Cloud Hosting Applications – The Scientific Community and Cloud Computing

The Cloud has an impact on more than just business; it has also brought its unique abilities to the scientific community. In the last decade the number of scientific instruments available that can add to the data stream has been enormous, and continues to grow. While this has spurred software development within the various scientific disciplines, hardware processing capabilities have struggled to handle the sheer volume of data. One of the areas where The Cloud has been brought in to handle this is astronomy, where the glut of data has been overwhelming for researchers.

One of the results has been the development of astroinformatics, the science of the exploitation of the information pertaining to astronomy through the development of grid and cloud computing. In Canada, researchers with The Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomical Research (CANFAR) in cooperation with CANARIE, a national research network organization is working to create a cloud-based platform to support astronomy research. The goal of the project is to create access for astronomers to datasets and resources in customized virtual compute and storage clouds. This would give them entrée to data that was previously only accessible locally and will allow astronomers across the country to handle the vast datasets being generated by global observatories. In addition, the expertise of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics and the National Research of Canada will be available through this network.

CANAR states that they envision this new cloud environment will “provide astronomers with novel and more immediate hands-on and interactive ways to process and share very large amounts of data emerging from space exploration”.

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