FABRIC testbed

fabric-testbed.net · Compute, Storage · 2 records · JSON

FABRIC Computefails: identityinstitutionno cardDwrite-gated
FABRIC testbed Storagefails: identityinstitutionno cardR

FABRIC Compute

fails: identityinstitutionno cardDwrite-gated

portal.fabric-testbed.net/about/about-fabric · GPU cloud · compute/fabric · JSON · compare

Free tier	FABRIC is an NSF-funded instrument of 29 sites across commercial collocation, national laboratories and campuses, connecting configurable compute with SmartNICs, GPUs, FPGAs and NVMe, plus P4-programmable switches at selected sites. Experimenters build project-scoped slices of virtual machines, network services and storage across sites, through the portal, a JupyterHub, or the FABlib API. unit none; metered on wall-clock; unmetered-experiment-slices
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not applicable
Retention	not applicable
Egress	not stated
Identity	institution an institutional login through CILogon: the signup guide states 'Currently, FABRIC requires the use of your institutional login via CI Logon. Using other options like Google, GitHub, Microsoft, or ORCID might require extra approvals and should be avoided whenever possible', and resource access additionally needs 'membership in an active FABRIC project'. The portal's identity-provider dropdown defaults to ORCID, which anyone can register for, so whether an ORCID signup completes without staff approval is unverified. No card, hold, debit or prepaid term is stated.
Limits	write-gated The documented sign-up route is an institutional login through CILogon, and access to resources additionally requires membership of an active FABRIC project; ORCID, Google, GitHub and Microsoft are named as possible identity providers but the teaching materials say they "might require extra approvals" without naming the approver or the criteria. source The documented sign-up route is an institutional login through CILogon, and access to resources additionally requires membership of an active FABRIC project; ORCID, Google, GitHub and Microsoft are named as possible identity providers but the teaching materials say they "might require extra approvals" without naming the approver or the criteria.
Binding	write-gated The documented sign-up route is an institutional login through CILogon, and access to resources additionally requires membership of an active FABRIC project; ORCID, Google, GitHub and Microsoft are named as possible identity providers but the teaching materials say they "might require extra approvals" without naming the approver or the criteria.
Interface	rest inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	FABRIC composes with an ACCESS allocation for anything compute-heavy, because it supplies the programmable network and SmartNIC hardware that Jetstream2 and the OSPool do not, and its API means a slice can be created from a script rather than a portal session.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	Contradictory evidence, recorded rather than smoothed. The portal defaults to ORCID, which anyone can register for free and which would make this reachable with an email-level identity; the teaching materials say institutional login is required and that ORCID needs extra approval. No page read names the approval criteria or the person who grants it, so the weaker verdict is recorded. What would settle it: attempting a self-signup with ORCID and observing whether the workflow completes without staff intervention. The corpus holds no FABRIC record. Per-slice core and node ceilings are not published on the pages read, so the shape fields are null; FABRIC is an instrument for experiments rather than a batch queue, so a core-hour figure would be the wrong unit even if it existed.
Evidence rung	documented
Checked	2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-21

Evidence (5)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	portal.fabric-testbed.net/about/about-fabric	29 sites of equipment at commercial collocation spaces, national laboratories and campuses, quoted
2026-10-22	support.access-ci.org/documentation/resources/fabric	FABRIC provides compute and storage with SmartNICs, GPUs, FPGAs and NVMe; "Specialized components such as GPUs, FPGAs, SmartNICs, NVMe devices, or programmable switches may require additional project permissions and are subject to site availability", quoted
2026-10-22	github.com/fabric-testbed/teaching-materials/blob/main/Aditi	"Currently, FABRIC requires the use of your institutional login via CI Logon. Using other options like Google, GitHub, Microsoft, or ORCID might require extra approvals and should be avoided whenever possible", quoted
2026-10-22	support.access-ci.org/documentation/resources/fabric	"Access to testbed resources also requires membership in an active FABRIC project", quoted
2026-10-22	teaching-on-testbeds.github.io/hello-fabric/	the portal's identity provider dropdown defaults to ORCID, and the instructions say to change it to a university affiliation, quoted

