Several computer science experiments require cloud infrastructure to produce results. Federally-funded cloud testbeds such as Chameleon and CloudLab aim to meet this need. A direct benefit of large-scale experimentation on these federally-funded cloud testbeds is the ease of reproducing experiments on the same hardware configuration originally used by an author. In this paper, we analyze over 100 shareable computer science experiments available on Chameleon, classifying them into different types: tutorials, research experiments, bug reproduction, and course assignments. We determine the packaging requirements for these various types of experiments and assess whether the resulting packages are repeatable on Chameleon and reusable on other public cloud infrastructures like AWS. Our findings reveal that several available experiments are contingent on obtaining leases, which result in significant lag time, thus affecting their ‘push-button’ reproducibility. Additionally, we find that packaging systems often overlook experimental files and include hardware configuration APIs that complicate reproducing these experiments on other public cloud infrastructures. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for creating reusable packages.

Scientists are increasingly interested in creating standalone web-applications as computational and data analysis tools. The authors have worked with several such research groups to design, develop, and deploy such web applications that are increasingly based on Jupyter notebooks. One of the primary reasons among many to use Jupyter notebooks is the fact that research groups inheriting these applications are capable of maintaining and extending them. In this paper, we walk through the design process for one such application and discuss development environments that are best suited to Jupyter notebook development. We then explore several other applications where we employ similar design patterns. In doing so, we expound upon the benefits, limitations, and challenges of Notebook-based applications to provide a guide for other facilitators in similar situations.