Introduction

StratusLab, an international collaboration, provides a complete, open source cloud distribution, allowing the installation of public or private “Infrastructure as a Service” cloud infrastructures. It aims to be both simple to use and simple to install.

Cloud infrastructures provide many benefits to developers and end-users (scientists and engineers). End-users appreciate the cloud’s ability:

• To provide a customized execution environment,
• To make available pre-installed and pre-configured applications,
• To provision new resources (CPU, storage, etc.) rapidly, and
• To allow complete control of those resources.

Application and service developers also appreciate:

• Easy access to the services through simple APIs and
• The elasticity of the cloud to respond to peaks in demand.

StratusLab provides a couple mechanisms for accessing cloud resources: a command line interface written in portable python and web interfaces (for a subset of services). Developers can also use the Libcloud API, the StratusLab Python API, or the service REST APIs for programmatic access.