[OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] Ideas/inputs for having a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM

Mon Oct 19 03:28:26 PDT 2015

Hi Toni,

For universities and education globally , there is definitely big need/demand for OSGeo-Live cloud service for easily organising the practical/tutorial sessions  . This is only going to increase rapidly as more universities start teaching using OSGeo software. Also for those running MOOC programs in Geospatial Science, this will be great benefit (esp. for scalability).  Also it will be useful  for those running OSGeo workshops/training at events (not just FOSS4G events)  etc can make use of this service.

>From Angelos and Peter's mail , there are some good developments and interest that we can follow up. But i would think there might be many others who will be also interested to join efforts. So it is good time to anyone interested to come forward and contribute to joint efforts.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________
From: Antoni Pérez Navarro [aperezn at uoc.edu]
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 9:06 AM
To: Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org; discuss at lists.osgeo.org; Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Ideas/inputs for having a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM

Sorry for being so late to the discussion.

Since we are a distance university, for us is very important a cloud service. Although OsGeoLive can be downloaded by students, sometimes we preferred to prepare the machine by ourselves in order all the students have exactly the same.
We tested virtual machines distributed, but they were too heavy for some students (we have students in very remote zones). Then we created an Amazon virtual machine with some applications of OsGEO Live, but it was worse, since it was too slow.

Unfortunately, now our postgraduate is closed and will not be able to test these new tools with students.

Toni

Antoni Pérez Navarro
Estudis d'Informàtica, Multimèdia i Telecomunicació
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

aperezn at uoc.edu
22@ (Rambla Poblenou, 156 / 08018 Barcelona)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonipereznavarro
@tonipereznavarr

[Universitat Oberta de Catalunya]

Aquest missatge s'adreça exclusivament a qui va destinat i pot contenir informació privilegiada o confidencial i dades de caràcter personal, la difusió de les quals és regulada per la Llei orgànica de protecció de dades i la Llei de serveis de la societat de la informació. Si no sou la persona destinatària indicada (o la responsable de lliurar-lo a qui va destinat), no heu de copiar aquest missatge ni lliurar-lo a tercers per cap concepte. Si heu rebut aquest missatge per error o l'heu aconseguit per altres mitjans, us demanem que ens ho comuniqueu immediatament per aquesta mateixa via i l'elimineu irreversiblement.

Abans d'imprimir aquest missatge electrònic penseu en el medi ambient.

--- Missatge original de Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> per a live-demo <Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org>,"ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org" <ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>,OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org> enviat el 18.10.2015 15:41

Thanks Cameron, Angelos, Giuseppe , Peter and everyone who contributed to these discussions. I am ccing this to discuss list so that the wider community and users who want a cloud service can let their  views known and  how they would use and benefit from an OSGeo-Live cloud service.

That way, we will get better idea if  there is need/demand and a sustaining community who will step up to keep the project maintained with each OSGeo-Live release.

All - please look though the ideas/inputs below that Cameron summarised for OSGeo-Live sustainable cloud service based discussions we had so far in education and live lists. If you are able to contribute to this , please let us all know. Thanks.

Suchith
________________________________
From: ica-osgeo-labs [ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Angelos Tzotsos [gcpp.kalxas at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2015 12:01 PM
To: live-demo; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Ideas/inputs for having a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM

I realize that my previous e-mail was not received by the list so I summarize:

1. OSGeo-Live is already cloud-ready on Synnefo stack
http://www.synnefo.org/
So basically we could deploy synnefo + geneti on OSGeo infrastructure and have a Free Software solution.
Alternatively we could deploy an OpenStack instance.
https://www.openstack.org/software/
We should ask SAC if the above options are feasible.

2. In case we want to deploy OSGeo-Live on AWS, it seems straightforward:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/VMImportPrerequisites.html
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/

Any other options in mind?

