CUMULUS: NASA's cloud based distributed active archive center prototype

Since 1994, NASA's Earth Science Data System (ESDS) Program, central to facilitating the implementation of NASA's Earth Science strategic plan, has committed to the full and open, public sharing of Earth science data obtained from NASA instruments. A vital responsibility of the ESDS Program is to continuously evolve the entire data and information system (“EOSDIS”) to maximize returns on NASA's collected data. An independent, holistic review of the EOSDIS was conducted to identify gaps and resulted in the following recommendations: investigate (a) whether commercial cloud providers offer potential for storage, processing, and operational efficiencies, and (b) the potential development of new data access and analysis paradigms. In response, ESDS has initiated several prototypes, including the “Cumulus” prototype, to investigate the advantages and risks of leveraging cloud computing. Cumulus is being designed and developed as a “native” cloud-based data ingest, archive and management system that can be used for all future NASA Earth science data streams.