JPL uses Red Hat OpenStack Platform to improve server capacity and storage and to process flight projects and research data using a private OpenStack cloud
Red Hat, the provider of open source solutions, announced that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has built a private cloud based on the Red Hat OpenStack platform, which they say will bring NASA significant savings in time and resources invested in data centers. This is by restructuring and consolidating their internal hardware.
JPL, which is NASA's primary center for robotic exploration of the Solar System, used Red Hat's OpenStack and Linux technologies to increase internal storage and server capacity, enabling it to support hundreds of scientists and engineers engaged in JPL missions.
NASA's JPL laboratory has led to many significant achievements in space exploration, from the creation of the first US satellite to the launch of spacecraft to every planet in the solar system, and all four space probes that landed on Mars. Today, these exploration missions rely significantly more on private cloud computing capabilities to process requests from flight projects, and researchers work with mission data. Traditionally, most of JPL's infrastructure has been based on server hardware installed at the laboratory site.
JPL engineers have set up a private OpenStack cloud on their site, and are using its computing capacity to provide mission scientists and engineers as they plan to move critical computing activities that were required to be on site to a more efficient private cloud architecture. The platform will also allow researchers to utilize their private cloud and use external cloud resources, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), when necessary to cope with peak demand.
