Nectar, supported by the Australian government, provides cloud-based e-research infrastructure to facilitate collaboration across research institutions in Australia. It offers a range of virtual laboratories and tools for various scientific fields, significantly enhancing the accessibility of research data and reducing collaboration barriers. The Nectar research cloud operates through a federation of eight institutions, supporting over 10,000 users and promoting innovative methodologies and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

1. National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources
NeCTAR is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative
Research Infrastructure Strategy to establish eResearch infrastructure in partnership
with Australian research institutions, organisations and research communities. The
University of Melbourne has been appointed as the Lead Agent,
nectar.org.au
National
Research
Cloud
1
Paul Coddington, Deputy Director, Research Platforms

2. Virtual
laboratories
Research Cloud
NeCTAR
National
eResearch
Collaboration
Tools
and
Resources
• Funded
by
Commonwealth
Govt EIF
and
NCRIS
since
2010
• Cloud
based
infrastructure
to
enable
research
collaboration
across
institutional
boundaries
• Enable
research
community
to
store,
access,
share,
and analyse data
National
Research
Cloud
• Computing
infrastructure,
software
and
services
-­‐ at
scale
• Self-­‐service
capability
to
quickly
provision
resources
Virtual
Laboratories
• Domain-­‐oriented
online
environments
• Combine
research
data,
models,
analysis
tools
and
workflows
• Support
national
and
international
collaborative
research

3. NeCTAR
enhances
Australian
research
Enhance
capability
and
competitiveness
of
Australian
research
by:
• Facilitating
knowledge-­‐centred
innovation
§ Innovative
infrastructure
enabling
innovative
research
methodologies
§ Democratising
access
to
sophisticated
digital
methods
• Accelerating
access
to
research
data,
tools
and
models
§ Bringing
together
access
to
modelling
and
observation;
platforms,
tools
and
applications
to
derive
knowledge
from
data.
• Removing
barriers
to
collaboration
§ Supporting
cross-­‐institutional
and
international
research
collaboration
– People
build
collaborations
-­‐ technology
can
reduce
barriers
to
collaboration
3

4. NeCTAR Virtual
Laboratories
Climate
and
Weather
Science
Laboratory
– Lead:
Bureau
of
Meteorology
– 6
Partners
§ Integrated
environment
for
climate
and
weather
science
modelling
and
data
Genomics
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
University
of
Queensland/University
of
Melbourne
– 9
Partners
§ Easy
access
to
Genomics
tools
and
resources
for
Australian
biologists.
Endocrine
Genomics
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
University
of
Melbourne
– 7
Partners
§ Statistical
power
for
clinical
research
Marine
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
University
of
Tasmania
– 8
Partners
§ Ocean
observations
and
modelling
to
improve
planning
for
marine
and
coastal
environments.
All
Sky
Virtual
Observatory
– Lead:
Astronomy
Australia
Limited
– 4
Partners
§ Theoretical
and
observational
astronomy
data,
simulations
and
tools
accessible
from
your
desktop
Biodiversity
and
Climate
Change
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
Griffith
University
– 18
Partners
§ Simplifies
biodiversity-­‐climate
change
modelling.
Humanities
Network
Infrastructure
– HuNI – Lead:
Deakin
University
– 13
Partners
§ Integrating
28
of
Australia’s
most
important
cultural
datasets
Characterisation
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
Monash
University
– 11
Partners
§ Integrating
Australia’s
key
research
imaging
instruments
with
data
and
analysis
tools
on
the
cloud.
Geophysics
Virtual
Lab
– Lead:
CSIRO
– 7
Partners
§ Easy
access
to
geophysics
workflows,
simulations
and
datasets.
Alveo – Human
Communications
Sciences
– Lead:
Western
Sydney
University
– 16
Partners
§ Studying
speech,
language,
text,
and
music
on
a
larger
scale
Industrial
Ecology
Virtual
Laboratory
– Lead:
Sydney
University
– 9
Partners
§ Supporting
comprehensive
environmental
carbon
footprinting and
sustainability
assessments
Infrastructure
partnerships
• High
demand
§ Funded
¼
of
proposals
• Research
institution
led
§ Addressing
identified
research
priorities
• Highly
networked
§ Over
35
universities
and
research
orgs
participating
§ Over
1:1
co-­‐investment
• Collaboratively
building
collaborative
infrastructure
4