More fields (1)

{
 "wave2": {
  "class": "open-science-grid",
  "free_tier_kind": "unmetered-experiment-slices",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": null,
   "ram_gib": null,
   "gpu_class": null,
   "gpu_count": null
  }
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (8)

$.egress.metered egress-unknown
$.egress.terms not-stated
$.per_object_cap.notes process
$.per_object_cap.stated not-applicable
$.reliability_note none-observed
$.retention.notes process
$.retention.stated not-applicable
$.tooling not-stated

FABRIC testbed Storage

fails: identityinstitutionno cardR

portal.fabric-testbed.net/ · research testbed - distributed compute + 0.5-1 PB file storage · storage/fabric-testbed · JSON · compare

Free tier	VMs up to 64 cores / 384 GB RAM with directly attached NVMe, GPUs, SmartNICs; 'large storage volumes'; facility holds 'between 1/2 and 1PB of file storage space' for experiment data, plus experiment-attached block storage unit GB; metered on stored-bytes
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not stated
Retention	Bastion keys expire in 6 months, sliver keys in 2 years. (180 days)
Egress	free; on-demand 25-100 Gbps inter-site links, public IPv4/IPv6 peering, Internet2 100 Gbps cloud peering
Identity	institution institution
Limits	per-ip-shaping 1 Gbps source retention-clamped expire in 6 months source Slices have 'a finite lifetime, but can typically be extended before they expire'. Management plane is rate-limited to ~1 Gbps and 'has traffic filtering rules to prevent hosting Internet-facing services' - so you cannot serve from the control network, only from experiment links. Identity is CILogon/InCommon R&S, i.e. an institutional IdP. Bastion keys expire in 6 months, sliver keys in 2 years.
Binding	none the quota is real and unreachable: identity is the binding constraint, and it is not one of the six limits kinds
Interface	ssh, cli fablib Python API, JupyterHub, portal; ssh via bastion.fabric-testbed.net
Tooling	fablib, FABRIC CLI, Jupyter notebooks with preloaded tokens
Composes with	slice with NVMe + block storage; the management plane is explicitly not a data path
Reliability	Explicitly 'experimental and no production'; not expected to provide production-grade reliability.
Notes	VMs up to 64 cores / 384 GB RAM with directly attached NVMe, GPUs, SmartNICs; 'large storage volumes'; facility holds 'between 1/2 and 1PB of file storage space' for experiment data, plus experiment-attached block storage
Evidence rung	reported One page read moves it to documented.
Checked	2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-04

Evidence (3)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-21	learn.fabric-testbed.net/knowledge-base/frequently-asked-sta	'The facility has between 1/2 and 1PB of file storage space'; VMs 'with storage in the form of dedicated NVMe drives and slower, but larger persistent block storage'; 'The portal and Jupyter Hub use federated identity through CI Logon and support any institutional identity provider that is part of InCommon R&S'
2026-10-21	learn.fabric-testbed.net/knowledge-base/things-to-know-when-	'Management plane is rate-limited to about 1Gbps ... has traffic filtering rules to prevent hosting Internet-facing services and should not be used as part of experiment data flows'; 'Slices have a finite lifetime'
2026-10-21	learn.fabric-testbed.net/knowledge-base/frequently-asked-sta	international nodes exist at CERN, University of Amsterdam, Bristol, Tokyo, but framed as partner facilities, not individual access

More fields (1)

{
 "dead_end": {
  "failure_class": "quota",
  "why": "VMs up to 64 cores / 384 GB RAM with directly attached NVMe, GPUs, SmartNICs; 'large storage volumes'; facility holds 'between 1/2 and 1PB of file storage space' for experiment data, plus experiment-attached block storage",
  "retry_when": null,
  "first_recorded": "2026-10-21"
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (5)

$.extras.dead_end.retry_when process
$.free_tier.notes process
$.per_object_cap.notes not-extracted
$.per_object_cap.stated not-extracted
$.retention.notes not-extracted