Best,
Angelos

On 10/18/2015 01:32 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
Bringing a few different email threads back to one, and answering Suchith's "next steps" question:

On 16/10/2015 12:43 am, Suchith Anand wrote:
Cameron - from your experiences with OSGeo live community, what do you think is the best way now forward ? Can you please summarise all discussions so far and reply to the public lists.Thanks.

Suchith
If we are to be successful at setting up an OSGeo-Live sustainable cloud service, I suggest we consider:

1. Would a cloud service be used? By who?
I'd suggest that people who want a cloud service speak up, say how you would use an OSGeo-Live cloud service. We are looking here to determine if there is a sustaining community who will step up to keep the project maintained with each OSGeo-Live release.

2. What are the steps technically required to set up the cloud service? Hopefully someone will step up to do the research on what is required, and will set up a Proof-of-Concept.

3. What will hosting a cloud service cost? Would it be a pay-as-you-use model? Would we be asking the OSGeo Foundation to sponsor? Would we be asking workshop providers to pay for the service?
I suspect that we could ask the OSGeo Foundation for base funding to prove a Proof of Concept (by paying for a cloud service for 1 year or so), but ask workshop providers and other users to pay for the service in moving forward.
This is something that can be decided once costs are understood.

4. But the bottom line is that the best chance of success will occur if someone stands up and champions its development.  Do we have someone interested to do the hard work of making it happen? (Speak up if interested). It certainly would be a valuable contribution to the OSGeo community.

Warm regards, Cameron

On 14/10/2015 7:59 pm, Peter Baumann wrote:
>  1.Do you think it is important to have a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM
not necessarily a cloud, as the whole OSGeo Live is not prepared.
But definitely hosting it on a VM (for easy cloning + move) is an asset - any
demo just needs to show a URL then.

>
>  2.What are the steps that we need to take to make this possible
find a caretaker with a machine.
Jacobs University can do that, for example, in tight collaboration with Angelos
on technical level.

-Peter

On 15/10/2015 2:53 am, Giuseppe Amatulli wrote:
Hi,
under the http://www.spatial-ecology.net/ initiative we  use the the OSGeo-Llive for courses and intensive training in Geo Computation.

In this line we have been used also Amazon Web Service to teach remote connection and scripting routines in the cloud. For this I was customize a Ubuntu Instance very similar to the  OSGeo-Llive.

Nonetheless, would be grate  to have the OSGeo-Llive directly hosted in AWS to allow teach but also to provide to the course participants  something that they can use after the course.

The AWS Educate <https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/><https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/> provide grants for education so maybe an official cooperation OSGeo&AWS can be a solution to host for free a OSGeo-Llive Instance

Best Regards
Giuseppe

On 10/13/2015 05:57 PM, Suchith Anand wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>
>Myself, Maria and Peter are now at ESA event and had a chance to catch up on ideas for future to expand education globally.
>
>
>I also remembered that few months back, we had an initial discussion on  the importance of having a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM to help running workshops at conferences, training events etc. Venka made this idea in one of the Geo4All AB discussions on workshops at FOSS4G Bonn that i copy below
>
>
>"Instead of buying 80-100 computers, it could be a worth considering to pay for a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM. Maybe one of our sponsoring companies could be approached to deploy such OSGeo Software as a Service solution.Such service could be made available to any event/institution wishing to run their own workshops anywhere place on earth with a good internet connection and thin client. For subsequent events or users could be charged to  cover cost of cloud hosting and paying for some developers to maintain the system.If the experiment is successful, we can think of replicating it in our globally through our local chapters."
>
>
>Me, Maria and Peter in our discussions today, thought it is good time to start doing something about this and have this for scaling up our education and training needs globally. So it will be good to get ideas from key people, so i request you all to give your thoughts/ideas.
>
>
>1.Do you think it is important to have a cloud service that runs the OSGeo-Live VM.
>
>2.What are the steps that we need to take to make this possible
>
>Looking forward to your inputs.
>
>Suchith
>
>

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