We're thrilled to announce that Renku 2.0 is now officially launched! We've rebuilt our platform from the ground up with a fresh approach to collaborative research computing, and we're excited to share what we've created.
We've been busy building, and we're thrilled to share what we've been working on! This release brings some of our most requested features to life, making it easier than ever to connect your data, share your work, and dive straight into collaborative research.
This month has been jam packed with new Renku features! Here are the highlights of the ones we're most excited about to help you collaborate in research and teaching.
Need a specific set of packages in your Renku session? Now you can customize exactly what's
installed in your session with Renku-built environments. Simply connect a code repository containing
a file with your project dependencies (e.g. an environment.yml), and let Renku build your session
environment (aka docker image) for you!
The wait is over! After a year of dedicated work and six months of testing in beta, Renku 2.0 is now open for Early Access. This means our entire user community is invited to explore the new and improved version of our open-source collaborative computing platform. Whether you're a seasoned Renku user or new to the platform, Renku 2.0 offers exciting possibilities for your research and teaching.
We’ve been busy behind the scenes, and now it’s time to share some of the exciting updates we’ve rolled out over our last few releases. These features are part of the Renku 2.0 beta, designed to to empower collaboration and make it easier to connect and share data, code, and compute resources. Here’s a quick tour of what’s new.
Working with your data in Renku is faster and simpler: you can write and read your data from your external storage services, such as S3, Azure Blob or WebDAV among others.
RenkuLab interactive sessions can access data hosted in a cloud storage system, and the storage is simply mounted as another folder in your session. You can concentrate on developing your code to analyse your data, rather than worrying about moving data around! Plus, when you add a cloud storage to your project, that configuration is available to all project members, so you can share the results with your colleagues or even with the broader community. Who has access is still completely in your control: the access to cloud storage is controlled by the storage provider, not Renku.
To add cloud storage to your Renku project, go to your project's Settings and find the new Cloud Storage tab. Check out Renku documentation for more details on how to configure cloud storage for your project.
If you use SSH sessions via the CLI, you can use cloud storage there too. You just need to configure cloud storage for your project on RenkuLab.io, and those storages will be mounted in your remote session.
Never lose track of important projects again! Pin a project by clicking the new pin icon in the top left corner of the project image. You can pin up to 5 projects, and these will stay at the top of the dashboard, above your recently viewed projects.
We are proud to release our completely redesigned landing page! Our new page better describes Renku and its capabilities, and features multiple entry points for getting started with the platform.
On RenkuLab you can now pause sessions and later resume them exactly where you left off. All of your work in progress, including files, data, and environment changes not saved to git, are resumed right as you left them!
The first thing you’ll notice in RenkuLab is that the session stop button has been replaced with a pause button.
Paused sessions will be maintained for 15 days, after which they (and any unsaved work) will be deleted permanently.
You can resume paused sessions from the Dashboard. Not sure if you have any work left un-committed from your last session? The un-saved work indicator on the Dashboard will let you know!
Session pausing replaces RenkuLab's branch-based auto-save mechanism. Most users do not have to do anything to transition from auto-saves to persistent sessions. However, if your last session went into an auto-save, you can still retrieve that work by using Start with Options and selecting your most recent auto-save branch. If your project contains auto-save branches that you do not need anymore, you can safely delete them.