Nimbus is an open-source toolkit that, once installed on a cluster

Cluster (computing)

A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely thus in many respects forming a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks...

, provides an infrastructure as a Service cloud

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....

 to its client via WSRF

Web Services Resource Framework

Web Services Resource Framework is a family of OASIS-published specifications for web services. Major contributors include the Globus Alliance and IBM.A web service by itself is nominally stateless, i.e., it retains no data between invocations...

-based or Amazon EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a central part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . EC2 allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications...

 WSDL

Web Services Description Language

The Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...

 web service

Web service

A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...

 APIs

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

.

Nimbus supports the Xen

Xen

Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....

 hypervisor or KVM

Kernel-based Virtual Machine

Kernel-based Virtual Machine is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions....

 and virtual machine schedulers PBS

Portable Batch System

Portable Batch System is the name of computer software that performs job scheduling. Its primary task is to allocate computational tasks, i.e., batch jobs, among the available computing resources...

 and SGE

Sun Grid Engine

Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems...

. It allows deployment of self-configured virtual clusters via contextualization. It is configurable with respect to scheduling, networking leases, and usage accounting.

Requirements

• Xen
  Xen
  Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
  
   3.x
• Kernel-based Virtual Machine
  Kernel-based Virtual Machine
  Kernel-based Virtual Machine is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions....
  
  
• Java
  Java (programming language)
  Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
  
   1.5+
• Python
  Python (programming language)
  Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
  
   (2.4+)
• ebtables filtering tool for a bridging firewall
• DHCP server

See also

• Amazon EC2
  Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
  Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a central part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . EC2 allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications...
  
   computing and storage provider
• Cloud computing comparison
  Cloud computing comparison
  -General information:-Supported Hosts:-Features:...
  
  
• Eucalyptus
  Eucalyptus (computing)
  Eucalyptus is a software platform for the implementation of private cloud computing on computer clusters. There is an open-core enterprise edition and an open-source edition. Currently, it exports a user-facing interface that is compatible with the Amazon EC2 and S3 services but the platform is...
  
   alternative open source IaaS software
• Xen
  Xen
  Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
  
  hypervisor

External links

• Nimbus website
• Science Clouds available
• Xen hypervisor
• ebtables software
• ISC DHCP software