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Who can access ScienceCloud?

Access to the ScienceCloud is open for all researchers at the University of Zurich. Access can also be provided to external collaborators if they are "sponsored" by a researcher affiliated with the UZH.

Access to ScienceCloud

Details on how to sign up for ScienceCloud and gain access are provided on the Access page.

ScienceCloud Architecture

ScienceCloud is built on OpenStack, an open-source cloud platform that provides scalable and flexible compute, storage, and networking capabilities.

ScienceCloud Web Interface is powered by OpenStack Horizon, a user-friendly dashboard for managing cloud resources such as instances, volumes, and networks.

What can you do with ScienceCloud and what restrictions are in place?

  • Every user belongs to a Project that normally corresponds to an existing UZH research group.
  • Every Project has a quota that limits the total amount of resources that can be allocated (e.g., instances, CPUs, memory, disk space, network IPs, etc).
  • All members of the same Project are accounted against the Project's quota.
  • All members of the same Project have control over each other's resources. In other words, every user can terminate someone else's instances within a given Project.
  • All Projects on ScienceCloud can access the same physical infrastructure underneath;
    • if physical resources are exhausted, a Project will not be able to allocate new resources even if its actual usage is currently below its defined quota.

Configure access for instances

Like most of the available Infrastructure_as_a_Service (Iaas) cloud systems, on ScienceCloud users have to upload their own ssh public key so that it can be passed to new instances when they are launched.

When you create an instance, you can select a key pair (i.e., an ssh public key). This key is then injected in the running instance when it boots up so that you (and only you) can use the ssh public key authentication mechanism to log into the running instances via the ssh command.

You may either create a new key pair or use an existing one if you already have one.

The instructions needed for both creating and adding the keypair to ScienceCloud are described in the "2.2. Get access to your instances" paragraph of the "Training Handout" page of this documentation.