About CloudForest
CloudForest is an on-demand computing platform for GSB faculty and their collaborating researchers.
Using your personalized Dashboard (Stanford login required) you can request AWS EC2 instances for your computing and analysis needs. Instances are more or less akin to the yen compute servers at GSB: Ubuntu (16) machines that have current versions of Python, R, Stata SE/MP, and MATLAB. DARC currently pays the costs for these instances, but we transparently show you cost rates and running totals right in your Dashboard.
Instances with up to 64 (logical) CPUs and 976 GB memory are available, as are instances with hardware acceleration (i.e., GPUs). You can access these instances with standard SSH tools using standard Stanford two-factor authentication. Faculty control who has access and what level of access they have through simple, web-based group management tools. You can also connect to notebooks directly through the Dashboard, and thus launch and compute interactively in the cloud without ever leaving your browser.
You can read quite a bit more here, or in our documentation.
If you are new to CloudForest, we strongly recommend reviewing all of our user-focused documentation before jumping into your own resources. |
CloudForest is not meant as a platform for storing your data, nor is it (yet) meant for use with high-risk data. |
Intended Uses
Additional CPUs
Need additional, temporary computing power for your work?
Dedicated Memory
Need access to a lot of memory, or an access guarantee?
Extra Privacy
Need your data or machines to be isolated from other users?
Special Software
Need to run with special software we can't install on-premise?
Accelerators
Need to run on specialized accelerator hardware, like GPUs?
Batch Jobs
Need to run the same code over (possibly many) different inputs?
Technologies
CloudForest is built entirely on top of popular web technologies:
Amazon Web Services (AWS),
mongoDB,
node.js,
react.js (and
redux.js),
influxdata, and
jekyll. Most of the stack is free: the only thing that costs money are the cloud services you use, either in AWS or for mongoDB (or both). At Stanford GSB, the DARC team pays for approved use.
Open Source
CloudForest is building up to be an Open Source project. You can view and contribute to any part of the code, including this site itself and the project documentation in it. We're aiming to fully open-source the project in the early Fall of 2019.
Obviously the actual platform supported by DARC is reserved for GSB faculty and their collaborators.
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