About

What is the Green Cloud?

The Green Cloud is an ongoing project that is being actively developed by the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame.

The aim of the project is to provide a stable cloud-computing platform that uses experimental techniques to remain as energy efficient as possible, helping the environment and lowering costs at the same time.

Cloud Computing

The Green Cloud is comprised of approximately 90 machines, providing over 360 cores of processing power for high-cost computational services. The Cloud runs a combination of OpenNebula an open-source, enterprise-grade cloud architecture, and Condor, a high-throughput batch job system, providing a simple platform to dynamically allocate computing resources in a scalable, reliable, and highly efficient manner.

Using a fully virtual environment, the Cloud allows users to perform a wide range of computing tasks, from development to research to web hosting, on a highly flexible and stable system.

Going Green

In addition to the technological power that the Green Cloud provides, the computing grid behind it employs grid-heating, an innovative energy-saving technique that seeks to recycle the heat normally produced by large-scale computing grids.

In the case of  the current Green Cloud, the excess heat produced by the grid is being used to heat the South Bend Green House, drastically reducing the environmental and financial costs to maintain both the green house and the computing grid itself.