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Key Concepts

Essential terminology and concepts for understanding RosettaHub, the Supercloud platform that unifies AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, OVH, and OpenStack under a single operational layer.

The Supercloud

RosettaHub is a Supercloud -- a platform layer that sits above multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, OVH, and OpenStack) and presents them as a single, unified computing environment. Rather than replacing cloud providers, the Supercloud abstracts away provider-specific differences so that teams can provision, govern, and operate resources across all supported clouds through one interface.

For a deeper look at the Supercloud model, see What is the Supercloud?.

Two Pillars

The Supercloud is built on two complementary pillars:

Pillar Purpose Scope
The MetaCloud Compute unification -- provision and manage resources identically across AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, OVH, and OpenStack Formations, sessions, machines, images, keys, storages
Cloud Operations (RosettaOps) Governance unification -- enforce organizational policies, budgets, compliance, and access control across every cloud account Organizations, projects, users, cloud accounts, budgets, policies

The MetaCloud provides a cloud-agnostic resource layer. A formation written once can launch on any supported provider without modification. Machines from different providers appear side by side, and cross-cloud operations (such as mounting AWS S3 storage on a GCP instance) are first-class features.

RosettaOps provides the cloud operations layer. Every resource launch passes through budget checks, policy enforcement, and audit logging before it reaches the cloud provider. Cost tracking, compliance rules, and user permissions are defined once and applied uniformly.

For details, see The MetaCloud and Cloud Operations.

Two paths to the cloud

Cloud experts (DevOps, architects) can use RosettaOps as a governance layer and access native cloud consoles directly via federated access. Domain users (researchers, educators, students) use the MetaCloud to provision and manage resources without cloud expertise. Both paths are governed by the same budgets, policies, and compliance controls.

The Platform

The Platform is the general UI framework through which users interact with both The MetaCloud and cloud operations (RosettaOps). It is built around three concepts:

Concept Description
Dashboard The main workspace. A configurable canvas of panels arranged into rows and columns. Each user can tailor their dashboard to their role.
Perspective A saved arrangement of panels. Switch between perspectives to move instantly between contexts -- for example, from a development workspace to a cost-monitoring workspace.
View A single panel within the dashboard. Views come in several types (see below).

View Types

View Type Description Examples
Artifact View Displays a RosettaHub resource collection Formations, Machines, Cloud Keys
Component View Built-in platform component Overview, Settings, Cost Dashboard
URL View Embeds an external web page Grafana, Jenkins, Jupyter
HTML View Renders custom HTML content Announcements, status widgets

For more, see Dashboard, Perspectives, and Views.

Core MetaCloud Concepts

These are the building blocks of compute unification.

Concept Description
Formation A cloud-agnostic Infrastructure-as-Code recipe that describes the resources needed for a deployment. Formations work across all supported clouds without modification.
Session The running instance of a formation. Launching a formation creates a session that tracks the lifecycle of all provisioned resources.
Machine A cloud compute instance running within a session. Lifecycle actions (start, stop, hibernate, snapshot) operate at the machine level.
Image A machine image (AMI, managed image, or equivalent) used as the base for launching instances. Images can be shared across teams and clouds.
Cloud Key A credential that maps to a cloud provider identity (AWS IAM key, Azure Service Principal, GCP Service Account, or Alibaba Cloud AccessKey). Cloud Keys authorize resource launches.
Key Pair An SSH key pair used to connect to running instances. Distinct from Cloud Keys.
Storage Object, file, or block storage resources. Storages can be attached across cloud boundaries -- for example, an AWS S3 bucket mounted on a GCP machine.

Formation Types

Formations cover a range of deployment patterns:

Formation Type Description
Machine Formation A single cloud instance
Machine Pool Multiple identical instances managed as a group
Virtual Lab A remote desktop environment for interactive work
EMR / Dataproc Cluster Spark and Hadoop clusters for big-data workloads
HPC Cluster High-performance computing clusters for parallel computation

Session and Machine Lifecycle

When you launch a formation:

  1. A Session is created, representing the active deployment.
  2. One or more Machines are provisioned within that session.
  3. Lifecycle actions (start, stop, hibernate, terminate) apply to individual machines.
  4. Budget checks and policy rules are enforced before the launch reaches the cloud provider.

Core Cloud Operations Concepts

These are the building blocks of governance unification.

Concept Description
Organization The top-level governance container. Holds users, cloud accounts, projects, budgets, and policies. Supports nested sub-organizations for departments or teams.
Project A logical grouping of resources and users within an organization, used to track costs and enforce access boundaries.
User A person with an assigned role and permissions. Roles control what resources a user can see, launch, and administer.
Cloud Account A connection to a cloud provider account (AWS account, Azure subscription, GCP project, or Alibaba Cloud account). Credentials are stored securely and assigned to specific organizations.
Pool A grouping of cloud accounts for bulk management -- for example, a Production Pool, a Development Pool, or a Regional Pool (EMEA, US, APAC).
Budget A spending limit applied to a cloud account, project, or organization. Budgets gate resource launches: if a launch would exceed the budget, it is blocked.
Policy A governance rule that controls what can be launched, by whom, and under what conditions. Policies enforce instance-type restrictions, region constraints, tagging requirements, and compliance standards.
Compliance Audit and regulatory controls that ensure cloud usage conforms to organizational or regulatory requirements. Compliance rules integrate with budgets and policies.
Cost Tracking Real-time and historical cost visibility across all connected cloud accounts, broken down by organization, project, user, or resource.

Resource Hierarchy

graph TD
    Org["Organization"]

    subgraph ops ["Cloud Operations (RosettaOps)"]
        SubOrg["Sub-Organization"]
        Users["Users\n(roles + permissions)"]
        Projects["Projects\n(budgets + policies)"]
        CA["Cloud Accounts\n(cost tracking)"]
    end

    subgraph mc ["The MetaCloud (Resources)"]
        Formations["Formations"]
        Sessions["Sessions"]
        Machines["Machines"]
        Images["Images"]
        Storages["Storages"]
    end

    Org --> SubOrg
    SubOrg --> Users
    SubOrg --> Projects
    SubOrg --> CA
    Formations --> Sessions
    Sessions --> Machines

    style Org fill:#e8eaf6,stroke:#283593,color:#000
    style ops fill:#e3f2fd,stroke:#1565c0,color:#000
    style mc fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#e65100,color:#000

Cross-Cutting Concepts

These concepts span both The MetaCloud and Cloud Operations (RosettaOps).

Concept Description
Actions Operations performed on resources: Launch, Start, Stop, Clone, Share, Snapshot, Delete. Actions are available from context menus, toolbar buttons, and keyboard shortcuts. See Actions Reference.
Sharing Any resource (formation, image, session) can be shared via URL. Recipients open the link and get an identical view, enabling reproducible environments and collaborative workflows.
Marketplaces Curated catalogs of pre-built formations, images, and configurations. Organizations can publish internal marketplaces; RosettaHub maintains a public marketplace of community contributions.
Cross-Cloud Operations First-class support for operations that span providers -- for example, mounting AWS S3 storage on a GCP machine, or cloning an image from Azure to AWS.

Service Verticals

RosettaHub serves distinct verticals, each with tailored formations, policies, and platform configurations:

Vertical Focus
Research HPC clusters, GPU instances, experiment tracking, and reproducible environments
Education Virtual labs, student sandboxes, classroom management, and usage quotas
Data Science Notebook environments, Spark clusters, model training pipelines, and shared datasets
Enterprise / SMB Multi-team governance, cost optimization, compliance automation, and production workloads

For vertical-specific guidance, see Solutions.

Next Steps

Now that you understand the core concepts: