Cloud Computing activities

ReSC staff did the initial trials of virtualisation software for use by ReSC and ESSC. VirtualBox and VMware ESXi were tested and both are now being used at ESSC. VirtualBox is being used on several PCs and laptops to enable local Windows and Linux installations to be used at the same time. VMware ESXi was found to be more suitable for server virtualisation, and there are now three VMware servers hosting a total of 11 VMs.

ReSC is participating in the FleSSR project. The first phase of the project is over but the Eucalyptus cloud infrastructre set up by Reading University IT Services is still under evaluation.

ESSC is considering various IaaS options, including the following.

• Reading University IT Services. Details and costs of VM hosting can be found on the infrastructure information page. NetApp based storage is available at a cost of £1000/TB/year.
• The Universities Modernisation Fund Cloud Pilot at Eduserv looks promising. The pilot infrastructure is VMware vCloud, which should make it easy for ESSC's existing VMware VMs to be deployed in the UMF pilot cloud.

-- DanBretherton - 16 Nov 2011