The Helix Nebula Science Cloud (HNSciCloud) hybrid cloud platform links together commercial cloud service providers and publicly funded research organisations’ in-house IT resources via the GEANT network to provide innovative solutions supporting data intensive science.
HNSciCloud has developed and piloted a hybrid cloud platform in order to meet the growing requirements of 10 leading European research centres with applications and datasets successfully deployed from astronomy, high energy physics, life sciences and photon/neutron sciences. These innovative services support the connection of the research infrastructures identified in the ESFRI Roadmap to the nascent European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) intended to create a single digital research space for Europe’s 1.8 million researchers. The published lessons learned are important for all scientific disciplines across Europe that are considering moving some or all of their research computing provision into the Cloud.
The EOSC initiative launched by the EC in November 2018 is potentially the greatest opportunity to stimulate and aggregate the demand from the science community for commercial cloud resources.
The HNSciCloud report, Integrating commercial cloud services into the European Open Science Cloud, explains how commercial cloud services can be integrated into the EOSC.
The OCRE project provides the main near-term procurement opportunity for the public research and education sector to exploit the results of HNSciCloud in the context of EOSC.
The experience gathered and lessons learned from using the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) instrument are being applied in the execution of the ARCHIVER project.
About the HNSciCloud Pre-Commercial Procurement
The Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud is a €5.3 million Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) tender for the establishment of a European hybrid cloud platform to support the deployment of high-performance computing and big-data capabilities for scientific research.
It covered the procurement of R&D services for the design, prototype development and pilot use of innovative cloud services. The tender wss operated as a competitive development with contracts in each phase (design, prototype, pilot) being awarded to multiple contractors using Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) criterion. The innovative cloud services provided through the platform were designed and implemented to address a set of challenges that require a combination of services at the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) level:
- Compute and Storage – support a range of virtual machines and container configurations working with datasets in the petabyte range;
- Network Connectivity and Federated Identity Management – provide high-end network capacity for the whole platform with common identity and access management;
- Service Payment Models - explore a range of purchasing options to determine the most appropriate ones for the scientific application workloads that will be deployed.
The procured cloud services were integrated with the procurers’ in-house resources and publicly funded e-Infrastructures to provide a hybrid platform for end-users from a wide range of scientific fields (See the HNSciCloud User Groups).
Facts about HNSciCloud
- Scope of the procurement: Joint Pre-Commercial Procurement of Cloud Services
- Estimated total value: Value excluding VAT: 5 383 332.00 EUR
- Lead procurer: CERN
- Start date: January 2016 | End date: End of 2018
- Prior Information Notice; Contract Notice
- 2 November 2016 - Design Phase tender awarded
- February 2017 - Assessment of the design phase deliverables
- 3 April 2017 - Prototype Phase award ceremony
- 6 February 2018 - Launch of the Pilot Phase
- 29 November 2018 - Results of the Pilot Phase
NEWS & EVENTS
CERN shortlisted in the Innovation Procurement of the Year" by the Procura+ Awards 2019
News - 02 Jul 2019
CERN, as leader of the HNSciCloud initiative, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Procura+ Award as "Innovation Procurement of the Year", in the sub-category "Outstanding Innovation Procurement in ICT...
Marine Metagenome Assembly on Helix Nebula Science Cloud
News - 07 Mar 2019
Tony Wildish from EMBL-EBI explains how the Helix Nebula Science Cloud project helped his team to use cloud resources to increase the throughput of their metagenome assembly pipeline.
Laying the foundations of the EOSC Business Model
News - 27 Nov 2018
The purpose of this session is to call European infrastructures, research networks and facilities to debate around the potential business model for the EOSC, starting from the existing funding models...
PICSE Wizard facilitating cloud procurement for public research organisations
PICSE Wizard (http://wiz.picse.eu): Cloud service procurement made easy!
Are you a Procurement official, IT manager or procurement initiator? Then, complete the PICSE wizard easy-to-use services to help you make informed decisions about how to procure cloud services. The PICSE Wizard is a web-based application that public research organisations can use to obtain guidelines on the most suitable model for procuring cloud services, to make a self-assessment and evaluate their procurement procedures. Each checklist comes with a set of recommendations & tips.
Who's behind HNSciCloud?
HNSciCloud Pre-Commercial Procurement is driven by ten leading research organisations from across Europe.
CERN is the world’s largest particle physics lab and home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful...
CNRS, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research) is a government-funded...
DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, is one of the world’s leading accelerator centres. Researchers use the...
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is one of the world’s top research institutions dedicated to basic...
The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is one of the most powerful synchrotron radiation source in Europe....
IFAE, the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, is a Public Consortium between the Generalitat de Catalunya (Government...
The National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is the Italian organization devoted to the study of the fundamental...
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is The Research University in the Helmholtz Association. Its major research...
STFC, the Science and Technology Facilities Council is a UK government body that carries out civil research in science...
Stichting EGI was established as a Dutch Foundation ‐ an independent legal entity – in February 2010 and is located at...
SURFsara is a Dutch foundation that provides supercomputers, colocation, networks and high-end visualisation to...
Trust-IT Services is an international marketing & research organisation specialised in fostering Information and...
Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud with Grant Agreement 687614 is a Pre-Commercial Procurement Action funded by H2020 Framework Programme.
Copyright 2017 - Helix Nebula - The Science Cloud all rights reserved.