NASA Launches 'Nebula' Compute Cloud

NASA is developing Nebula, an open source-based cloud computing initiative that would support space missions and as well as an overhaul of the agency's Web sites. "It provides high-capacity computing, storage, and network connectivity and uses a virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy efficiencies," according to NASA's Nebula Web site. NASA says Nebula could be used for the rapid development of policy-compliant, secure Web applications that support education, public outreach, collaboration, and mission-support initiatives.

Components used in Nebula include the Eucalyptus software developed at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Lustre file system used on 64-bit storage nodes, the Django Web application framework, the SOLR indexing and search engine, and an integrated development environment. Nebula also will be compatible with Amazon Web services (AWS), enabling AWS-compatible tools to work with Nebula, and allowing Nebula virtual servers to run on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

Nebula also could be used to consolidate many of NASA's sites into a single family with a Web application framework that would include templates for user-generated blogs, wikis, and other content. NASA technologists also are investigating how cloud computing could be used to support the U.S. space program, including making data from NASA's various missions available in the cloud.

From Information Week
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