Nimbus

Network Models
- Centralized: DHCP using existing/dedicated DHCP server
- Local: DHCP server installed on VMM node

Storage Support
- Cumulus
  - Open-source implementation of the S3 REST API
  - POSIX-Compliant storage systems are supported as backen
    - PVFS
    - GFS
    - HDFS
    - Blobseer
- Can be used by many existing clients,
  - Boto
  - s3cmd
  - jets3t

Control Panel
- Nimbus Web Control Panel (Admin)
  - Python Django Web Application
  - Install/Configure/Deploy/Test Nimbus Installation
- Cloud Client
  - Commandline based
  - Upload VM images to the cloud
  - Launch/Terminate VM instances
- Reference Client
  - Commandline based
  - Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) based frontend
  - Allows advanced control
- EC2 Compatible frontend
  - Partial protocol implementation of EC2's Web Services Definition Language (WSDL)
  - Supports some EC2 command line clients (from ec2-tools package)

Virtual Machine Image Registry
- Nimbus VM Image repository
  - Uses Cumulus as backend

Security
- Cloud client authenticates with a Nimbus Installation in one of these ways,
  - Using a certificate, secret key and unencrypted credentials stored in a properties file
  - Using an encrypted key certificate (Proxy Credentials)
  - Using a user certificate and an unencrypted user key

Interoperatiblity
- Cumulus is an open-source partial implementation of the Amazon S3 REST API
- Cumulus is compatible with jets3t API.
- Java API
- EC2-tools based scripts might work because Nimbus partially implements EC2 tools