5. NeCTAR
Research
Cloud
5
Stemformatics
Stem Cell data visualisation on the Cloud.
Find
and
visualise
interesting
genes
in
datasets
from
leading
stem
cell
laboratories
on
the
Research
Cloud.
•Over
400
users
nationally
•100
cores,
multi-­‐site
•NCRIS
supported.
Plant
Energy
Biology
Centre
of
Excellence
Researchers
study
how
plants
capture
energy
from
sunlight
and
how
they
use
that
energy
to
grow
and
develop.
Hosting
collaborations
with
the
Max
Planck
Institute
and
the
Beijing
Genomics
Institute
– on
the
NeCTAR
Research
Cloud.
Building collaboration on the Research Cloud.
“NeCTAR makes it much easier, much faster. It
means more collaborations — projects that
would have just been too hard to go ahead.”
Professor Ian Small, Laureate Fellow, West
Australian Scientist of the Year 2015.
Cancer
Therapeutics
CRC
“The service, support and responsiveness that
we have received from the Nectar team has
been first class, and feels like an extension to
our own internal support services.”
Paul Reeve, Director of Operations,
Cancer Therapeutics CRC.
Access to cancer research data, tools and
visualisation on the NeCTAR Cloud
Providing
access
to
analysis
and
visualisation
tools,
and
over
30TB
of
cancer
research
data
on
the
Research
Cloud.
The
Nectar
choice
was
easy,
and
the
migration
process
seamless.
Supporting
innovation
and
collaboration
in
the
business of
research.

6. The
NeCTAR
Research
Cloud
A world first…
The NeCTAR Research Cloud is a partnership
between 8 institutions and research
organisations who are operating Australia’s
first federated research cloud.
• University of Melbourne
• National Computation Infrastructure (NCI)
• Monash University
• Queensland CyberInfrastructure Foundation
(QCIF)
• eResearch SA (eRSA)
• University of Tasmania
• Intersect, NSW
• iVEC, WA
A single integrated cloud
operated by 8 national
partners and
supporting over 10000
research users.

7. Cloud
7
year
timeline
7
2011 2013 2014 2015
QCIF
512 cores,
Q2 2013
eRSA
2560 cores,
Q1 2014
iVec node
2944 cores,
Q4 2014
Melbourne
1920 cores,
Q1 2012
Melbourne
3840 cores,
late 2012
Monash
2560 cores,
Q2 2013
NCI
2560 cores,
Q1 2014
UTas, 1408 cores,
Q2 2014
Intersect node
4352 cores,
Q4 2014
National cloud
workshops.
OpenStack selected
in April 2011
First call for
nodes
Sept 2011
Second call
for nodes
May 2012
Nectar begins at
U. Melbourne
POC launched,
300 cores
Science clouds
program begins
2010 2012 2016

8. Some
facts
Provisioning
resources
at
scale
to
researchers
• Single
sign-­‐on
with
University
username
and
password
• Supporting
diverse
needs
across
the
breadth
of
Australian
research
• Any
researcher,
anywhere…
8
40,000
CPU
cores
4
PetaBytes
10,000+
registered
users
since
Jan
2012
http://status.rc.nectar.org.au

9. Nectar
Federation
A
single
national
cloud
interface
• OpenStack
cells
to
support
8
regional
sites
• Users
can
request
a
site
– or
deploy
anywhere.
National
services
• Cloud
dashboard
(Horizon)
and
API
• Authentication
(Keystone,
AAF)
• Image
repository
(Glance)
Federated
services
• Object
store
(Swift)
• Compute
(Nova)
and
volume
storage
(Cinder)
• User
support,
help
desk,
user
guides,
documentation
9

