What is OpenScienceLab?¶
OpenScienceLab is a service providing users persistent, cloud-based, customizable computing environments. Groups of scientists and students have access to identical environments, containing the same software, running on the same hardware. It operates in the cloud, which means anyone with a moderately reliable internet connection can access their development environment. OpenScienceLab sits alongside ASF’s data archives in AWS, allowing for low latency transfer of large data products.
OpenScienceLab is a deployable service that creates an autoscaling Kubernetes cluster in Amazon AWS, running JupyterHub. Users have access to customizable environments running JupyterLab via authenticated accounts with persistent storage.
While OpenScienceLab was designed with SAR data science in mind, it is not limited to this field. Any group development scenario involving large datasets and/or the need for complicated development environments can benefit from working in an OpenScienceLab deployment.
Sign in or create an account to try OpenScienceLab
How will OpenScienceLab benefit my work as a SAR scientist?¶
OpenScienceLab addresses the following issues that often arise when developing SAR data science techniques, especially in a collaborative setting:
Most SAR analysis algorithms require the installation of many interdependent Python science packages
Collaboration is often slowed or interrupted when contributors work in varying environments with different versions of installed dependencies
SAR data products are often quite large, which leads to slow, expensive data transfers
SAR scientists with limited resources may lack access to the hardware required for analysis
How will OpenScienceLab benefit the class or training I am planning?¶
OpenScienceLab alleviates some of the pitfalls commonly encountered when teaching software development and data science in any field:
Teaching is often interrupted when students work in varying environments, requiring valuable instructor time to help set up their systems so they may complete their assignments.
Students may lack the hardware needed to run the software required for assignments.
Students may lack the bandwidth needed to download large data products to their local computers.
How is OpenScienceLab different from Binder?¶
Authenticated user accounts
Persistent user storage
Cost reducing storage management features
Customizable server resources (pick your EC2 size)
Deployable to other AWS accounts
Developer defined server timeouts (not restricted to 10 minutes of inactivity)
How to Access OpenScienceLab¶
As a Paid Service Managed by Alaska Satellite Facility Enterprise¶
Contact ASF-E (uaf
Contact Us¶
Have questions, suggestions, or need advice? We would love to hear from you!
Email us at uaf