Cloud Computing for Research and Education Gets a Sweet Upgrade with CACAO

Abstract

We introduce Cloud Automation and Continuous Analysis Orchestration (CACAO), an open source web platform designed to facilitate access and availability of cloud resources for education and research. By leveraging open source Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) technologies such as Terraform and Ansible, CACAO empowers users to create customized cloud resources and complex software stacks through an intuitive web interface. CACAO integrates with CyVerse, another prominent open source cyberinfrastructure, and is a featured interface for Jetstream2, a public education and research cloud. CACAO effectively manages multi-cloud deployments in OpenStack and commercial service providers. In 2022 bioinformatics and machine learning workshops worldwide used CACAO during its alpha release. CACAO adheres to open science standards and the FAIR data principles, broadening access to cloud platforms and reducing the complexity of deploying the resources necessary for teaching advanced data informatics skills required in today's workforce.