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. 2019 Jun 10:8:842.
doi: 10.12688/f1000research.19013.1. eCollection 2019.

de.NBI Cloud federation through ELIXIR AAI

Peter Belmann  1 , Björn Fischer  1 , Jan Krüger  1 , Michal Procházka  2 , Helena Rasche  3 , Manuel Prinz  4 , Maximilian Hanussek  5   6 , Martin Lang  4 , Felix Bartusch  6 , Benjamin Gläßle  6 , Jens Krüger  6 , Alfred Pühler  1 , Alexander Sczyrba  1
Affiliations

de.NBI Cloud federation through ELIXIR AAI

Peter Belmann et al. F1000Res. .

Abstract

The academic de.NBI Cloud offers compute resources for life science research in Germany. At the beginning of 2017, de.NBI Cloud started to implement a federated cloud consisting of five compute centers, with the aim of acting as one resource to their users. A federated cloud introduces multiple challenges, such as a central access and project management point, a unified account across all cloud sites and an interchangeable project setup across the federation. In order to implement the federation concept, de.NBI Cloud integrated with the ELIXIR authentication and authorization infrastructure system (ELIXIR AAI) and in particular Perun, the identity and access management system of ELIXIR. The integration solves the mentioned challenges and represents a backbone, connecting five compute centers which are based on OpenStack and a web portal for accessing the federation.This article explains the steps taken and software components implemented for setting up a federated cloud based on the collaboration between de.NBI Cloud and ELIXIR AAI. Furthermore, the setup and components that are described are generic and can therefore be used for other upcoming or existing federated OpenStack clouds in Europe.

Keywords: Authentication; Authorization; Cloud Computing; ELIXIR; Life Sciences; OpenID Connect; de.NBI; de.NBI Cloud.

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Conflict of interest statement

No competing interests were disclosed.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Project application process for de.NBI Cloud users.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. The user workflow which is implemented by the de.NBI Cloud Federation.
1. User logs in to the portal and applies for a project. 2. The Virtual Organisation manager configures the project. 3. Project configuration data is saved in Perun. 4. The project data is propagated to an OpenStack installation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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