Help:Cloud Services introduction

Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS) is a flexible computing ecosystem built on OpenStack, GridEngine, and Kubernetes. The project empowers technical contribution to the Wikimedia software world. The products and resources of the WMCS project are available for use by anyone connected with the Wikimedia movement. Support and administration of the WMCS resources is provided by a Wikimedia Foundation team and Wikimedia movement volunteers.

Poster-format overview

Our products

• Cloud VPS provides collaborative owned collections of virtual private servers where users develop and maintain software projects that help the Wikimedia movement.
• Toolforge provides a shared hosting/platform as a service environment for running bots, webservices, scheduled jobs, and data analysis.
• Data Services is a collection of products including private-information-redacted copies of Wikimedia's production wiki databases and access to Wikimedia Dumps

Which product should I use?

VPS → Cloud VPS

If you need to run full virtual instances and are willing to administer them on your own we can provide quota to do so.

PaaS → Toolforge

If you need to run a specific webservice, scheduled job, or perform analysis but do not want to or are not able to manage a full virtual environment, this is the best place.

DaaS → Data Services

We provide replicas of the production databases and other data for analysis and experimentation. DaaS resources are available from both the VPS and the PaaS environments, though some of them may need to be requested for a specific VPS Project. In addition, the Quarry service provides database access via a web interface without project setup.

Terms of Use

• All WMCS resources are subject to the Wikimedia Labs Terms of Use and the Code of Conduct for technical spaces.
• Toolforge tools must be open source software licensed under an OSI approved license.
• Toolforge and Cloud VPS projects must not collect, store, or share private data or personally identifiable information, such as user names, passwords, or IP addresses, except when complying with the conditions listed in the Wikimedia Labs Terms of Use.

Joining and Participating

Wikitech Account Holders are governed by the Labs terms of use, the Rules, and the Code of Conduct for technical spaces. The agreement to disclosure of personally identifiable information covers End-Users.

Read our Getting Started guide for detailed information on creating accounts and becoming active in our projects.

Support and Administration

We use Phabricator (workboard), an IRC channel (#wikimedia-cloud ^connect), and email list (labs-l) as primary support channels.

Wikimedia Cloud Services are a joint effort between Wikimedia Foundation staff and many dedicated volunteers:

• Wikimedia Cloud Services team
• Wikimedia Technical Operations
• Community Liaisons
• Toolforge standards committee
• Phabricator participants
• Cloud VPS project maintainers
• Toolforge tool maintainers
• and many more people who help by creating and maintaining documentation on this wiki and others in the Wikimedia movement

Learn more

WMCS components

• Read our glossary of terminology
• Browse existing VPS projects using OpenStack Browser.
• Project administration is done through the OpenStack dashboard known as Horizon.
• Toolforge (Tools) has a homepage and a directory of Tools

Other explanations

• Introducing the Cloud Services Team: What we do, and how we can help you blog entry (September 2017)
• What is Wikimedia Cloud Services? presentation slides (12 pages)
• Video presentation: Introduction to Wikimedia Cloud Services, at Wikimania 2017 (56 minutes)

History

A community consultation on branding has now been closed after an open call for participation and discussion.

We are actively working to rebrand the WMCS products. Working titles are now in use across some documentation. The generic compute/'Labs' environment for running your own virtual instances is being referred to now as "Cloud VPS" and the Tool Labs PaaS environment is now being referred to as "Toolforge".

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From 2011 until early 2017, WMCS was known as "Wikimedia Labs". The term 'Labs' became overloaded and often required clarification about what component of the ecosystem was being referred to. The former Wikimedia Foundation Labs team and the Tool Labs Support team have joined forces as the Wikimedia Cloud Services team and are launching a campaign to improve the language and branding surrounding products and services offered.