WACREN is seeking collaborators from its NREN community for pilots of cloud and shared services hosted in the region.   These Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) pilots will be based on Synnefo, a complete open source cloud stack written in Python that provides Compute, Network, Image, Volume and Storage services, similar to the ones offered by AWS. 

“Synnefo manages multiple Ganeti clusters at the backend for handling of low-level VM operations and uses Archipelago to unify cloud storage.  To boost 3rd-party compatibility, Synnefo exposes the OpenStack APIs to users.”
 
Partners
WACREN has signed a technical collaboration agreement with GRNET, the Greek National Research and Education Network and developers of the Synnefo software for its expertise in setting up and organizing a IaaS cloud computing service.  
 
WACREN encourages participation of all stakeholders in the development of the NREN business model and envisages partners in the following categories.  

Hosting Partners
RENs in West and Central Africa with reliable datacenters or in collaboration with local datacenter operators that can act as hosts. These partners will need to provide server hardware and connectivity for their clusters.  
 

WACREN has a number of collaboration agreements with datacenter operators and the minimum requirements for server clusters to guide interested RENs.
 
End-user Partners
NRENs and Campuses interested in developing reliable and easily maintained research and education e-Infrastructure.   Examples of these include:
  1. Campuses or NRENs with limited resources focused on running an robust and efficient networks and exploiting the savings in having storage and computing needs provisioned on cost-efficient infrastructure in a reliable datacenter
     
  2. Better resourced campuses with good infrastructure looking for disaster recovery or exploring reliable and automated ways of building infrastructure or the cost benefits and scalability of migrating to the cloud.
     
  3. Scientists and researchers needing virtual environments which support test driven development, continuous integration and continuous delivery to undertake their research.
Hosting and End-user Partners in established pilots will benefit from training in IT infrastructure automation, agile engineering processes and management and provisioning workflows that embrace the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as method. 
 
Knowledge Partners
Organisations and persons involved in global standards and reproducible models for reliable and open infrastructure for Research and Education as well as those providing training on related technologies and practices.
 
Next Steps
For more information and expression of interest, please send e-mail to secretariat@wacren.net with a brief description of your interest and requirements.
 
FacebookXLinkedInWhatsAppEmail