About the AuScope Cloud

About the AuScope Cloud

The AuScope / Underworld Cloud is a computing platform for launching docker containers that draw content dynamically from a public git repository. It is focused on and optimised for distributing our training and reference materials.

Our goal with the AuScope cloud is to make reproducible scientific exchange routine in our discipline and to make it simple to extend the ideas that others share.

If you have used www.mybinder.org, then you will already have seen how code and ideas can be exchanged in executable form. With the addition of  a home directory, you can be sure not to lose work between sessions. This helps researchers to build on the work of others as well as reproduce that work.

The AuScope / Underworld Cloud is robust and scalable — for deployments that may have hundreds of users at one time, we use the Kubernetes platform, and for quick deployments, we use a combination of github actions and digital ocean droplets to manage single-use environments that are persistent for a few weeks and then get torn down (e.g. to teach a class / tutorial of a known size).

For information on how to use the AuScope / Underworld cloud to browse or serve content, read all the cloud-related posts