CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has awarded a contract to Deutsche Telekom for its new service, Open Telekom Cloud, launched at CeBIT 2016 to be used for physics data processing. CERN will use, 1,000 simultaneous virtual machines and associated cluster storage of more than 500 Terabyte, for a three months period, to validate if physics data processing can be flexibly out-tasked to a commercial cloud provider. Services will be provided by T-Systems, corporate customers unit of Deutsche Telekom.
CERN will be able to manage its deployment through a user-friendly interface as well as OpenStack APIs for maximum resource customization and flexibility. CERN will benchmark commissioning, service and reporting performance for such large-scale deployments.
This contract will allow Deutsche Telekom to show the capabilities and strength of its new public cloud services, a market segment that up to now has been dominated by its U.S. competitors. The high-capacity connectivity required will be supported by Deutsche Telekom’s multi-award-winning network providing at least 10G bandwidth and peering options with the German and European Research Networks.
This project represents a step in the direction of a future dynamic cloud provisioning model, whereby public and commercial e-Infrastructures are combined to provide a seamless large-scale resource fully compliant with the EC Data Protection and Data Processing Regulations. It will also demonstrate how scientists can make use of cloud in future, to improve and accelerate science and to benefit from interdisciplinary work in a European Science Cloud being prepared by the European Commission.
As Helge Meinhard from the CERN IT department explains: “We are pleased to collaborate with T-Systems and this contract will allow us to further our understanding of the practical steps needed to integrate commercial cloud services into our physics workflows by increasing the scale of the resources being integrated with the private cloud resources of CERN.”
The work builds on the achievements of the Helix Nebula Initiative that has provided the groundwork for technical solutions, standard interfaces and SLAs, connectivity, procurement methodologies and governance. The partners intend to make results available through public communication to stimulate take-up of and further strengthen trust in cloud computing services in Europe.