Going Cloud Native at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS)

In the mid-2010s, the NCCS built a cloud-like environment called ADAPT that has access to a large collection of NASA earth science data. This environment has served the NASA earth science community well but lessons learned have led us to re-imagine this environment with an eye to the concept of "cloud native". Problems to be solved include resource starvation, poor visualization performance, and limited data discovery and management tools. Additionally, new users have begun to expect cloud orchestration tools to support their workflows.

To improve the user experience and respond to new requests, the NCCS has implemented OpenStack, introduced self-provisioning, improved their shared data environment, and added remote visualization tools.

We will discuss the important technology and policy decisions made to determine the best path forward as well as the educational efforts underway to help our user community transition from Platform-as-a-Service to a more intrinsic cloud environment.