March 2024
Attach/Detach Storage (on an existing workspace)
Moving around persistent storage volumes between workspaces was tedious, before.
If your workspace is from March '24 or later, you can just pause the workspace and manage the attached storages in the "Storage" tab of the extended workspace display in the portal.
read more
Mount Storage Volumes by Name
Persistent storage volumes used to be mounted under ~/data/volume_<x>
The number "x" was randomly assigened so you had to guess which volume was which, if you had more than one attached.
Now, by default, volumes are mounted by their given storage name.
If your catalog item still needs the legacy naming pattern of "volume_<x>", you can set a special parameter.
Flexible Security Groups (open ports)
Opening ports required you to think ahead a lot, before creating the workspace.
Now - depending on the catalog item you use - you can add security group rules that will open specific ports or port ranges. Read more in the
Versioning in Component Creation
If you are maintaining a catalog item on Research Cloud, you want to make sure that it keeps working for your end users while you are working on improvements.
While the Ansible Playbooks, Docker files or powershell scripts can be version-controlled in git, the remainder of a component with all it's fields was not really versionable.
Now you can take your component through an actual Dev/Test/Production cycle, too.
read more
September 2023
Access Jupyter Notebooks with SRAM
If you start a Jupyter Notebook workspace using a SURF Research Cloud catalog item, you will log in to the workspace with SRAM.
This is the same mechanism that is used for logging in to the SURF Research Cloud portal.
Just select your institute (or EduID) and log in.
This feature active after September 12th 2023.
April 2023
New catalog creation flow
We have thoroughly redesigned the workflow of the catalog creation.
To begin with, "plugins" are now called "components" and "applications" are called "catalog items".
Both components and catalog items are now created and edited "wizard style".
"Application Offers" have disappeared from the user interface entirely.
The creation process should be a lot clearer now.
Please also refer to the updated documentation.
"CO first"
In the resource creation wizards for workspaces, storage, reserved ip-addresses and private networks you now select the collaboration (CO) first.
Wallet chart
On the "Wallet" tab of the portal there are charts available to give you insight into your usage of the budget.
Extend the display tile of the wallet to see a chart for each budget that is funding your wallet.
Provisioning wallets per CO
We could speed up the process of issuing wallets for some situations. When your CO is prepared accordingly, you can choose if a new CO member should receive a wallet of an assigned budget. Please contact us via https://servicedesk.surf.nl if you are interested in using this feature.
Windows: Chrome and Edge
On Windows workspaces, the Chrome and Edge browsers are available now.
Chrome being the default-browser.
February 2023
Jupyter Notebook workspaces by default offer a Python3 kernel to run notebooks with.
We have added an "example custom" kernel that also offers numpy, matplotlib, pandas and scipy.
In the user's home-directory there is a notebook "KERNEL-README.ipyn" that explains how to modify an existing kernel and how to create your own.
The plugin that is used to create a custom kernel can also be used with other Ubuntu-based apps in ResearchCloud. Not only Jupyter.
November 2022
Flavours are split in 'os' and 'size' part
Earlier, workspace flavours on Research Cloud defined
- OS-type (Ubuntu, CentOS, Windows, ...) and
- sizes (number of cores, RAM-size, ...).
Now there are two separate types of flavours: "OS" and "size"
This makes catalog item creation and catalog choice easier.
The flavours for public clouds will also bear the cloud provider's native flavour name.
Admin only workspaces
You can create an application that only a collaboration's admin can log in to.
Overwriting the parameter "co_admin_user_only" with "true" sets a catalog item to admin-login only.
This means that only members of the collaboration's group "src_co_admin" can log in to the workspace.
iRods storage connection integration
On the portal's profile tab, you can add your iRods information to any of your collaborations.
Your storage will be mounted and your iRods will be linked to the workspaces of the collaboration.
Please refer to this documentation page for details.
October 2022
"Basic Cluster" workspace
The basic cluster is a workspace that contains multiple VMs.
The number of worker VMs can be set by the user during the workspace creation in the workspace wizard.
Restricted Remote Desktop Protocol for Windows workspace
If you create a catalog item for Windows, you can enforce a stricter security policy for the RDP client.
By overwriting the parameter "co_rdp_secure" with "true" data transfer through the RDP connection is disabled.
Copy/paste and mounting local drives will not work anymore, though.
Catalog item access restriction
The choice in the catalog can be confined to explicitly whitelisted applications.
Collaboration-administrators can place users in the collaboration group "src_no_ext_apps".
Members of this group can only start applications that have been allowed explicitly for this collaboration.
Plugin creation wizard
We wanted to make the creation of plugins more user friendly.
So we now have a wizard-style workflow for creating new and editing existing plugins.
The changed user interface is documented here.
User notification on full System disk
When 80% of the system disk is full, an automatic warning mail is sent to the workspace owner.
Budget warning for contract administrator
When 80% of a budget has been spent, an e-mail will be sent to the contract administrator.
The contract administrator is the person who is listed in our Central Budgeting and Accounting service for this contract.
Workspace owner e-mail available in workspace
Inside Research Cloud workspaces, an e-mail mechanism is used to send notification e-mails to the workspace owner.
This API is now also available for your own plugins.
Please contact us if you want to use this feature in your plugins.