"November 2019 Use Cases & Capability Delivery Plans" Rating

These three use cases (IAAS-11, SPI-09, SPI-10) are intended to help a broader set of service providers grapple with cybersecurity issues. This broader set includes: campus IT administrators (engaged via campus bridging), new XSEDE Service Providers, and researchers who administer cloud resources. You may rate these three use cases as a set (provide the same rating for each use case) if you don't have time to review each individually.

SPI-09 describes a service provider using an automated service to scan his or her service for common vulnerabilities. The idea is for XSEDE to make it easier for newer, less experienced service operators to identify the most common vulnerabilities in their systems so the issues can be fixed before they're exploited by attackers. The specific proposal is for XCI to evaluate existing scanning services to see if any are worth recommending and/or partnering with.

These two use cases (RC-08, RC-09) describe researchers using CVMFS (aka CernVM-FS) in their research computing. CVMFS is a read-only, shared filesystem used to distribute software and data to distributed systems. It is used by the Open Science Grid, Compute Canada, and Galaxy (data-intensive biomedical research) communities and related research projects. Several current XSEDE resources (inc. Bridges, Stampede2, Jetstream) already provide CVMFS access.

RC-09 describes a researcher accessing data or software from a CVMFS repository on a self-administered system, most likely a cloud VM or virtual cluster. The researcher either needs to install the CVMFS client on the system or use a pre-built system image with CVMFS installed. The specific proposal is to provide documentation (references to CVMFS documentation and XSEDE best practices) enabling the researcher to do this.

These three use cases (RC-10, SPI-11, SPI-12) are the researcher and service provider experiences that would result from XSEDE offering CVMFS (aka CernVM-FS) repository hosting services. A repository hosting service hosts the master (writeable) copy of a repository so it can be accessed on other resources. The contents of the repository can be populated manually (RC-10, SPI-11) or automatically (SPI-12). These use cases share a common capability delivery plan with a total estimate of 12 person-weeks for all three use cases, beginning with a pilot project. You may rate these three use cases as a set (provide the same rating for each use case) if you don't have time to review each individually.

SPI-12 describes a service provider hosting a CVMFS repository that is automatically populated. The service provider hosts the storage for the repository and configures the repository to automatically pull its contents from a source repository such as GitHub or DockerHub.

These three use cases (RC-10, SPI-11, SPI-12) are the researcher and service provider experiences that would result from XSEDE offering CVMFS (aka CernVM-FS) repository hosting services. A repository hosting service hosts the master (writeable) copy of a repository so it can be accessed on other resources. The contents of the repository can be populated manually (RC-10, SPI-11) or automatically (SPI-12). These use cases share a common capability delivery plan with a total estimate of 12 person-weeks for all three use cases, beginning with a pilot project. You may rate these three use cases as a set (provide the same rating for each use case) if you don't have time to review each individually.

RC-10 describes a researcher managing the contents of a CVMFS repository so a research team can access the contents on a variety of resources, including SP resources, cloud resources, and potentially others. The repository is hosted by XSEDE.

These three use cases (IAAS-11, SPI-09, SPI-10) are intended to help a broader set of service providers grapple with cybersecurity issues. This broader set includes: campus IT administrators (engaged via campus bridging), new XSEDE Service Providers, and researchers who administer cloud resources. You may rate these three use cases as a set (provide the same rating for each use case) if you don't have time to review each individually.

IAAS-11 recognizes the growing trend for researchers to spin up virtual clusters on cloud resources. It aims to encourage researchers to protect these virtual clusters by making it easier for them to set up a bastion host to limit direct access to the cluster. The specific proposal is to collect the documentation and VM images for bastion hosts on specific cloud services and is a total of approximately four person-weeks.