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Published on Thursday, 13 May 2021 12:00

May 12, 2021

Presented by Rob Fatland, UW Research Computing Director & CloudBank Lead of Education, Outreach and Training, and Shava Smallen, San Diego Supercomputer Center and CloudBank lead architect of user portal

CloudBank supports learning about and using the cloud stack from proposal writing through to post-grant data provisioning. In this webinar we present the thesis of cloud viability in relation to the science gateway paradigm.  This naturally touches on reproducibility and data sharing with extension to technical challenges of building and using science gateways. We will describe the cloud development environment in terms of services: Tools and technologies developed on top of the basics of compute, storage and networking that serve to simplify and accelerate infrastructure building.

About CloudBank: CloudBank is an NSF-sponsored collaboration among UC San Diego, University of Washington and UC Berkeley to promote and support cloud computing adoption in data science, both in the strategic sense of understanding cloud technology and the tactical sense of managing cloud accounting and spend, security and resource management. CloudBank comprehensively answers the question 'How does moving data and computation to a cloud platform work in practice over the full arc of a research grant?' CloudBank originated from the computer and information science and engineering (CISE) directorate at NSF and will expand its supportive role to additional domains. CloudBank's focus is research acceleration via the necessary technical and sociological shifts in the research community's perception. 

Gateways and the Cloud Padlet (contributions are welcome!)

Webinar Q&A

Q: When using public cloud provider calculators, are prospective PIs still finding it challenging to identify what resources they need to use and how much consumption there may be? How do researchers gain support services from cloud service partners?
A: Yes, absolutely, a challenge! Optimization support: CloudBank provides this directly to a degree ('first order'); and we integrate support with the vendors and are a networking resource to additional service providers.

Q: When the data that the PI puts in CloudBank is generated at the home institution and sensitive, do you have BAA that covers the home institution with the cloud vendor? What about security and compliance?

A: Not resolving but towards this: CloudBank places no restrictions on account access; so you can imagine granting access to research team members and IT staff from the awardee institution. As far as BAA's on Google Cloud, they are accepted by individual users to meet compliance needs. Cloud projects have Security Command Center references to any potential risks. These can be controlled by policy per organization which could cascade to projects within that organization. Each public vendor varies in their approach to confidential computing.

Webinar Slides