This page is a work in progress. It was last updated November 6, 2023
A key objective of NASA Openscapes is to minimize “the time to science” for researchers. Cloud infrastructure can facilitate shortening this time. We use a 2i2c-managed JupyterHub, which lets us work in the cloud next to NASA Earthdata in AWS US-West-2. The purpose of the JupyterHub is to provide initial, exploratory experiences accessing NASA Earthdata in the cloud. It is not meant to be a long-term solution to support on-going work. For those users that decide working in the Cloud is advantageous and want to move there, we support a migration from the Hub to their own environment through Coiled.io.
Hub Management: 2i2c is a nonprofit that designs, develops, and operates JupyterHubs in the cloud for research and education, including NASA Openscapes. 2i2c ensures that Hubs are cloud-vendor agnostic and are built using open-source software such as JupyterHub and Kubernetes.
User Management and Access: 2i2c manages users through GitHub Teams within the NASA-Openscapes GitHub organization. This requires new users to accept an invitation from NASA-Openscapes. Following that acceptance, the user can then log on to the 2i2c Hub with their Github credentials. Using the NASA Openscapes Hub, the only software requirement to launch the Hub are access to a computer and the internet.
Hub Location and Right to Replicate: Our Openscapes JupyterHub is built on top of AWS and is in-region with NASA Earthdata (AWS US-West-2). 2i2c gives users the right to replicate their infrastructure. This means that our Hub could be replicated on GoogleEarthEngine or Microsoft Azure, or ported to another AWS region.
With this setup, we have flexibility to support a diverse range of user needs. The 2i2c Openscapes Hub has been used by the NASA-Openscapes Mentors and other NASA DAAC staff internally as a testing ground for developing cloud tutorials and workflows, but also externally in the research community for workshops like those for science teams and “Hackathons,” a term used here to describe multi-day events with split time for teaching and helping researchers implement concepts into their research projects.
This section drew from the ‘Solution’ section of the White Paper entitled, “The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs in enabling Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud” (Nickles, et.al, 2022).
Access is controlled by the NASA Openscapes Team, who oversee the management of the Hub and Cloud costs. The first step to gaining access to the NASA Openscapes 2i2c Hub is to request access via this form.
Our JupyterHub users are managed in three GitHub Teams:
- Long-term access: This access is for NASA Openscapes mentors and team, DAAC staff and others who request a longer-term engagement
- NASA Openscapes Champions: This access is for teams that participate in the NASA Openscapes Champions Program. These teams have access for up to a year as they migrate their workflows to the Cloud.
- Workshops and Hack-a-thons: This provides short term access of up to 1-month to participants of NASA Earthdata workshops. Participants will be removed at any time and have no expectation of on-going storage in their home directories.
Users who join these GitHub teams agree to use the NASA Openscapes Hub only for work on NASA EarthData related activities. Generally, recommended instance size is the smallest instance (1.9GB RAM and up to 3.75 CPUs).
Run large or parallel jobs over large geographic bounding boxes or over long temporal extents should be cleared with the NASA Openscapes Team by submitting an issue to this repo.
The NASA Openscapes Hub is a shared, limited resource that incurs real costs. Users are granted access in the terms above and are removed at the end of those limits. Users that haven’t accessed the Hub in more than six months are also removed for security purposes.
We will do our best to alert users before they lose access to the NASA Openscapes Hub. However, we reserve the right to remove users at any time for any reason. Users that violate the terms of access or incur large Cloud costs without prior permission from the NASA Openscapes Team will be removed immediately.
