Researchers and Instructors often require specialized computing environments tailored to their projects and courses. But creating and maintaining these environments can be time-consuming and a barrier for students, especially those with limited access to personal computing resources. The University of Oklahoma Libraries leverages the National Research Platform’s Nautilus project, a hosted Kubernetes framework, to address this challenge.

The Nautilus cluster is a cluster of computers that have CPUs, a variety of GPUs, and file storage which is located primarily in the United States. It allows users to participate using shared resources contributed by universities. While this infrastructure can do many things, the University Libraries. is using the service to host pods (containers) for JupyterLab environments to access common software setups for coding languages and applications.

This framework is being used by the University Libraries for their hosted researcher workshops in R, Python, Data and Software Carpentry. Additionally, courses in Meteorology, Linear Algebra, Astronomy, and Biology have integrated Nautilus for use by learners. Several research groups are using the Nautilus framework on their own to create more detailed workflows and processes to aid in their research.

Faculty and instructors who may be interested in using the portal for their course can fill out a request form. A member of the UL staff will instruct on the best practices for using in a course and are informed as to what support is available. Any questions can be asked by sending an email to Data Scholarship and Data Services. 

• Nautilus FAQ | OU Libraries
• Leveraging the NRP Nautilus to Build a Scalable Research and Education Environment
• Tutorial: Introduction to Nautilus