Nebula

Overview
Nebula is a cloud computing pilot under development at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. It is an infrastructure as a service implementation for scientific data and Web-based applications. Platform as a service capability is planned for the future. According to NASA, Nebula is to provide high-capacity computing, storage, and network connectivity using a virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy savings. Currently, NASA's Nebula is considered a private cloud and is operated at Ames Research Center on NASA equipment using both government and contractor personnel.

Nebula is housed in a standard shipping container that is mounted in place, but could be transported if needed. Program officials chose this design as a means to easily replicate the Nebula equipment as the program expands. The officials state that a future goal is for Nebula to become a hybrid cloud as a way to eventually foster collaboration in analysis of NASA-sponsored research with the academic community and the public. As a result, Nebula relies on open-source cloud computing technologies so that data can be easily transferred to other cloud service providers, if required. The officials stated that when NASA data is first generated, its sensitivity must be evaluated to see if it is appropriate for public release. Once the decision has been made to share the data, the use of Nebula makes sharing information easier.

The officials also stated that Nebula will provide other benefits. For example, according to NASA, researchers who use Nebula will not have to purchase their own servers, hardware, and computing infrastructure, which can be time-consuming. Nebula is currently authorized to handle only low-impact data as defined in FIPS 199; however, officials noted that they may migrate to a moderate-impact system in the future.