Page 37 - Campus Technology, January/February 2019

Photos: Indiana University
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | January/February 2019
2018
Putting Advanced Computing Power Within Reach
Indiana University led the creation of an on-demand cloud platform that extends scientific and research computing resources to more higher education communities.
Category: IT Infrastructure and Systems Institution: Indiana University
Project: Jetstream: A Cloud System Enabling Learning in Higher Education Communities
Project lead: David Y. Hancock, program director, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, Pervasive Technology Institute
Tech lineup: Ceph, Dell, MathWorks, OpenStack, Red Hat
INDIANA UNIVERSITY’S Pervasive Technol- ogy Institute is leading an NSF grant (currently valued at more than $13 million) to create, implement and operate Jetstream, a user-friendly cloud environment designed to give more researchers and students at higher education institu- tions access to high-end computing resources on demand, from their tablets, laptops or desktop computers.
This effort by the IU Jetstream team and partnering insti- tutions — including the Texas Advanced Computing Cen- ter, the University of Chicago (IL), Johns Hopkins Uni- versity (MD), the University of Arizona, the University of Texas-San Antonio, and Cornell University (NY) — puts advanced computing power within reach of research, sci- ence and education programs that previously did not have access to comparable resources.
In 2016, when Jetstream entered into its first few months in full production as an NSF-funded cloud for conducting scientific and engineering research, the platform support- ed just over a dozen education initiatives across the U.S. Today, it supports 409 active projects and serves nearly 2,400 researchers and 900 students, with 75 fields of sci- ence represented from 180 different institutions.
These and other data confirm that Jetstream is filling a gap in the nation’s cyberinfrastructure for research and ed- ucation. Jetstream takes a different approach than previ- ously established scientific platforms. Many thousands of
David Y. Hancock