Many who are not involved with the world of HPC or cloud computing aren’t aware that NASA is the source of innovative cloud computing research via its Nebula cloud. NASA regularly deploys open source software to power its needs from Ubuntu Linux down, which naturally helps the agency cut costs. In an interview with NASA CTO Chris Kemp following the OpenStack announcement,–which is based on a partnership between Rackspace and the space agency to open source the cloud (read more on that in detail here)–the CTO noted that “NASA is using KVM on Ubuntu’s Lucid LTS” and that the company isn’t paying Canonical for support. Kemp also noted, “In Nebula, we’re going for the exact opposite where every component is commodity gear, the software is open source and we’re trying to make vast computing resources available at a very low price point.”
Why NASA Uses Open Source
July 21, 2010