Cloud hosting & file transfer

Researchers are increasingly taking advantage of cloud services to support their IT needs. A number of services are available to Australian researchers that provide free access to cloud resources.

All of these services can support secure multi-institutional, external and international access and data sharing.

NeCTAR cloud hosting

NeCTAR is partnering with Australian institutions and research organisations to create a national research cloud for Australian researchers. Victoria University (VU) has a development allocation for use in VU research projects and services on the cloud, as well as several allocations dedicated to specific research projects.

The NeCTAR cloud allows research projects and programs to host servers and therefore IT services as needed, for example web applications or computers to perform operations and calculations on demand.

In practice, VU staff and students have two options: do-it-yourself or use the VU research development allocation. Currently, VU staff are using the cloud for modelling and simulation (in place of a large computer), mobile phone data collection, simulating business to business services, developing data portals, VU's Research Data Australia database and for online collaboration environments.

: Do-it-yourself

From the NeCTAR website you can read guides, support documentation and log in to the dashboard.

By selecting 'Victoria University' as your organisation you can log in using your VU AD username (starting with 'e' or 's') and password. If you have trouble logging in, see the Australian Access Federation (AAF) page.

You can contact the eResearch team to help you consider and apply for a project allocation.

Use the VU allocation

To use the VU research development allocation, please contact the eResearch team.
: NeCTAR does not provide file storage or sharing as a desktop service, but it does provide storage for servers that you can use with sufficient IT knowledge.
For a Dropbox-like service, see Cloudstor+. For secure longterm storage or sharing files with VU staff and students we recommend using the VU R: drive.
However, the NeCTAR cloud has been used to collect data and create web-based collaboration environments.
: Using the NeCTAR cloud yourself (do-it-yourself option) requires intermediate to expert IT system administration knowledge. If that's not for you then please contact the eResearch team to discuss further. Otherwise, here are a few tips:
Generally speaking, you use images or snapshots to launch/start an instance (a running virtual machine) under a given project allocation. By default everyone has a 2 CPU allocation, a personal play space in which to run a server for up to 3 months.
Use the NeCTAR Image Catalogue to determine what image to start with and if there are special instructions. NeCTAR supports Linux operating almost exclusively and only some Linux variants are guaranteed long term support.
Make sure you've created a Security Group or changed the default to allow external access to the correct ports (e.g. 22 for SSH, 80 for HTTP) before launching any instances. This is like a network level firewall.
Make sure you've imported an SSH public key or created an SSH key pair and saved it before launching any instances. You won't get a chance to set a root password, you must use SSH keys to access the instance once started.
When launching an image remember to select your security group and your security key in the options.
You'll need to use SSH and your private key to log in to the newly created server instance. Install and configure new packages at will using the command line.
Server packages and data are not stored unless you take a Snapshot. Double check that all Snapshots complete. Terminating an instance generally results in loss of the operating system, package configurations and data.
However, NeCTAR now supports persistent disk storage using volumes. An instance can be launched from a volume if it contains a boot disk or copy of a bootable image. Alternatively, a volume can be attached to a running instance as an extra disk. You can also snapshot a volume.
Many problems on NeCTAR seem to result in your mounted disk going read-only. Performing a hard reboot on your instance will fix this problem.
Server IP addresses on NeCTAR are randomly allocated for each new instance, so try not to hardcode these in applications or the operating system. If you require a host/server name, you'll need to use a separate DNS service or contact the eResearch team to discuss a VU domain.
Rebooting an Image will preserve the current IP and the current disk state, so try hard rebooting first, not stopping and starting over.