Rapid Access Cloud

Collaboration and perseverance — looking back over the last year

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As we near the end of Cybera’s 2025 fiscal year, looking back, it’s clear this has been a period of uncertainty that has tested our entire community. From financial pressures to geopolitical tensions, Alberta’s public and education sectors have faced many difficulties! But even amid these challenges, our community has shown resilience and determination by […]

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Testing improved data retrieval on Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud

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This week, from May 18-20, the annual Mining Software Repositories (MSR) conference is taking place. This annual event brings together global experts in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to explore interesting and actionable ways to improve software development practices. In the lead up to MSR, a hackathon was organized. This year, the focus

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HackED Beta gives tech “newbs” a chance to try out a hackathon

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This past November, the University of Alberta’s Computer Engineering Club held its fifth annual HackED Beta — “Alberta’s friendliest beginner hackathon,” of which Cybera was a proud sponsor. The 24-hour coding competition is geared towards beginner programmers who are either in high school or the first two years of post-secondary education. It aims to provide

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Rapid Access Cloud user profile: PinterEC explores remote video capture

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Periodically, we like to chat with one of Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud users, to find out what fun and innovative projects they’re exploring on our cloud. In this post, we talked to Chris Pinter, CEO of PinterEC Technology Projects, a research and development firm that works with companies to build high tech solutions. Pinter is

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Creating a federation of global computers for science and research

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Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud is a small contributor to a global chain of compute nodes, brought together by the Open Science Grid to support science projects. A computer cluster is when several “tightly connected” computers are made to work on a project together, essentially creating a single system. These clusters are a great means of

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Alberta cloud resource supports local charity that diverts edible food from the landfill

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The Leftovers Foundation is one of Western Canada’s largest food rescue charities. Based in Calgary and Edmonton, the organization works with local restaurants, bakeries and grocers to redirect edible food that is headed to the landfill towards those who need it most. This rescued food helps service agencies such as the Calgary Drop-In Centre, Calgary

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Alberta’s Rapid Access Cloud is supporting a global open-source networking solution

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How a small Software Defined Networking solution out of New Zealand became a tool used by universities and research labs around the world, with a little help from the Rapid Access Cloud. In 2013, Cybera blogged about Software Defined Networking (SDN) being “the latest ‘big thing’ in the field of networking”. Simply put, SDN allows

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University hackathon shows students the wide possibilities of cloud

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In 2013, Cybera launched the Rapid Access Cloud (RAC) in order to fill a gap in Alberta research and education: access to free but powerful compute infrastructure to run tests and support learning. Over the last seven years, as usage of our cloud took off, we have been amazed by the breadth of projects we have supported:

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Platform built on Rapid Access Cloud is deepening understanding of Canadians’ online mental health

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There have been many interesting news stories popping up recently about artificial intelligence (AI) being trained to identify human emotions. Like so much else to do with humans, reading emotions is a nuanced, complicated endeavour, particularly for machines. But the benefits of having technology that can do this are immense — far beyond just creating

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Helping Edmontonians Access The Services They Need

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Hundreds of Edmontonians are able to access benefits more easily, thanks to a new tool hosted on Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud. Individuals, families and community workers in Edmonton are spending less time sifting through the myriad of information on financial needs and assistance, thanks to the recently launched online screening tool, You Can Benefit. Each

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Three-day makeathon creates specialized solutions for people with disabilities

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Article by: Brian Cechmanek The Tikkun Olam Makers:Calgary (TOM), run by local non-profit Kadima Dynamics, proudly celebrated Calgary’s spirit of innovation at its third annual makeathon event. Local engineers and designers (‘Makers’) collaborated with people living with disability (‘Need-Knowers’) to create real-life solutions for their everyday challenges. From August 24-27, 13 teams of 4-6 individuals,

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Cloud-Based Security Services

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Authors: Jean-François Amiot, Byron Chu, Neil Stewart Beyond Firewall-as-a-Service The concept for the K-12 Firewall as a Service pilot is simple: leverage Cybera’s existing cloud resource, the Rapid Access Cloud, to provide a virtualized security solution for schools. These institutions are looking for an alternative to the individual security appliances employed by the majority of K-12

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Using Terraform Part 5: Virtual Networks

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Introduction The previous blog posts in this series focused on creating “compute”-based resources in Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud — that is, services focused around virtual machines. The Rapid Access Cloud recently implemented OpenStack Neutron, which provides virtual networking services. Let’s see how Terraform can take advantage of these new services. Virtual Networks and Subnets Just

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