Pillars of Liminal
Data Storage
Right now, all Liminal data is stored on secure cloud storage. We are working on allowing you to choose your own storage provider. Users will be able to "plug in" their own storage provider, such as the cloud storage providers your University already supports or a University compute cluster.
For example, at Purdue University, where the first labs are using Liminal, we are working to plug in to the Purdue Research Computing storage system. This will allow researchers to use their existing storage and not have to worry about moving data around. This makes Liminal cheaper and simpler for customers, as you don't need to worry about data costs.
Compute Power
Right now, all Liminal computing is done on a cloud server. This is going to change soon, as we are working on allowing our users to "plug in" the compute source (much like the data storage source). This will allow users to use their existing compute resources, such as a University compute cluster or cloud computing resources.
Login and Authentication
We are working on allowing users to use their existing University login credentials to access Liminal. This will make it easier for users to get started with Liminal, as they won't have to remember another password. This will also make it easier for University IT departments to manage Liminal access. Alternatively, users can login with another authorization method, such as a Google account or even a separate Liminal account.
Data Provenance & Reproducibility
Liminal is made up of various "entities" or "objects", each representing a different part of your lab. Liminal is all about connecting these entities together, so you can see how everything in your lab is connected. The notebook is the hub for making these connections via references all relevant objects related to your work.