Collaborative Research: Managing Cloud Usage Allocation and Accounting for the NSF Community

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Cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Cornell Red Cloud, and the SDSC Storage Cloud have emerged as important research computing resources. These resources are already popular in research and education due to their instant (on-demand) access, seemingly infinite scalability, ease of configuration for widely varying needs, and ability to offer higher-level, easier-to-use services to less-than-expert users. However, as usage of Cloud resources by the NSF community continues to grow, challenging issues of resource allocation, accounting, reporting and billing emerge. This award develops a framework that can simplify Cloud usage for researchers and educators while also enabling allocation, monitoring, and management by those responsible for strategic and budget planning and reporting. The PI's partner with Amazon, Inc., Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., and MathWorks, Inc., theGlobus Online team from the University of Chicago and the Red Cloud team from Cornell University to develop and evaluate a prototype service called Globus Usage that can be leveraged by individuals and their research groups, academic institutions, NSF projects, and XSEDE to integrate a range of cloud services into their research computing environments, with the ability to implement allocation, accounting, reporting, and billing all from a single Web-based dashboard.