Enabling CloudBank to safely manage their own cluster infrastructure

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We recently enabled CloudBank to run Terraform changes for their cluster without needing to wait on 2i2c engineers for each request. They run 50+ hubs for various community colleges, and we want to enable them to self serve as much of that as possible. When we introduced home directory quotas, they were no longer able to set up hubs by themselves without help from 2i2c engineers. Our goal was to empower them to be able to set up new hubs in a safe way while still benefiting from the home directory limits work.

CloudBank simplifies cloud access for computer science research and education.

To do this safely, we needed to avoid granting access to shared Terraform state that could impact other communities. Following Yuvi’s suggestion, we migrated CloudBank’s Terraform state to CloudBank’s own GCP project so that infrastructure changes from the CloudBank team are isolated to their cluster only, making this safe to try. This unblocks CloudBank to run changes like terraform plan and terraform apply themselves, meaning that CloudBank can deploy and update a hub without 2i2c engineers in the loop.

This is a good example of how we aim to balance community autonomy with infrastructure safety. CloudBank can now self-serve routine operations while our broader infrastructure remains protected.

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Acknowledgements #

Thanks to Sean Morris and the CloudBank team at UC Berkeley for collaborating on this workflow.

Giving CCAD more control over data science infrastructure via a Catalyst Project hardware exchange

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

2i2c has successfully completed a hardware exchange with Universidad Nacional de Córdoba’s Centro de Computación de Alto Desempeño (CCAD) through funding from the Catalyst Project. CCAD used funding to purchase new on-prem computing infrastructure, significantly expanding their computing capabilities.

This exchange reduces CCAD’s reliance on ongoing cloud funding while giving them direct control over their infrastructure. The new hardware will support a scalable JupyterHub deployment and provide valuable training opportunities for researchers who may work with local computing resources.

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Acknowledgements #

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for their Catalyst Project award
CCAD for their collaboration on this hardware exchange

Sovereignty | 2i2c

Enabling CloudBank to safely manage their own cluster infrastructure

Learn more #

Acknowledgements #

Giving CCAD more control over data science infrastructure via a Catalyst Project hardware exchange

Learn more #

Acknowledgements #