystem
scientists and enables them to collect, contribute, store, share and integrate
data across disciplines. Collectively this increases the capacity of the Australian
ecosystem science community to advance science and contribute to effective
management and sustainable use of our ecosystems.
TERN is delivering critical research infrastructure and supporting national and
international networks of scientists, environmental managers and stakeholders,
needed to improve understanding and management of Australia’s ecosystems.

27. Challenges
• Initially NSP was provisioned on Shared Storage –
Impacted by Performance and Reliability.
• Researchers always wanted largest VM Types and
Storage Offerings.
• Confusion with the two NeCTAR Clouds.
• Transition to operation has had it’s challenges.
• Sustainability of the service still needs to be
completed.
• Cloudplatform Disaster Recovery - Promised
• Citrix Support – Xenserver and Cloud teams where
two team not one, resulting in separate support
requests for one issue

28. Conclusion
• The National Server Program (NSP) was established
to provide a hosting home for Australian eResearch
Services.
• Any publicly funded eResearch service provider may
apply through a merit scheme to have their service
hosted on the NSP.
• The services hosted on the NSP are used by
researchers across Australian and Internationally.

29. Questions
Over to you…