ARDC Nectar Research Cloud Node at Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre Now Live

A new node of the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud is now live at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre for Western Australian and national cross-institutional research. 

Pawsey joins 9 federated nodes of the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud (Nectar), which provides powerful computing services for research, designed to save time, boost computing resources and support collaboration. They include cloud computing and services to run virtual desktops, Jupyter Notebooks, BinderHub, GPUs, and preemptible instances. In the last financial year, Nectar had over 3,900 users and supported 1,900 research projects. 

The new node is an outcome of the MOU signed between ARDC and Pawsey in 2024, which aims to bring critical Australian compute, storage facilities and resources closer together, creating a seamless and efficient research environment for Australian researchers and national data collections. Both organisations are enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). 

Rosie Hicks, CEO, ARDC, said, “The launch of the new ARDC Nectar Research Cloud node at Pawsey marks an exciting step forward for Australian research. By extending Nectar to Western Australia, we’re strengthening national collaboration and enabling researchers to integrate cloud and high-performance computing. This partnership will accelerate innovation and deliver powerful, connected capabilities for data-driven discovery.”

Mark Stickells, CEO, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, said, “Pawsey’s partnership with ARDC increases advanced computing resources and services available to our partners and researchers nationally. Researchers across all domains are using more computation to power their research, and the new WA Nectar Research Cloud node at Pawsey will accelerate impactful scientific discovery in WA and nationally.”

The new node at Pawsey is set to expand Nectar’s use for diverse fields of research. Over 80 WA-related projects are already using Nectar, including:

• Desert Fireball Network – monitors a third of the Australian skies with remote camera systems all night, every night to track fireballs, meteorites and their pre-Earth orbits to uncover the mysteries surrounding the formation of the solar system – led by Dr Ellie Sansom at Curtin University
• GlobalArchive, an online repository of fish image annotation data and Baited Underwater Remote Video samples (also an ARDC co-investment partnership project) – led by Dr Tim Langlois, Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia (UWA)
• AERIAL – research investigating the possible contributors to childhood lung disease by studying the epithelial cells from the nose at birth – led by the Airway Epithelial Research Group from The Kids Research Institute Australia
• Advanced bioinformatic approaches for plant pathogen research – developing data-driven solutions for fast tracking genetic analysis and to develop more effective predictive tools to understand fungal disease – led by Dr James Hane at the Centre for Crop and Disease Management
• Seaweed aquaculture hydrodynamics – developing comprehensive understanding and predictive tools for how offshore cultivated seaweed species modify a range of hydrodynamic processes in offshore environments – led by Prof Ryan Lowe at UWA Oceans Institute through the Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre (CRC).

Nectar also provides cloud computing in WA for:

• ARC Training Centre in Critical Resources for the Future
• National Imaging Facility (NIF) WA Node.

The new node expands Australia’s national research cloud, adding over 6,000 virtual cores of compute resources for virtual machines (VMs), with 500 TB of fast NVMe drives for volume storage. Root disks for VMs will be stored in 90 TB of NVMe storage directly on the compute nodes, to provide lower latency. In addition, Pawsey is contributing 2 PB of S3 object storage from Acacia, to be made available through Nectar allocations.

Researchers can sign up for a free trial of the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud now. Learn how to start your free trial, join training on 11 December, or register for upcoming training.

ARDC Nectar Research Cloud — Powering Australian Research

The ARDC Nectar Research Cloud is a federated service that is co-designed and receives co-investment from universities and research infrastructure facilities across Australia. The federation enables cross-institutional research collaboration at a national scale.

Nectar hosts powerful computing services for researchers, designed to save time, boost computing resources, and promote collaboration. They include services to run virtual desktops, Jupyter Notebooks, BinderHub, GPUs, and preemptible instances. Nectar also provides infrastructure for national services through the ARDC Thematic Research Data Commons and is used by research organisations across the country, including:

• 37 Australian universities
• 15 NCRIS facilities 
• 11 ARC Centres of Excellence.

All Australian researchers can try Nectar with a 6-month trial, and Nectar offers ongoing access to researchers in all fields of research at no cost to eligible researchers. 

About ARDC

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) drives the development of national digital research infrastructure that provides Australian researchers with competitive advantage through data.

We facilitate programs and partnerships that provide the research community and industry access to nationally significant, data-intensive digital research infrastructure, platforms, skills and collections of high-quality data. We also support researchers and their organisations with digital research services, most of which are either available to all or to merit-based researchers at no cost.

Our digital research infrastructure activities directly support the Australian research community to generate real and tangible outcomes for society.

The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

About Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre

The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre accelerates scientific discoveries and fosters innovation across Australia’s research landscape. Named after Dr Joseph Pawsey, a pioneering Australian radio astronomer, we honour his legacy by enabling breakthroughs for over 4,000 researchers. 

Our impact spans diverse fields such as radio astronomy, energy, resources, engineering, bioinformatics, and health sciences. As an unincorporated joint venture between CSIRO (Australia’s national science agency), Curtin University, Murdoch University, and The University of Western Australia, collaboration is our driving force.

Pawsey is an NCRIS facility funded by the Department of Education. The Australian Government also provided a $70 million grant for the Pawsey Capital Refresh project. Additionally, support for the Centre comes through the Western Australian Government and our partner organisations.

Learn more about the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud.