On 14-16 November the EaPConnect partners took part in an advanced Cloud Workshop in Rome, organised by GARR, the Italian Research and Education Network.
The hybrid event offered the opportunity for knowledge sharing on the various uses of cloud platforms in the research and education environment, and included a brief introduction of the activities of GARR’s cloud department, its developments and use cases.
Day one featured a recap and generic updates on areas such as federation, security, monitoring, under-cloud infrastructure and geographical availability. The remainder of the three day event had a roundtable format where participants evaluated a variety of techniques and were encouraged to discuss and share their different needs, requirements and challenges. In particular, the active roundtables focussed on open stack, cloud infrastructure monitoring, accounting tools, practices and policies.
To prepare for similar future events, we asked the EaPConnect partners participants to share their impressions.
Nichita Degteariov, Technical Specialist from REANAM, the National Research and Education Network of Moldova commented:
What a great event! I enjoyed taking part in the roundtable discussions, having the opportunity to share our experience and learning about best practice from our colleagues in the EaPConnect project. The topics covered are very valuable to us working on the development and maintenance of RENAM Cloud Services. Personally, I was very impressed and inspired by the progress made by colleagues from Georgia and by the excellent technical presentations and guidelines on cloud service management provided by GARR. All my expectations were met, it was an awesome experience.
Ramaz Kvatadze, Executive Director for GRENA, the National Research and Education Network for Georgia added:
Both my colleagues Temur Maisuradze and Besik Abuladze agreed that the workshop was very valuable. I am delighted to share that their discussions with GARR colleagues about technical issues, especially with the GCloud system upgrade, will lead to a stronger collaboration with the Italian NREN’s cloud team whose support will be of great value in the upgrade process. This event has also given us a great stepping stone to present our cloud activities at future meetings within the GÉANT community such as the Special Interest Group on Cloudy Interoperable Software Stacks (SIG-CISS). Many thanks to GARR for their hospitality and seamless organisation.
