VLab - NWS OSTI
VLab Vision:
“Provide the tools and services to foster innovation and streamline R2O”
VLab Goals:
- Reduce the time and cost of transitions of innovations to enterprise operations,
- Minimize redundancy and leverage complementary, yet physically separated, skill sets,
- Forge scientific and technical solutions based on a broad, diverse consensus,
- Promote an NOAA culture based on collaboration and trust,
- Provide excellent customer service,
- Embrace emerging technologies, like the use of Git repositories and a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) software development strategy,
- Cater VLab services to key programs like AWIPS, and
- Leverage VLab infrastructure for establishing STI’s cloud development and testing environment.
VLab Services
The VLab is comprised of three main components:
VLab Cloud
VLab Cloud Services is a Cloud based system that supports research, development, testing, training, and non-mission critical workflows for the Office of Science and Technology Integration. VLab Cloud provides:
- Infrastructure support (managed through VLab)
- Monitoring costs - you pay for what you use (compute, storage, egress)
- Tagging of resources to track costs at project level and responding to cost requests
- Cloud design and creation of cloud resources
- Managing AWS Account permissions and users via AWS Roles, Policies, and Groups
- Administrative support within EC2 instances (VMs)
VLab Collaborative Service - VLCS
VLab Collaborative Service keeps everyone in your organization productive, self-sufficient, and connected with a modern intranet.
You can increase productivity by organizing and sharing training materials, support resources, and best practice information in one place.
You can also foster collaboration through employee online forums, blogs.
CMS Services and External Websites - VLab CMS provides a set of modern technologies that allow you to define, standardize, and tailor unique online experiences to connect with your public audience.
Website platform features: Customized Workflows, User Management, Inline Editing, Versioning, Dynamic Publishing, Localization, Form...
VLab Development Services - VLDS
Project Management: Redmine is a roll-based project management tool allowing project managers to visualize task dependencies and timelines via Gantt charts. It also provides wiki, forum and issue tracking functionality to enhance the development process.
Code Repository Service: VLDS provide free Git and SVN repository services to its users.
Code Review Service: Gerrit is a team software code review tool where developers in a team can review each other's code modifications and approve or reject those changes. Working with Git and Redmine, Gerrit helps control project software changes.
Continuous Integration Service: Jenkins is a continuous integration tool for software developers. It allows for the automated building of a software application resident in Git repositories.
VLab and AWIPS
- VLab is an integral piece of AWIPS2 (A2) R2O.
- The AWIPS Community in VLCS is used to distribute documents and information regarding governance
- VLab Gerrit is required for code check-in and review
- VLab Jenkins ensures integrity of check-ins
- VLab Redmine is used for development issue tracking, integration tickets, and development level documentation through wikis
- AWIPS in the Cloud is hosted in VLab Cloud
- VLab Cloud hosts the Weather Event Simulator (WES) in the Cloud