Darkroom is CamCEAD's cloud platform for scientific analysis. It gives researchers computing power and easy access to their data when they need it, without having to run any infrastructure themselves.

What Darkroom provides

Darkroom is built on cloud principles. Scientists get a self-service dashboard where they can start and manage their own compute environments, run data-processing pipelines and follow the progress of their jobs, all on CamCEAD's own storage and computing.

Key features

• Interactive environments: JupyterLab notebooks, RStudio, Visual Studio Code and full remote desktop sessions, started on request.
• Pipelines and batch jobs: long-running data-processing jobs can be submitted and monitored from the dashboard.
• Flexible compute: you can ask for resources sized to the job, including access to Kubernetes and the option of running your own Docker images.
• Data access: S3-compatible storage, synchronisation of remote directories and remote data access for moving data on and off the platform.

Getting started

Access is by registration and administrator approval. After you log in, the dashboard shows your storage use, running Jupyter servers and job status, with links to every part of the platform. The full documentation is at darkroom.ast.cam.ac.uk/docs.