10. Nectar
Federation
OpenStack
Higher
Level
Services
• Data
&
analytics
– Trove,
Sahara,
Gnocchi
• Application
services
– Heat,
Murano,
Magnum
• Software
defined
networking
– Neutron
• Storage,
backup
&
recovery
– Manila
National
and
local
resources
• Nationally
and
locally
funded
cloud
resources
• National
and/or
local
resource
allocations
• National
standards
and
local
customisations
• Standard
and
specialised
instance
configurations
(GPUs
etc)
• ‘Golden
images’
and
community
contributed
images
10

11. NeCTAR Research
Cloud
Ops
Team
…a
federation
of
8
operators (~
16
FTE
total)
11
Core
Services
Cloud
Operators
Distributed
Help Desk

12. Activities
used
to
“glue”
distributed
ops
Six
Monthly
Tech
and
Operations
Workshops
• Physically
bringing
Core
Services,
Node
Operators
and
DHD
together
for
2
days
Fortnightly
RC-­‐ops
meetings
• Video
Conference
of
Core
Services,
Node
Operators
and
some
DHD
Weekly
Core
Services
meetings
• Video
Conference
of
Core
Services
staff
from
UoM,
Monash
and
NCI
Fortnightly
DHD
meetings
• Video
Conference
of
5
nodes
participating
in
the
DHD
Monthly
Control
Group
meetings
• Video
Conference
-­‐ Node
Management,
Nectar
Directorate,
DHD
and
Ops
Mgmt

13. Federation
Challenges
Collaboration
is
great
but
not
always
easy
• Federated
organisations
in
Nectar
are
all
very
different
• Funding
contracts
and
OLAs
with
Nodes
• Have
to
make
it
worthwhile
to
federate
into
a
national
service
• Scaling
out
will
be
interesting,
hierarchical
model
is
key
Security,
access,
networking
• Security
challenges
with
broad
access
self-­‐service
vs
managed
service
• Incident
response
within
Nodes
and
across
the
federation

14. Challenges
Access
and
cost
recovery
• Costs
covered
by
institutions
not
directly
by
users
(has
pros
and
cons)
• Allocations
process
has
been
fairly
ad-­‐hoc,
moving
to
more
structured
• Capacity
management
across
multiple
Nodes
Authentication
and
Authorisation
• Australian
Access
Federation
(AAF)
has
worked
very
well,
but
some
issues
§ people
in
institutions
not
in
AAF
(e.g.
international,
govt)
• Now
trialling
NZ
access
via
their
SAML
federation
• Looking
forward
to
EduGAIN to
provide
international
access
via
SAML
• Authorisation
not
so
straightforward

15. Future
Directions:
International
Science
Clouds
Nectar
pioneered
the
way
– but
others
have
followed:
• Over
22
International
Science
Clouds
established
(OpenStack-­‐based)
§ CERN
cloud
is
250,000
cores
§ Jetstream
at
Indiana
U
is
15000
cores
§ Chameleon
NSF
cloud
is
16000
cores
§ UTSA
Open
Cloud
Inst.
is
12000
cores
§ Grid.5000
in
France
is
8000
cores
§ CLIMB
UK
cloud
is
7680
cores
(4
Unis)
§ Compute
Canada
Research
Cloud
(distributed
national
resource_
§ European
Open
Science
Cloud
Nectar
is
pursuing
interoperability with
other
Science
Clouds
15

16. Future
Directions:
Interoperability
Want
to
• Make
it
easy
for
researchers
to
collaborate
and
share
infrastructure,
data,
applications
across
institutions,
states,
countries,
research
domains
• Reuse
applications
and
workflows
developed
elsewhere
• Make
use
of
external
resources
in
private
or
public
cloud
• Add
Nectar
resources
to
international
projects
Through
involvement
with
• OpenStack
Scientific
Working
group
• Global
e-­‐Infrastructures
Interoperability
Working
Group
• Open
Research
Cloud
Congress
(and
Declaration)
• Other
research
clouds
§ Working
with
NZ
institutions
to
develop
a
NZ
research
cloud

17. National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources
www.nectar.org.au
17