Abstract
Supporting research involving controlled data requires simultaneously dealing with three interconnected dimensions of complexity: (i) developing capable CI to secure the data; (2) supporting users accessing and working on the data; and (3) scaling to enable community access beyond the institution. While most university CI efforts focus on the first two components, the ACCORD project is driven by our mission to support researchers who don’t have access to secured CI resources at their home institutions. In this presentation, we describe ACCORD’s approach of leveraging the latest CI tools to compartmentalize research environments into reusable containers that can be catalogued and managed. For example, we rely on InCommon federation to streamline user authentication hurdles, COmanage to lessen user onboarding and management difficulties, and containers coupled with a web-driven interface to alleviate the user accessibility burden. The challenge is to, hopefully, hit the right levels of simplicity and security for a variety of users. Also, with containers we’re able to provision an environment almost instantly, on a per-project basis, that has minimal demand on the infrastructure when researchers are not using it. In this presentation we will also share the current project status, lessons learned, and future goals. Discussion will be welcome.
Speakers: Ron Hutchins and Neal Magee, University of Virginia