Suppose you need just a little bit of computing power for a long time or a huge amount for a short period. Neither situation makes it worthwhile to buy and maintain your own server.

So the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has launched Red Cloud, an on-demand research computing service available by subscription.

Two Red Cloud services are available. The basic offering provides root access to virtual servers and virtual disks on Dell PowerEdge C servers with 50GB of storage. Red Cloud subscriptions provide fast access to data via 10Gb Ethernet in and out of the cloud at no additional charge.

The second offering, "Red Cloud with MATLAB," allows subscribers to run the MATLAB numerical computing environment and its graphical extension Simulink on a computer cluster. The Red Cloud environment for MATLAB includes NVIDIA graphics processing units for improved performance. Subscribers program applications on their desktops using their licensed copy of Parallel Computing Toolbox, then scale up to Red Cloud with MATLAB.

Red Cloud services are also available to researchers at other academic institutions. Industry can access Red Cloud through CAC's corporate program.

"Cloud computing has the potential to advance U.S. research discoveries and better prepare students for STEM careers by making computing, software and data resources more readily available at an economy of scale," said CAC Director David Lifka.

To learn more visit http://www.cac.cornell.edu/redcloud.