A consortium of Internet2 (I2) member universities, including North Carolina State University (NC State), George Mason University (GMU), Georgia State University (GSU), Virginia Polytechic Institute and State University (VA Tech), Clemson University, University of South Carolina, Florida International University (FIU) and University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), will be launching the Internet2 VCL Research Cloud Initiative, with initial partners Internet2 Net+ Services and IBM.
The founding institutions are all members of I2, and it is the group’s intent to invite other I2 university members over time (as capacity and proposed projects dictate). For a complete list of all higher education members of I2, please visit http:members.internet2.eduuniversityuniversities.cfm. The research cloud will be physically located within the NC State VCL-based research and education cloud, while the initiative will be formally sponsored by GMU.
A primary goal of the consortium will be to develop a service whereby VCL users may readily share their cloud resources between each other’s institutions to address emergency capacity or other needs. This should be technically feasible through minor additions/modifications to the existing Apache VCL code, with much of the effort focused on developing the governance and business models required to make such sharing a reality(this includes the development of billing/charge back capabilities within VCL, utilizing its existing rich usage monitoring capabilities/statistics). This should also facilitate the ability of VCL users to consume vendor-hosted cloud services upon demand.