NIST describes Cloud Computing as "a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

Nebula is a Cloud Computing pilot under development at NASA Ames Research Center. It integrates a set of open-source components into a seamless, self-service platform, providing high-capacity computing, storage and network connectivity using a virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy efficiencies. The fully-integrated nature of the Nebula components provide for extremely rapid development of policy-compliant and secure web applications, fosters and encourages code reuse, and improves the coherence and cohesiveness of NASA's collaborative web applications. When completed, Nebula will offer cost-effective Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service(PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service(SaaS). As a hybrid cloud, Nebula enhances NASA’s ability to collaborate with external researchers by providing consistent tool sets and high-speed data connections.

Nebula is currently being used for education and public outreach, for collaboration and public input, and also for mission support. Nebula’s capabilities, for example, are already being realized as amateur astronomers upload high resolution photographs. Astronomy enthusiasts are informally working with NASA scientists to get a better view of the Moon using the LCROSS participation site built on the Nebula platform. Nebula is helping drive the creation of "citizen science" where real people can track this significant event and share critical data with our organization.

Built from the ground up around principles of transparency and public collaboration, Nebula is also an open-source project. Open-source means transparency and enhanced interoperability to the end-user. The creation of this kind of system, made up of cooperating programs that aren’t all owned by the same company, delivers an Internet platform that is owned not by one organization, but a collaborative mega-system created by thousands who seek improved operability.

The primary Nebula container is at Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, California. The Ames Internet Exchange (AIX) which hosts the cloud, was formerly "Mae West," one of the original nodes of the Internet, and is still a major peering location for Tier 1 ISPs, as well as being the home of the "E" root name servers.

Aside from these peering relationships, we also connect to CENIC and Internet2, at 10GigE connections.

You can read more about the components, technologies, and services of NASA's Cloud in Services.