Names, Terms, and Acronyms

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system, storage, and networking resources and services in a way that does not necessarily always require the active management by a person. Typically a cloud will provide the ability to create one or more virtual machines located within a virtual network with appropriate amounts of disk space. Each virtual machine may or may not be mapped to an externally accessible Internet address. (If not, then such machines must be accessed through the cloud management interface.)

NOTE: Access to our clusters' clouds is via OpenStack web interfaces, however, before one can log in and use such, one must request access. See: https://docs.alliancecan.ca/wiki/Cloud for more details.

A cluster is a set of computers that inter-operate and function as a single computer system. Normally when one refers to a cluster, one is referring to a compute cluster as opposed to a cluster of computers that is being used to operate a cloud.

A compute cluster is a set of computers that inter-operate and function as a single computer system. Programs are executed on compute clusters using scheduling software. Computer clusters typically have high speed interconnections between all computers within the cluster to allow them to communicate with high bandwidth and low latency. The latter is typically very important when single jobs need to make use of more than one compute node.

A compute node is a computer in a compute cluster.

Compute Ontario is a federation of consortia in Ontario serving the Advanced Research Computing and big data needs of researchers. CO is a regional partner of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. URL: https://computeontario.ca/

A data transfer node (DTN) is a special node that Compute Canada has exposed to the Internet in order to enable the transfer of large amounts of data. Transferring data using login nodes can trigger limits that will prevent the successful transfer of large amounts data. Data transfer nodes are configured differently so large amounts of data can be transferred successfully. Every cluster typically has at least one data transfer node.

Digital research infrastructure is a collection of tools, services, and hardware that allows researchers to help realize their digital research aims (e.g., compute, storage, cloud, etc.). It is comprised of research data management (RDM), research software (RS), and advanced research computing (ARC). Link: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/digital-research-infrastructure/en

East Cloud is a cloud managed by Calcul Québec, located at the Université de Sherbrooke, and is a national system. See https://docs.alliancecan.ca/wiki/Cloud for more information.