The Cloud@ReCaS platform is based on the PRISMA framework, which is has been designed and built upon the OpenStack suite. It provides several cloud services, following the Infrastructure as a Service model, as virtual machines, disk space, computational resources, and networks, aimed at supporting a wide set of use-cases: enterprises, research institutions, local public bodies, and international organisations.

Different authentication mechanisms are available: username/password, X509 certificates, external SAML2 Idp/LDAP authentication (in particular the VOMS module)

Users can create virtual machines with the desired features, following a self-service/on-demand paradigm, and must not be concerned with the management of the hardware.

Moreover, Cloud@ReCaS offers different storage systems, with different features and level of Quality of Service (QoS)

• the Block Storage service, which allows to provide on-demand virtual volumes (cloud equivalent of USB hard drives), that can be directly attached to any virtual machine. The parameters defining different levels of quality of service are user-selectable, and define performances, number of replicas, encryption, I/O.

• The Object Storage service provides storage space for large amounts of non-structured data, as virtual images, backups, videos, photos, web contents, etc. Contents can be accessed through protocols as the native OpenStack Swift API, the Amazon S3 API, or the CDMI (Cloud Data Management Interface) interface. All this options make the platform highly elastic and interoperable.

Network configurations can be defined by the user, who can create virtual networks, firewalls, complex topologies and routers within his projects, connecting all the appliances with the external net. Everything is secured, in order to provide the highest standard of isolation and security.