The African data intensive research cloud

Abstract

The African Data Intensive Research Cloud project aims to establish resources to support data intensive radio astronomy research among collaborating partners in South Africa and African Square Kilometre Array telescope partner countries. Infrastructure as a Service cloud instances using the OpenStack middleware have been deployed at three sites in South Africa as a proof of concept for the future larger scale deployments. By supporting common software, knowledge can be shared amongst the partners leading to faster resolution of problems, thus providing better support to the research community. The project will deploy a mix of scales of systems, with users bursting to the larger facilities as needed. Software to support data distribution, analysis and visualisation of astronomy data through scientific gateways is being deployed. Providing training of computing support teams, astronomers and data scientists at the partner organisations is key to the success of the project