Science Clouds: Early Experiences in Cloud Computing for Scientific Applications

The Science Clouds project allows members of the scientific community to lease resources for short amounts of time, in a manner similar to Amazon's EC2 service : a client requests a resource lease for a few hours and, if the request is authorized, a Virtual Machine (VM) is deployed. The client can then use the VM as needed (e.g., ssh to it, move data to it, or run computations) for the requested time. The power of this model lies in the fact that the client is allowed to bring a VM configured to his/her exact specifications and is given an exclusive ownership of the leased resource (the VM) to be shared with others only at the client's discretion.