Cornell Launches Subscription Cloud Service

By Matthew Dublin

The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has launched an on-demand research computing cloud called "Red Cloud". The cloud is available to both Cornell University researchers and other academic institutions.

There are currently two available services, "Red Cloud" and "Red Cloud with MATLAB."

"Red Cloud" is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that runs Eucalyptus, open source cloud computing platform, that will provide subscribers with root access to virtual servers and virtual disks.

“Red Cloud with MATLAB,” is a Software as a Service (SaaS) that runs MATLAB Distributed Computing Server and features GPUs. Users can develop their applications using the Parallel Computing Toolbox and then scale up to the cloud with the MATLAB Distributed Computing Server.
 
The Red Cloud sports an 10Gb Ethernet network for moving large datasets in and out of the cloud with 50GB of available storage per user.  

"Red Cloud" subscriptions for Cornell staff is $500 for 8,585 core hours and $750 for "Red Cloud with MATLAB." For non-Cornell researchers, subscription prices run $750 and $1,200 respectively.

“Cloud computing has the potential to advance U.S. research discoveries and better prepare students for STEM careers by making computing, software, and data resources more readily available at an economy of scale,” says CAC director David Lifka.