Lake Effect is a subscription-based Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) cloud that provides root level access to virtual servers and storage on demand.  The term "cloud" means many different things to many different people.  UB's Research cloud, affectionately known as Lake Effect, was put into service to provide infrastructure CCR wasn't previously able to provide to it's users.  CCR's primary role is to provide high performance computing and high end visualization to UB's researchers and collaborators.  We are now able to assist researchers by providing servers for them to test software and databases, run websites for research projects, and a slew of other use cases that will work to benefit your research needs.  Our cloud is 100% compatible with Amazon's Web Services (AWS) to allow our users to go between the two services. 



Features of Lake Effect:

1. Deploy virtual servers in minutes

2. Various Linux operating systems are supported.  NOTE: Windows could potentially be supported; however, there are additional license issues involved.  Users will need to contact CCR Help if interested in running Windows in the Lake Effect cloud.

3. Allocate persistent disk storage in increments of 1GB, for up to 1TB/virtual disk

4. 10Gbit Ethernet interconnect throughout the cloud infrastructure and to the campus backbone for fast network access. Unlike commercial cloud options, there is no charge for network traffic on CCR's cloud.
5. CCR provides pools of CPUs in configurations such that users can choose CPUs and RAM that are not oversubscribed. An Intel Xeon processor core is behind each core on the virtual server for fast and consistent performance.  However, cheaper rates are available for those that have projects that can benefit from virtualized CPUs.
6. Control access to your virtual servers by port numbers and IP addresses for maximum flexibility and security
7. Lake Effect uses the Red Hat OpenStack Platform with an Amazon Web Services (AWS) compatible API. You can seamlessly scale to AWS if your research, education, or outreach application outgrows our capacity.


Use Cases of the Research Cloud:

  • Academic courses (teach cloud computing, computer science, or HPC)
  • Big data analytics (Hadoop, databases)
  • Bursting to Amazon Web Services
  • MATLAB Distributed Computing Server (MDCS)
  • Web portals for science gateways and research websites
  • Testing new software before purchasing permanent hardware
  • High throughput computing (don't want to wait in the queue?  Pay for immediate access to nodes)
  • Testing and development of software or products
  • What else can you dream up?

As with any IaaS cloud, users are expected to possess working knowledge and expertise in system administration to effectively secure, configure, and use their virtual server instances. Please refer to this knowledgebase for documentation and startup information as well as the enormous volume of info available online from the Amazon Web Services support group and the Red Hat OpenStack Documentation.  If you still have a question, contact CCR Help and we’ll be happy to answer a quick question or two.  If you or your project team need additional help getting started, anticipate having lots of questions along the way, or you’d like us to do some work for you (such as building your image so that it’s all set to go), consulting is available as an option when you start your subscription.  We can help you estimate the number of consulting hours to include with your subscription. Consulting may also be added after starting your subscription.


Please note that we can only allow academic and research users to utilize the Lake Effect cloud at this time.  Industry partners and non-academic users should utilize commercial cloud resources such as Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and similar services.



More documentation on the Lake Effect research cloud