StratusLab open-source IaaS cloud v1.0 released

July 1st 2011: The StratusLab project has released the first production version of its IaaS cloud computing distribution.  The software allows deployment and management of private computing clouds, with the aim of enhancing distributed computing infrastructures, such as the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI), which allow research and higher education institutes from around the world to pool computing resources. 

SixSq, responsible for the integration and testing of StratusLab, has put significant effort to ensure that the distribution can be installed and configured very quickly. In fact, for simple deployments, system administrators can turn existing physical infrastructures into IaaS cloud within minutes. The idea being that simple things should be simple, this is why the StratusLab distribution ships with sensible defaults, which will work in most of the cases, at least to start with.

With the release of version 1.0, the fully open-source StratusLab distribution now offers a complete solution for creating and managing cloud-based infrastructures.  It integrates the OpenNebula virtual infrastructure manager with tools such as the Claudia platform service management toolkit for dynamic service provisioning and scalability; a Marketplace allowing scientific user communities to create, search for and share customised digitally-signed virtual machine images; persistent storage allowing users to create and access disks on remote cloud storage resources; a web monitoring tool, and a comprehensive set of easy-to-use command-line tools for system administrators and users.

The StratusLab cloud distribution also includes unique features to facilitate the integration of cloud and grid technologies, such as the authentication Proxy service which allows user authentication via a range of credentials, including X509 grid certificates, integration with the Quattor fabric management toolkit widely used in Grid sites, and a set of grid server appliances available through the StratusLab Marketplace.

Previous public releases are already in use in production infrastructures, with a Grid site currently running on a StratusLab cloud as part of the Greek National Grid Infrastructure.  With the release of version 1.0 it is hoped that other grid sites will follow suit, bringing the benefits of cloud computing to the broader European distributed computing infrastructure ecosystem.

The StratusLab project is funded through the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).  Visit http://www.stratuslab.eu/ for more information or to download the StratusLab distribution.

The StratusLab distribution brings the benefits of cloud computing to the European distributed computing and grid research infrastructures, making sites easier to manage and enhancing flexibility and energy efficiency by allowing site administrators to deploy services on a private cloud.  Future releases will look at adding cloud federation and scale-out to commercial cloud services to meet peak demands.  This will result in major benefits for European academic research and is part of the European Commission strategy to develop European computing infrastructures.

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For media queries please contact Dr Charles Loomis, tel: +33(0)164468910.

For commercial queries please contact Marc-Elian Bégin, tel: +41 77 44 68 119. 

Notes for editor

About the StratusLab Project:

The StratusLab project consists of numerous collaborators from six European research institutions. A website can be accessed via the following address: www.stratuslab.eu. The project is partially funded by the European Commission through the Grant Agreement RI-261552. 

The project brings together six organisations, all key players with recognised leadership, proven expertise, experience and skills in grid and cloud computing. This collaboration presents a balanced combination of academic, research and industrial institutes with complementary capabilities. The participating organisations include the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France; the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; the Greek Research and Technology Network S.A., Greece; SixSq Sàrl, Switzerland; Telefonica Investigacion y Desarrollo, Spain, and Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

About European Union Framework Programme 7: 

The Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof playing a crucial role in reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment. The framework programme runs a number of programmes under the headings Cooperation, Ideas, People and Capacities. All specific programmes work together to promote and encourage the creation of European poles of scientific excellence. Find more information on FP7 can be found on their website.