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<h2>Nimbus 2.3 - Bird's Eye View</h2>

<p>
    If you want to learn more about the concepts underlying Nimbus, see the
    <a href="faq.html">FAQ</a> and <a href="_NIMBUS_WEBSITE/papers/">Publications</a>
    section.
</p>

<p>
    In a nutshell,
    Nimbus allows a client to <b>lease remote resources</b> by deploying virtual
    machines (VMs) on those resources and configuring them to represent
    an environment desired by the user.  This is known casually as <i>cloud
    computing</i> (one definition of it), a little more specifically as an
    "infrastructure-as-a-service" (IaaS) solution.
</p>
<p>
    Nimbus 2.3 consists of a piece of software for one
    <i>service node</i> and a separate piece of software to install
    on any number of <i>virtual machine monitor</i> (VMM) nodes.
</p>
<p>
    There is also a separate download
    for a special client called the <i>cloud client</i> that makes life
    very easy for clients.  And another separate download, a special packaging
    of a remote service container, to make life easier for administrators.
</p>
<p>
    Clients interact with the service using X509 credentials over multiple
    protocols.  The easiest client to use is the <i>cloud client</i>
    (<a href="clouds/cloudquickstart.html">details</a>) which
    is geared towards getting users up and running in minutes.  The service
    must be configured in the <i>cloud configuration</i>
    (<a href="doc/cloud.html">details</a>) to serve requests from the
    cloud client.  These clients implement web services messaging (specifically
    <a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsrf">WSRF</a> based).
</p>
<p>
    But Nimbus 2.3 also provides an implementation of the Amazon Elastic
    Compute Cloud (EC2) web services description (WSDL) that allows you
    to use clients developed for the real EC2 system against Nimbus
    based clouds. 
</p>
<p>
    You can examine the 2.3 WSRF based interfaces in detail in the
    <a href="interfaces/index.html">WSRF interfaces</a> section.
</p>
<p>
    Nimbus also allows clients to create <b>auto-configuring clusters</b>.
    Starting one VM is somewhat straightforward, but launching 10s or 100s
    together can become laborious without heavily customized scripts.  Nimbus
    provides a general solution to this problem, one that allows you to even
    store VMs with no private credentials on-board.  For more information,
    see <a href="clouds/clusters.html#features">here</a>.
</p>

<hr />
<p>
    Download the software from the
    <a href="_NIMBUS_WEBSITE/downloads/">downloads</a> page, peruse the
    <a href="changelog.html">changelog</a>.
</p>

<p>
    And see the links on the left for more information.
</p>


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