Cloud Infraestructure

We provide a hybrid public and private cloud infrastructure to host cloud services and applications in a flexible, efficient, and secure environment.

Servers

We offer virtual cloud servers with the resources and storage that best suit the needs of each university or research center. Whether they are managed virtual machines or in self-service, they share some common characteristics:

• Public IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity of the Anella Científica or commercial internet.
• Deployment of private networks with the possibility of extending it to the institution itself through the Anella Científica.
• Load balancing on services to balance traffic between different resources.

Choose the management model that suits you best!

Managed virtual machines

If you want an environment dedicated to the specific requirements of each application, and with the possibility of fast-growing in memory, computing capacity or disk space, opt for our model with built-in management.

Managed servers include technical support, infrastructure operation and maintenance, as well as 24/7 incident support and based software upgrade and maintenance.

The user has at his disposal a proactive monitoring and the possibility of performing backups.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

If you prefer, you can opt for a self-service model for managing servers, networks, and assigned storage. In this case, the user has access to a configurable pay per use infrastructure that includes and/or provides:

• Creating, scalating, cloning... (virtual servers, private networks, disk image).
• Advanced web environment with multi-user support for institution (Virtual Data Centers).
• Variety of supported operating systems: Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu Server, CentOS, Microsoft Windows Server 2016/2019, Microsoft Windows 10.
• Automatic autoscaling services capabilities.
• Virtual resources templates in pay per use modality.
• Interoperability via API (OCCI and EC2).
• Ability to perform backups.

The management of these self-service servers is offered centrally through OpenNebula, an open source cloud computing platform that provides state-of-the-art solutions for building private clouds and managing virtualization centers of data. Thanks to OpenNebula and the collaboration of the CSUC, we promote the creation of hybrid clouds to provide services to universities and research centers. It is an increasingly widespread formula that combines the use of resources from public and private cloud providers. The aim is to respond to the demanding needs of these institutions in terms of execution times, increased resources, security, etc. OpenNebula allows the assignment of roles and fees to deployed servers.

Storage

If you are thinking of storing your organization's information in the cloud, or realizing any type of backup, at CSUC we offer you the disk and tape space you are looking for. We have 60 PB of storage from two different manufacturers or leaders in this field.

Types of storage

• By blocks. Storage area networks (SAN) allow the connection between servers and disk drive devices, so for the operating system the devices appear to be connected locally. Supported protocols are iSCSI and Fiber Channel.
• By files. Network attached storage (NAS) allows you to share storage with different clients. Supported protocols are SMB/CIFS for Windows and NFS environments.
• By objects. On-demand storage accessible via API and compatible with S3.

Added value

• Snapshots. Possibility of having snapshots by hour, day or week.
• Backups.

The storage infrastructure has been funded through the Next Generation Recovery Plan, as part of the European Union's response to the COVID-19 pandemic under the FEDER Operational Programme of Catalonia 2014-2020.